#I want to see Kira level up into a scary battle rogue

[lediz-watches]

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

To quote or paraphrase Andy Farrant (I watched the stream a few days ago, the wording's not in my head) "It was better than it had any right to be."

This was such a fun movie, though. It was silly popcorn fun with legitimate heart, which is exactly what action adventure movies should be.

I loved the overarching narrative and the way it showed a legitimate found family long before it verbally addressed it. I loved the relationship between Holga, Edgin, and Kira, and that beautiful repeated phrase "I'm gonna bring back your mom".

As someone who loves the idea of DnD but has never had much success with it (I think it's very telling that my favourite DnD stream is Oxventure and I couldn't sit through more than ten episodes of Critical Role), it was so curious how they played this. They didn't (although they very easily could have) show you the rolls, but you could definitely feel them sometimes. I'm not just talking about the Nat20s and NatOnes, but like Simon's player in general is a very good player with such cursed dice. He failed so many saves and had to adjust around them.

I actually wonder how someone who has never played the game would react to some of them, actually. Like, there's a point where Simon gets his foot caught in some cobblestones. To a DnD player, what happened is that it's clearly a failed stealth check followed by several failed saves from everyone to free him. But I wonder if to a non-player whether that seemed like a bit of an arbitrary complication to the story for DRAMA.

But there are, I should point out, very few points where I actually noticed those points that would likely end up as a divide. Mostly, I think, the movie was incredibly accessible.

Like, even painfully DnD tropes. Everyone points out that Xenk is either a DMPC or a player who barely ever gets to play and so is always overpowered so they can be a fun addition. But the actual painfully DnD trope about him is that he's just SO Lawful Good. So lawful that he can only walk in straight lines. But rather than it being specifically a DnD joke, he's a parody of The Perfect Hero. Everyone knows that trope. Everyone can follow that trope.

So the only problem I have with it from an adaption perspective is how twisted and messy the story felt. As a DnD player, it was fine - the players were scrambling to find solutions to a problem and were going on multiple quests to figure out what they would do. But I can definitely see how an outsider might find it all... incohesive.

They're gathering party members > oh, that wasn't good enough.

They're going to search for a helmet > oh, that isn't available.

They're going in search of a hero > oh, he's going to give them a different quest for the helmet.

They've got the helmet but more importantly they have this hero > oh, he's leaving, okay.

They've got the helmet > oh, that won't work.

They're doing a heist > oh, that's not going to work either...

Like, I get it. I FELT it. But I can also see how an outsider might react to it in the same way I originally felt watching The Dark Knight. After a point, plot twists get tedious. And some of these plot threads could have been entire stories on their own rather than quick asides. Everything was a little too shallow in order to fit a lot of story into a twisted adventure.

But that said, I enjoyed it. And I loved the complications in this a lot more than I do in heist movies where it all turns out that it actually went exactly as the grandmaster thief intended all along.

And more than anything, I loved the main arc. I am always a sucker for Found Family, but this was beautiful.

From the very start, the film goes out of its way to SHOW us that Holga and Kira are an unconventional but very real mother and daughter. Holga has a closer relationship with Kira than Edgin does. BUT the story is told from Edgin's perspective, so it repeatedly TELLS us that Holga is Edgin's partner, Kira is Edgin's daughter, and the quest is to bring back Edgin's dead wife so she can be a mother to Kira.

I love that dichotomy SO MUCH. I adore it when stories not only use show and tell cohesively, but make the difference between them a POINT. It was amazing, and something that I think couldn't have been done nearly as well in a written medium, I'm so in awe of how effortless it felt.

That one line was... mmph! Nice job, Mr Pine, nice job making that line hit your character so hard.

AND while I probably can't get into it without going on a whole essay about western ethics re: resurrection, there was something I really appreciated about how the film didn't linger over Edgin's wish and decisions about his wife. This was a DnD campaign. Resurrection is expensive and a pain, but it's a thing that happens, the only issue is Faerun lore about other planes, let's move on.

Last thing I'll talk about is the characters themselves. This was such good casting, and I love the characters and how they're embodied.

I love Holga's unapologetic dumb muscle and how much heart she had. (Side note, Bradley Cooper's cameo was wonderful and heartwrenching and that whole mini-arc is going to quietly stay in my heart for a long while)(Side-side note, I love Bradley Cooper so much more as a supporting character actor than a lead. He's SO GOOD at what he does but lead characters make his arcs overwrought)

I love Simon and Doric's blunt, awkward style and how you can tell they'll work well together but would be hopeless without Edgin's charm and energy to guide them.

I love Edgin, and I LOVE Edgin played by Chris Pine, who balances that charm and quiet desperation and arrogance into one perfect BARD. He was SUCH a BARD, even though he was missing the magic and lore (yeah... Simon fails saves, Edgin fails knowledge checks all. the. time. His dice hate the lore and it's absolutely a running joke at the table). His personality was just embodied Harper bard and it was perfect.

I love Hugh Grant's villain era because I actually find it a very natural evolution of his typecasting. But more than anything, I love that Forge isn't and never was actually evil. He's Neutral. He's selfish and willing to do either good or bad to achieve his goals. He didn't really want his friends to die, and you know, the overall outcome of the scheme was regrettable, but he would get away with money, love, and his life, so... -shrug- And Hugh Grant plays that so well. He's so dry and deadpan and you're never sure whether he's making fun of you or not, and it just works. So it's Nice. I like it. Nice.

But yeah! I could ramble about the things I loved for days, and there are certainly things I would have preferred, but this was actually a really good, really fun movie using DnD rules and tropes.

Good game, Paramount. Well done.