News culture Dungeons & Dragons Honor Thieves: The best film adaptation of the famous Heroic-Fantasy universe!
Published on 03/12/2023 at 10:00
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After The Lord of the Rings, The Witcher and Games of Thrones, it’s the turn of another flagship Heroic-Fantasy franchise to be remembered. Dungeons & Dragons, the cult tabletop role-playing game, is embarking on a new cinematic epic in the spring of 2023. Is Honor Thieves safe?
Summary
The adaptations of Dungeons & DragonsHonor ThievesThe best D&D movie!
Dungeons & Dragons adaptations
Born from the fertile imagination of designers and authors Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons (Dungeons & Dragons of its English title) is originally a tabletop role-playing game first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. From 1997, Wizards of the Coast takes over. With several editions enriching the lore and its growing international success, D&D quickly left its native lands to conquer other arts… literature, comics, cinema and of course video games. Many adaptations have emerged through the ages, and some have left a lasting impression on fans, whether for good or ill.
Players from all over the world were able to rejoice in (re)discovering these medieval-fantasy lands, in particular with the sagas Baldur’s Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Neverwinter Nights or the MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online. Cinephiles were clearly not so lucky. In 2000, the first film adaptation of D&D was released, and it was a cold shower. Dungeons and Dragons directed by Courtney Solomon with Justin Whalin (Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) and Jeremy Irons (Alfred Pennyworth in DC’s Snyderverse) as the headliner is being destroyed by critics. And let’s not talk about its two sequels which manage the feat of being worse than their elder on all points.
Dungeons & Dragons (2000) – 10% off RottenTomatoesDungeons & Dragons 2: The Supreme Power (2005)Dungeons & Dragons 3: The Book of Darkness (2012)
Nothing better to reconcile us with the universe of Dungeons & Dragons on the small or big screen than to turn to animation. In January 2022, Amazon Prime draws an animated series that will be a landmark among Heroic-Fantasy fans. Produced in collaboration with Critical Role Productions, The Legend of Vox Machina adapts the first campaign of the Critical Role web-series during which professional voice actors and actresses play Dungeons & Dragons. The expectation aroused by the project is such that the program is renewed for a second season even before the broadcast of the first.
Thieves Honor
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Thieves is by no means a sequel to the aforementioned movie trilogy. On the contrary, this new adaptation cuts all family ties with its “illustrious” predecessors, both in terms of characters and the region explored. This reboot directed and scripted by the duo Jonathan Goldstein – John Francis Daley (Game Night) frees itself from a painful past in order to offer spectators a humorous and family medieval-fantasy epic.
A charming thief and a band of adventurers embark on an epic heist to recover a lost relic, but things go dangerously wrong when they run into the wrong people. -Paramount Pictures
The cast of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Thieves:
Chris Pine (Wonder Woman) – Edgin the bardMichelle Rodriguez (Fast and Furious) – Holga the barbarianJustice Smith (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu) – Simon the sorcererRegé-Jean Page (Bridgerton) – Xenk the paladinHugh Grant (Bridget Jones’s Diary) – Forge FletcherSophia Lillis (I am Not Okay with This) – Doric the DruidDaisy head (Shadow and Bone): the red witch of Thay
The best D&D movie!
It is sometimes enough to be the best to simply be the least bad, and in the case of Dungeons & Dragons in the cinema, it seems to be within everyone’s reach as the first trilogy had marked the 7th Art by its mediocrity. The Honor of Thieves, on the contrary, seeks to pay tribute to the Dungeons & Dragons saga and its tens of thousands of role-players who have kept this universe alive for almost half a century. To do this, the directors imagined a colorful adventure, sprinkled with humor and winks in order to seduce two distinct audiences.
This new vision of D&D in the cinema is aimed at “everyman” and is intended for a family audience without however being suitable for an audience that is “too” young. It is therefore not necessary to know this universe of Heroic-Fantasy to dive into it body and soul, and thus enjoy a fun and light-hearted adventure., maybe even a little too much. The Honor of Thieves does not forget fans of tabletop role-playing games. The feature film mentions elements of lore that will probably thrill purists, and tells this robbery story as a game master (or GM) would.
A narrator thus comes to underline the peregrinations and the heroic acts (or not elsewhere) of our disparate group of adventurers whose function and attributes echo the great archetypes of D&D. The Honor of Thieves even sometimes looks like a LARP (for “Larp” role-playing game)… plus special effects which, by the way, oscillate between the pleasant and the perfectible. Unfortunately, in order to please as many people as possible, Dungeons & Dragons is scattered and becomes ultra kitsch, even “cheesy” (cheesy) at times, which risks making fans of this universe wince, but also the rest of the spectators. .
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Thieves does not demerit, but only partially succeeds in carrying out its mission, namely to bring together under the same banner D&D fans and neophytes.
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