Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Favorable review. These are new characters, so I don't need to do this huge deconstruction of their arcs, other than to say I liked them (particularly Chris Pine's character). I think the biggest reason I liked it was because it was enjoyable. I love The Lord Of The Rings movies, but man, those are a freaking slog. Not only are they long, but they take things SO freaking seriously.

And the problem was the last time Dungeons & Dragon had a movie was it was TOO silly. It devolved into camp. And I think the fact that this movie's tone is more modeled on the first three Phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is right. It's fun, it has jokes, but the story is serious enough to have actual stakes too. And I think that's how popcorn movies SHOULD be. You can have jokes in a movie, and have it be enjoyable, without lowering the stakes or turning it into a slapstick comedy. It's weird Marvel itself is currently struggling with that. But as seen here it's still pretty much an effortless thing to do.

There is a tag, but it's a joke tag, which I approve of. I must be alone in disliking the Marvel tags. I wish each of those films were permitted actual endings and allowed to finish telling THEIR stories instead of teasing the future of different movies in the continuity. I came to watch the movie. I did not sign up for a lifetime commitment. And this is speaking as someone who watches all of those movies and even the Disney+ TV shows. I like closure in my stories. And it's especially frustrating not getting it because most of the Marvel tags don't even pimp future outings of the same franchise. None of those endings to those movies feel like they belong in those movies. And they've gotten me off on quite a tangent in this review, haven't they?

Speaking of the joke tag. The five questions thing was the proper use of comedy in a big budget action picture. It's silly, but doesn't actually break the reality of the Universe. I don't personally find that a difficult needle to thread in my own writing, but I guess it must be considering how much stuff actually struggles with it.

The guy Hugh Grant played turning out to have betrayed them all was the least surprising thing ever, although just based on how insincere Grant played him making that promise, it was also set up well.

Choosing to save the woman at the end played by Michelle Rodriguez was the right narrative choice and made the stakes and sacrifice genuine. Again, not as impossible as much of fiction makes it look, but it's actually rare, so maybe I'm crazy.

I looked for Gary Gygax's name in the credits and didn't see it, even as a "special thanks". It's weird that Futurama acknowledged his influence in their Dungeons & Dragon stuff, and an actual Dungeon & Dragons movie acts like it's down to Hasbro, and is a corporate toy franchise on par with Transformers or Lego instead of a passion project from a single creator. I don't like that fact.

But the movie itself is quite charming. I would not mind seeing these characters again, or even an entirely new cast set in the same continuity. I enjoyed it. ****.