We are in an era of filmmaking where being able to tie a new film to a known and popular piece of intellectual property is basically required. It seems like nearly every movie that is released is a sequel or a reboot of something popular or based on something else that people already know. The reason for this is obvious, but while it can certainly attract an audience already familiar with the book or movie in question, what if a new film is based on something that a lot of people have heard of, but aren't actually that familiar with? in this case, I'm referring to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Certainly, a lot of people are familiar with the name Dungeons & Dragons. It's not even the first movie with that title, and a lot of those people probably have a basic understanding of what the game is, but I’d wager that most moviegoers in your average theater on a Saturday night have never actually played Dungeons & Dragons. That might have at least the potential of turning off people who aren’t familiar with the game from seeing Honor Among Thieves. But fear not, because if you’re one of those people who is afraid a lack of knowledge about the game will harm your enjoyment of the movie, I’m here to tell you that won’t be a problem.
Dungeons & Dragons Is Inspired By The Fantasy Tropes You Already Know
Dungeons & Dragons has been around since 1974, and in the nearly 50 years of its life, it has created a number of different fantasy worlds that are populated with all sorts of incredible characters, creatures, magic and monsters. There’s so much that even regular players can’t ultimately keep it all straight, but the fact is that none of that matters when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
In order to be easily accessible to the people that wanted to play the game, Dungeons & Dragons took much of its own mythology from the traditional fantasy worlds that came before it. If you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies or any of the countless movies or books that were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's work, or really any fantasy at all, then you already know basically everything you need to know. There are alterations here and there; what you might know as hobbits from Tolkien are called halflings in D&D, but you’ll get the basics pretty easily.
Having said that, Dungeons and Dragons does have its own mythology, history, and recurring characters who occasionally pop up throughout history. However, all of it is in service of allowing players to create their own adventures. Dungeons & Dragons is designed to be a blank slate for others to create their own stories on top of. Ultimately, that’s all Honor Among Thieves is: a story that is being told inside the world created by the game. The rest is just details.
The “Game” Elements Of Dungeons And Dragons Have No Part In Honor Among Thieves
If there’s a part of Dungeons & Dragons that’s a bit more complicated, it’s the structure of the game itself. The primary tools of Dungeons & Dragons are dice and math. Major decisions are made via a combination of character role-playing and random chance. But of course, it would have been pretty difficult to translate the mechanics of the game into the actual fantasy story, and luckily the movie doesn’t try to do that.
This isn’t a LEGO Movie sort of situation where there’s a meta element on top of the fiction. There’s no D&D game happening alongside the adventure that is designed to “explain” why a character might be successful at casting one spell while another doesn’t quite go as planned. One imagines such an attempt would have been difficult, if not impossible to pull off in a way that doesn't kill the action.
Some of the game's elements, like the way that the Speak with Dead spell happens to work, find their way into the movie. However, the arbitrary number of questions that one gets to ask that make sense in the mechanics of the game are just waved away in the movie.
Honor Among Thieves Explains What You Need To Know Naturally, Without The Need For Info Dumps
With almost 50 years of lore to dive into, there’s a lot that Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves does reference. Those who know the game world well will recognize the names of characters and locations. They’ll be able to tell you what all the various strange creatures and monsters are called. But part of what the movie does right is that it doesn’t make any of this information necessary to enjoy or even understand what is going on.
There is a moment early on when the heroes first encounter an owlbear, a creature that is exactly what it sounds like: a combination of a bear and an owl. The movie does stop and inform the audience just what in the world that crazy thing is, but thankfully, that’s the only moment when the movie wastes time pointing out its own references. The fact is that if you’re not a fan, you won’t know what most of the other creatures are called when the movie is over, but you’ll know what they can do, and that’s far more important.
You don’t need to know what a displacer beast or a gelatinous cube actually are to understand what sort of creatures they are, what they can do or why they are dangerous. The movie makes all this information clear, but it’s done so naturally simply by showing you what the creature can do.
If you're in the mood for an exciting, fun, and funny, fantasy adventure, then Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will likely be exactly what you're looking for, even if you can't tell a Drow from a Tiefling. There is, however, a decent chance that after seeing the movie starting March 31, you may want to try Dungeons & Dragons. The good news is there's probably going to be somebody in the theater who will be happy to let you join their game.
