By LUKE SPENCE/Staff Writer
As an avid Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) player and Game Master, I was skeptical of the new attempt at adapting the feel of a D&D game while being accessible to a larger audience. Especially given the failed, and frankly awful, previous trilogy.
The popular fantasy role-playing game is a highly subjective and difficult idea to center a movie around, as there is no one “true” way to portray it. It’s a game played with friends on a free weekend night, so the antics and emotions are hard to grasp and adapt to a universal story.
But as “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” began and we are introduced to the main characters, Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), I became enthralled by the passion, love and care put into the production.
One of the first things that stood was the costume and set design. While it was obvious that green screen, motion capture or other computer-generated graphics was kept at a minimum, it would be difficult to show the fantastical and magical aspects of the world without it. However, compared to recent CGI slug fests and bland machine-churred movies of the past decade, the monsters and creatures in the film looked beautiful and realistic.
There were clever scenes that were practically made of CGI without letting it ever overstay its welcome; the magic, too, never strangely stood out (with the exception of one wonderfully comical illusion).
But the true magic shined with the prosthetics, props and practical effects used to bring D&D races like the iconic orc or the avian humanoid aarakocra to life. Mechanical suits and puppets were used in lieu of performance capture technology, hilarious makeup was used to bring life to the undead, and so much more: the list could go on. I felt transported to the world the movie presented.
The next major aspect of my enjoyment stemmed from the fight choreography. The fights and tense chases were amazingly shot and easy to follow. Each scene included a way to showcase something unique and creative about a character, whether it be the unpredictability of a sorcerer’s castings or the raw strength of an angry barbarian. I never found myself wondering why a character wouldn’t try something in their arsenal.
The performances were largely great with some bumps. I found myself wondering about the motives of some characters, but most lack of development was because of the small amount of time the character was on-screen. Other times the bumps were from the characters being too one-dimensional or stereotypical, but never did this take away from the feeling of adventure and fantasy.
Ultimately, the “Dungeons & Dragons” aspect of the adaptation was unlike any other D&D media I’ve consumed. It truly felt as if the story came from a group of friends playing at a table.
There were scenes I felt the energy of the players struggling through an improvised event by the Game Master, where tedious fetch quests and processes occurred with no second thought and where obviously favored NPCs would show up and abruptly leave without much reason other than they must.
It was an engaging and fun movie that I would love to see many more times. I could not recommend it enough to showcase to newcomers what D&D is like.
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