Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s most popular desktop role-playing game, could not achieve what it wanted on the big screen. The adaptations we’ve watched so far have been far from the expected shine.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves can either make you happy or hate itself, depending on how you set your expectations. In general, we are faced with the first of the stories to be followed, and the target audience is a younger audience.
Note: No spoilers!
Neverwinter is the New York of the D&D universe.
This universe, which contains stories spread over dozens of different books, was also published in our country under the name of Forgotten Realms. Productions such as Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights set in the same universe were also productions we played on computers.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is set in Neverwinter, the New York of this world. Just as the subject of superhero movies always includes New York, the stories of this universe are somehow connected to Neverwinter. It is no different in this movie. When we look at it in terms of introducing a new world, we see a good starting point.
The biggest success of the movie is that it manages not to take itself seriously.
If you have a brand that will make a lot of money, of course you want to use it. This is what the producers also made, but it is clear that they made two very right decisions from the very beginning: Their determination to make a movie that resembles deer spinning around a desk and to do it with the aesthetics of 90s B-grade movies makes the movie great.
The importance of respecting the characters also comes into play.
Despite the production’s abundance of jokes and glaring gaps in some places, the respect for the characters is remarkable. Although the characters are often joke material, they never become the joke itself. No character is put on the screen just as a joke. Besides, whenever they need to be mature, the characters can think and act like adults.
Two movies in one: a movie for those who are D&D actors, and a movie for those who will.
One of the most successful aspects of the film is that it allows different audience groups to enjoy this production at the same time. The film is layered: while the average joke manages to appeal to the general audience, FRP players laugh at the same joke from another angle. Overall the jokes are well balanced, it doesn’t dilute the story too much, but it also shows that the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously.
In other words, it is possible to say that you will be happy if you do not expect a Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones epic from the movie. On the other hand, does it create a sweet irony that we are faced with a more mature work on adult relations than many productions? Do we complain, never.
Actors do not grin either, they manage to convince themselves.
Pine, one of Hollywood’s Chrises, suits her role. Even though she is one of the leading roles that would not change much if she left the story, she manages to be at the center of a very entertaining story. Michelle Rodriguez, on the other hand, performs well as a true ax deity (divine?). Regé-Jean Page, whom we know as the brother in Bridgerton, also appears in a different performance than we are used to seeing him in the movie.
In addition, practical effects were used as often as CGI in the production, and frankly, they were successful. Practical effects may not always produce ultra-realistic images, but if you don’t have a problem with extreme realism, the scenes you see are fine. It also allows us to see at a stage which characters’ toys will be made.
