Dungeons & Dragons is a super fun game that I miss
playing very much. If you don’t quite understand what D&D is, I will try to
explain it briefly: it is a tabletop, paper and pen role playing game, of
which all mainstream video game RPGs are at least partially derived form. The
game is played as a group who create characters to individually play as based on
classes/archetypes found in the rule book. One player is the “Dungeon Master” or
“DM” who designs the world the game takes place in and usually plays the roles
of everyone in that world who aren’t the players. The player characters inhabit
said world and roleplay an adventure as dictated by the DM. Actions, particularly complex actions and combat actions,
are determined by rolling dice, usually a twenty-sided die, which are further enhanced
by statistics of the individual character performing the action base. Basically,
if you roll high you are successful and if you roll too low you are not
successful. Don’t roll a natural 1.
Honestly D&D likely requires its own article to explain
the full details and nutty history, but for the purposes of this review note
that it’s been popular since its inception in 1974 and over the decades has produced
a large amount of world expanding material from novels (lots of novels) to
video games to Saturday morning cartoons. By now there’s a lot of officially licensed
material tied to the D&D IP, so it seemed like a movie would inevitable.
And it already happened in the year 2000. And it bombed big
time. It still got a pair of straight-to-home media sequels that I’m not
certain how or if they’re related, but I know that they were also not all that
well received. Because of this most folks have not held up hopes for another go
with a film adaptation. However, the brand is now owned by Hasbro, the creators
of Transformers, and because they want all the money it was just a matter of
time before they made another attempt.
Which brings us to today’s review, Dungeons & Dragons:
Honor Among Thieves was directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.
The trailers had made this flick out to not only have a much lighter and
comedic tone than past efforts but also made a point of making very obvious references
to various aspects of the game (seeing an owlbear in the original trailer made
me drop the drink I was holding when I first saw it). Still, an awesome trailer
that promises good fun means absolutely nothing in this day and age (See: Suicide
Squad) so we are still left with the question of whether or not this reboot is
any good.
Full review after the jump.
