Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Never put your trust in a con man.
THE SUMMARY: A ragtag band of magical characters in a sprawling fantasy world works together to resurrect a guy’s wife, but one of them dies so they use the one-time power to resurrect her instead. It’s full of impressive visuals and creative characters, but the story is hard to follow. Perhaps I’d like it more if I understood the Dungeons & Dragons universe. To me it’s like Game of Thrones meets Lord of the Rings meets Star Wars, just not as good as any of them.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JACOB: A thoroughly enjoyable movie with a cast of well-written characters - it is nonstop fun.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
Holy Grail-esque.
Not sure why I got a handlebar mustache in this one.
When it’s Blonde’s turn to launch the border catapult.
Now Blonde is a Magical Negro.
THE BEST:
Great visuals: Honor Among Thieves is incredible in its visual presentation. My frustration with the plot is countered by consistent eye-candy: scary characters, magical powers, tense combat, and an all-around exceptional aesthetic. Particularly impressive are the shapeshifting escape scene, the final battle with the witch, especially as her condition deteriorates, and the broken spell during the distraction.
Great action: General complaints about empowered female combat aside, the action in the movie is excellent too. The initial scene with the beheading escape sets the tone, and each fight is awesome all the way through the witch battle. Each point of combat is tense and chaotic, but in a new way that keeps it all interesting. It’s even more impressive with so many digital effects. The combat never looks fake or clumsy, always convincing.
Creative scenarios, characters, and environments: The great visuals and action are complimented by great conceptual creativity as well. Scenarios are rarely as simple as ‘this guy fights that guy.’ The use of portals, for example, makes for inventive situations (even if they are strongly reminiscent of the video game): the heist of the vault carriage, and the … redistribution… of Forge’s wealth, among others. Understanding the movement of the characters through the portals gets mind-bending, and it all presents very cleanly - no obvious glitches or mistakes.
Several of the enemies or monsters are excellent too: the ‘brain cannibals,’ the ‘mouth chest,’ the ‘owl bear,’ and many more.
The varied environments are also consistently beautiful. Stone cityscapes, dramatic forests, deep dragon lairs - the movie keeps the scenery changing and each is new and exciting.
Some decent comedy, cleverness, and even philosophy: Honor Among Thieves’ script also deserves some honorable mention for its script writing. Holga calls Forge ‘a real son of a bitch,’ and Xenk responds ‘so you blame his mother for his corruption.’ The five questions for the raised dead is also a good bit. And even though it’s another comedy bit, I actually find a lot of wisdom in Edgin’s line ‘we must never stop failing, because if we do, we’ve failed’ (paraphrased). It’s a paradox of course - if failing is the point, then failing is both success and failure at the same time. But there’s truth to it - life is generally an exercise in persistent failure, and that’s not pessimistic. It’s what it means to learn. If there’s no failure in your life, it means you’re not challenging yourself. And to forego all challenge is to… well, miss the point of life, exactly as he says. Pursue challenge and fail. It’s the path to success.
To be a fly on the wall.
Cool and creepy.
Portal meets GTA.
THE WORST:
Who’s that and what’s he doing, again?: This is the problem with big, expansive worlds and stories with so many characters - it’s easy to lose track. Maybe I’m just a dummy, but this plot was incredibly difficult to follow, especially for one that should be so simple: a guy is on a quest to get his family back. But that quest has so many steps and subplots and side characters, it all gets mashed up to make each piece and person more forgettable, at least in what role they play. I still don’t even understand why the witch hates Edgin and company so much - why does she want to kill them? Just because he arrested a red wizard way back when? These witches abuse people this violently and the biggest problem they have is some guy arrested one of them years ago? I don’t get it.
And that’s my question with most of the story and characters - why are they here? What purpose are they serving? How does this advance the plot of restoring this guy’s family? All the visual presentation in the world, and this movie has plenty, can’t replace a good core story. And this movie lacks one. Or if it is there, it’s buried under so much distracting nonsense it’s hard to identify.
No, the replacement mom is not as good or better than the real mom: I know we’re supposed to love this ending where Holga dies, and Edgin and Kira use the ‘Tablet of Reawakening’ to resurrect her instead of Kira’s mom/Edgin’s wife because Holga actually raised Kira. I hate it. Yes, it’s admirable to step into a parental role for a child who’s lost one. Yes, society should care for orphaned children. But no, that doesn’t mean that a kid’s actual mom is replaceable by someone else by choice. Or that it’s better to replace a kid’s mom with someone else by choice. In this case, some super masculine woman who was disgraced for marrying outside of norms, draw whatever real social parallels are probably intended by that message.
Maybe I’m just too sensitive to this sort of messaging since it’s everywhere these days, but I will always reject the premise that mom and dad are interchangeable with anything else. They aren’t, and you’ll never propagandize me to believe otherwise.
The wrong choice.
THE RATING: 3/5 Wickies. Visually impressive and narratively confusing, it’s decent entertainment that I’m sure is more enjoyable and understandable to a Dungeons & Dragons fan. Or if the story wasn’t insanely complicated for no good reason.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇ Note: if you get a notification saying you have already voted and you haven’t, this is because of an issue with iOS (Apple mobile devices). Try voting on a desktop or laptop computer.
NEXT WEEK: Unbreakable (2000). I have made an executive decision to accept the most-voted non-wildcard movie from last week, based on likely vote fortification once again (a late surge to wildcard with just enough votes to win and not look suspicious). For this reason, changes are coming to the voting and wildcard system, which I will announce and describe on the stream.
AFTER THAT? YOU PICK - VOTE! July’s nominations are from listener Jacob. To deter vote fortification, the vote totals will be hidden until the vote expires on Saturday, July 13.
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