Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a delightfully refreshing adventure film that reveals what so many other modern fantasy titles are missing.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is far better than it has any right to be. The film, which counts Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, and Michelle Rodriguez among its stars, is Hollywood’s latest attempt to profit off the popularity of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game. The industry’s previous attempts to do so went famously poorly. Fortunately, Honor Among Thieves isn’t just a marked improvement on the previous Dungeons & Dragons movies, but it’s also a genuinely fun adventure film that has more heart in it than most other blockbusters that are released nowadays.
Part of the film’s charm is its lighthearted, straightforward comedic tone. From the moment it begins, Honor Among Thieves doesn’t take itself too seriously. While it features more than its fair share of exposition and world-building, too, the film doesn’t ever get too bogged down in setting up the “seriousness” of its fantasy world. Instead, Honor Among Thieves focuses all of its efforts on telling a fantasy adventure story that is, above all else, infectiously fun.
In doing so, the film reveals the one thing that’s been missing from so many of the live-action fantasy movies and TV shows that Hollywood has produced in recent years.Escaping the shadow of Game of Thrones
When Game of Thrones originally came along in 2011, the series offered a kind of live-action fantasy story that viewers had never quite seen before. Its commitment to exploring a world rampant with sex, violence, and treachery made Thrones feel refreshing and engaging at the same time. Twelve years later, however, the series’ dark spin on the fantasy genre has begun to feel stale, and that’s largely due to all the subpar imitations that have followed it.
