Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

silverharp · 04-09-2023 9:55am

a funny excerpt from the Bluray extras

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1698293938962993527

Varik · 20-11-2023 11:56pm

Chris Pine saying he has "heard rumours" about Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves 2 and says that he would "absolutely" return.

With how well the recent Baldur's gate game did I hope they try their luck again

~Rebel~ · 21-11-2023 1:29am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121394187#Comment_121394187

D&D's box office wasn't brilliant, but with the ongoing extremely positive response as its moved to streaming, could see the viability of a sequel being decent enough. Think a lot of people just hadn't a notion what the deal was with the first, so stayed home, but might come out for a second one. It doesn't hurt that it's a big fun fantasy adventure movie, that isn't about superheros.

TheIrishGrover · 21-11-2023 10:17am

It would make an excellent tv series. Just a coupe of 6 hour-long seasons. No more. One story per season or maybe just one overall. Sure, not with Pine or Rodriguez. And it would need relatively decent budget but would be great fun.

The tone of the movie was just right. Fun without being snide at long term fans. Accessible to those (like me) who know almost nothing about D&D but with enough deeper cuts for players. And, again, without being snide. I have some friends who have played for years and they enjoyed it. Weren't nearly as precious about liberties taken as, say, Star Wars fanatics can be. I suppose this is because everyone has their own interpretation of what's acceptable.

pixelburp · 21-11-2023 10:25am

It was a good example about how that "knowing" kinda humour can work, whereby the characters are laughing with the absurdity of it all - but crucially not at it. It's a key difference that IMO can make the difference between charismatic "we're all having some fun here" and obnoxiousness. It also helped that not every moment of genuine drama was undercut by a stupid "well, that just happened" Whedon'esque joke.

I started watching Apple's Godzilla TV series and I see no reason why you couldn't do a D&D series yet still maintain the budget - and maybe even the cast. Chris Pine seems keen so perhaps he'd be happy knocking out an 8 episode series for a streamer as he would a sequel film - it'd probably work out about the same shooting schedule on average.

El Duda · 08-12-2023 11:17am

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – 6/10

I hoped to enjoy this a lot more than I did. It’s not bad, but it is too long and has clear peaks and troughs. The highlight being a sharply written gag about awakening corpses and having a limited number of questions to ask them. It’s moments like this, where it appears to be emulating The Princess Bride, that it really excels. It just needed a bit more of it.

I saw it with a mate and the main thing we discussed afterwards was CGI. We know that this is just how films are made these days, and it would be harsh to penalise a film because it isn’t the 80’s anymore, but modern movie making methods do not lend itself well to the fantasy genre. The thing that made the likes of Willow, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth and The Never Ending Story special was the practical effects. It was spectacle. It made you wonder how on earth they did it. Movies just seemed magical back then and they left you awestruck as a child. For me, that was a huge part of what gave the fantasy films of the 80’s their longevity and cult status.

Do kids really get the same sense of awe and wonder when they see a CGI Colosseum?

It would be amazing to see someone try and make a film like this, but produce it in a more traditional manner, keeping CGI to the bare minimum. Never gonna happen though is it?

I was never a Dungeons & Dragons fan, so I have no idea if they got the mythology/lore right but judging by the reviews it seems they did a decent job.

pixelburp · 08-12-2023 12:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121470063#Comment_121470063

I saw it with a mate and the main thing we discussed afterwards was CGI. We know that this is just how films are made these days, and it would be harsh to penalise a film because it isn’t the 80’s anymore, but modern movie making methods do not lend itself well to the fantasy genre. The thing that made the likes of Willow, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth and The Never Ending Story special was the practical effects. It was spectacle. It made you wonder how on earth they did it. Movies just seemed magical back then and they left you awestruck as a child. For me, that was a huge part of what gave the fantasy films of the 80’s their longevity and cult status.

