Honor Among Thieves’ Looks Like A Love Letter To D&D Fans

When I hear Dungeons & Dragons within a word or two of the word movie, my reaction is generally something like this:

But the new trailer for Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is shockingly . . . really great, and if we can trust the trailer’s good D&D energy, then I think we have a film that’s worth looking forward to at last.

The Chris Pine-led adventure film appears to actually understand and appreciate what an actual session of Dungeons & Dragons tabletop gaming is like. This is fan-service, but it’s fan-service for actual fans and it’s genuinely funny and awesome.

Here, watch first then we’ll talk:

So, in very broad strokes, this looks like the kind of campaign where the Dungeon Master (or DM) has tried pretty hard to craft a serious story only for the players to basically turn it into a running gag. All that hard work over “unleashing the great evil” turns into a series of ridiculous scenarios and lute jokes. Yep, we’ve all been there.

The entire bit about “making plans that fail turn into new plans” is so meta D&D it’s not even funny. I mean, it is funny. It’s just so on-point D&D it’s kind of shocking. Are the people making this movie actual . . . gasp! . . . D&D nerds? I thought movie adaptations of tabletop and video games were supposed to be made by people who hate these things!

I mean, it could still be terrible—I’m jaded enough to not get my hopes up too high—but this trailer is definitely a pleasant surprise. I love that they’re not making this some epic quest to stop the dark lord or, rather, I love that even if that’s what the DM had in mind, the movie is actually all about these rogues and thieves screwing around and getting into tight spots and having a swashbuckling adventure.

I dig it. More like this, please.

Honor Among Thieves stars Chris Pine alongside Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant. The film’s directors are Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly who previously made Game Night starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams—a film I somehow never heard of but now would like very much to see.

I missed this Comic-Con panel, unfortunately. I did make it to both the Severance and Dragon Prince panels Thursday and am sallying forth to many more today. Apparently Hugh Grant is a Comic-Con newbie just like me. Ben Stiller, at the Severance panel, was revealed to also be a Comic-Con virgin. I feel that I am in good company.