Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Release: March 31, 2023
Genre: Fantasy
Screenplay: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and Michael Gilio
Story: Michael Gilio and Chris McKay
Starring: Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis, Michelle Rodriguez and Holga Kilgore, Justice Smith as Simon Aumar, Sofia Lillis as Doric, Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam, and Daisy Head as Sofina
Running Time: 134 Minutes
We all knew it was coming. Over the last decade and change, Hollywood seemingly banked everything on superpowers and colourful lycra. Yes, there were attempts to mine other intellectual properties during that time. We, of course, can not forget the hit and mostly miss attempts at mining the grounds of so-called “young adult” fiction that came in the waning years of the Harry Potter film franchise. It is easy to erase from memory the period when coming attractions reels were packed with washed out, vapid dystopias aimed at a gullible audience of millennial teens, and even twenty-somethings with misty-eyed nostalgia for the literary offerings upon which these films were based. The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent, and on and on. I would also feel a bit remiss if did not mention the drab, gray vapidity that was the Twilight quadrilogy. Not much of it seemed to stick with the audience, however, quite as well as superheroes. Fox and Disney rode the wave to billion dollar successes with their respective X-Men and Marvel Cinematic Universe franchises. Sony even got in on the action with the Spider-Man and Venom films. Warner captured some success as well with films featuring old DC Comics favourites Batman and Wonder Woman, but have thus far struggled in their efforts to get a Disney-style “cinematic universe” off the ground. Streaming services made a mad dash for the indie comics space, hoping to scoop up their own stables of brightly coloured heroes with which to hit pay dirt. Although, this would prove to be too late in the game.
A combination of factors now seems poised to push the superhero gravy train off of the tracks. The end of the Infinity War and Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse meta narratives that drove much of the success of the MCU and X-Men franchises collided with an ill-advised pandemic lockdown that had audiences watching films designed for giant theater screens on tiny phone screens and televisions. For once they were viewing these films under a microscope and finding the underlying product a bit wanting. With a seeming era of diminishing financial returns for spandex sci-fi underway, the studios are reading the writing on the walls and casting about for another crop of ready made IPs to mine for a deluge of ceaseless and profitable content. This has seen their gaze turn toward gaming. Over the last few years, notable entries in the games to film space have included Mortal Kombat, Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, The Last of Us (technically a series, yes), and Super Mario Bros., and have met with varying levels of critical and -more importantly- financial success. Into this early ground comes Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The film represents the second attempt at bringing the venerable tabletop gaming franchise to the big screen.
Honor Among Thieves tells the story of Ed, a cynical bard and member of iconic D&D faction the Harpers, and his world-weary Barbarian companion Holga. The pair escape from prison and put together a new party with the goal of seeking revenge on the con artist Forge Fitzwilliam and his comrade Sofina, a Red Wizard of Thay, who betrayed them two years prior to the events of the film. If there is one kind thing I can say about the Honor Among Thieves, it is that it is a marked improvement over the first attempt at a film adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. Most of the main actors turn in decent performances with the material on offer; charming, silly, and a little bit campy, exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a flick based on the D&D license. This is especially true for one that is explicitly set in the Forgotten Realms (in and around Neverwinter). No piece of Dungeons & Dragons media would be complete without the inclusion of many of the franchise’s well known “demihuman” races, and the film includes plenty of them. Unfortunately, so many of them don’t look very good. Honor Among Thieves is awash in thoroughly modern, and thus thoroughly ugly, CGI. Quite possibly the worst in this regard are the Dragonborn, Half-Orcs, and Aarakocra (a race of avian-like humanoids). The effects on these characters are too cartoonish, and it results in them not blending well with the film’s human characters. Ugly CGI bleeds down to magic and other effects as well. The costumes are at best inconsistent. An attempt to have things too closely resemble the very underwhelming Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition aesthetic yields costumes that vary wildly between good and cheap cosplay. As we exist in a post-Denis Villeneuve, post-Christopher Nolan world, Honor Among Thieves also suffers under another of the worst and most persistent of cinematic aesthetic trends: colour desaturations. Anyone who has played a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms, or partaken in any of the Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, or Neverwinter Nights video games knows that this is a high middle ages to early renaissance setting. It is bright and colourful, sometimes garishly so. Unfortunately, that gets lost in the modern attempt to have everything have the colour palette of The Dark Knight or Sicario.
It’s not going to be taking home any awards, but as film adaptations of popular games go, you can find much worse than Honor Among Thieves. See 2021’s Mortal Kombat for instance. The filmmakers here certainly make a much better use of the license than the infamous film from 2000. The filmmakers here have actually told a story in an established game setting, and featured at least a couple of iconic locales. The outing from 2000 was pretty much just a botched, generic fantasy flick with a popular license needlessly attached to it. I must admit that despite my numerous criticisms of its aesthetics, I found the film fairly enjoyable overall, though perhaps a tad bit overlong. The filmmakers did a respectable job of capturing the tonal feel of the Forgotten Realms, even if they fell a bit short on the aesthetic front. It is not exactly Lord of the Rings or even Conan The Barbarian (John Milius, not Marcus Nispel). It is, however, a decently entertaining little fantasy flick with some picaresque elements.
Now don’t get too excited for this incoming era of game to film adaptations being good. a sequel to 2021’s Mortal Kombat is apparently on the horizon after all.
Score: 6.5/10