That's an interesting perspective, and yeah maybe on reflection something that held the movie back a little, even if on balance I think I enjoyed it more than yourself. I'm not sure you could escape the use of CGI everywhere mind you - the Fat Dragon scene kinda necessitated it - and the LOTR trilogy made its own use with things like their Cave Trolls or Shelob, while using CGI to merge in their use of "bigature"s for structures; but like you said there was a slight lack of spectacle in spots. The sections filmed in Ireland around our coastline had the most impact when scenes were actual and not green-screen.

kerplun k · 21-12-2023 12:08am

That was a pleasant surprise. Big shame this underperformed.

Considering I had no previous knowledge of this, I’m blaming the marketing. D&D had a lot going for it, a pre-existing fan base, fun cast, solid action, funny, charming, good pacing, and overall, just an enjoyable romp.

There was great chemistry between the cast, they genuinely all looked like they had a blast. You’d love to see a sequel squeeze through on a leaner, tighter budget.

~Rebel~ · 21-12-2023 3:39am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121520556#Comment_121520556

Think it was maybe release strategy more-so than marketing - they did do a tonne of marketing, but people across the board are just going to see less movies, particularly if it's not some big cultural event thing. If your film is strong (and not a cultural event) then word of mouth is the way to go for the next while I think - but in this case they opened super wide right from the get-go, and then shut after a few weeks. They needed a slow burn, a small opening, steadily increasing theatres as favourable word spread. The unfortunate reality is that this would have meant low opening weekend figures, which seems anathema to the business at the moment.

Apparently it's doing really well with streaming figures, while maintaining very positive word of mouth, so there's a decent chance of a follow up.

CastorTroy · 21-12-2023 3:20pm

Think I said before, but if I remember correctly, it released between Mario and John Wick. So not a great spot.

pixelburp · 21-12-2023 3:42pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121522576#Comment_121522576

It came out a mere week before the Mario movie (and yeah the week after Wick 4 opened); it went from number 1 with $37 million opening weekend, to number 4 and $13 million - while Mario went in at $146 million(!!). Jaysus.

Barbie and Mario absolutely trampled the box office this year, but as has been said this little nugget has had good word of mouth and if it does well on streaming, there's always hope.

For sure Chris Pine is IMO the best Chris for starring these Hollywood blockbusters - better Pine than Pratt.

silverharp · 21-12-2023 8:44pm

D&D is a dated franchise, Gen Z wouldnt be familiar with it at all or have any emotional connection to it, noteworthy that Hasbro laid off over 1,000 (20% of the workforce) this week and the cuts were in their table top divisions including D&D, I believe on top of 800 earlier in the year. They were never going to get a blockbuster off the name, there is always going to be more hype off a Sonic movie or whatnot

johnny_ultimate · 21-12-2023 8:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121523830#Comment_121523830

Hardly dated or a Gen Z write off - Baldur's Gate 3 has been the undisputed video game success story of the year and sold likely tens of millions of copies. Plenty of life in D&D yet - might not translate to film tickets, but it continues to be a major cultural force - if anything, BG3 has ensured it's having a 'moment' beyond Stranger Things or whatever.

pixelburp · 21-12-2023 9:45pm

I've worked in enough IT offices to know that younger adult demographics have never been so into board games - Dungeons and Dragons included. Tabletop gaming is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment, while as Johnny says Baldurs Gate 3 has been a multi million selling phenomenon.

All that being said, I've said it before that I think High Fantasy is an incredibly tough sell in modern cinema and in many respects this film was perhaps always destined to struggle and fail. Nothing since Lord of the Rings has hit gold - and even other attempts with a vast pre-existing fandom like Warcraft similarly flopped (though in that case the film itself was much worse than this one).

silverharp · 21-12-2023 10:17pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121523846#Comment_121523846

but then they should have made the movie Baldur's Gate and tie it into that audience, if its an important game in its own right? this D&D movie would have been huge probably in the 80's, now it just falls between a lot of stools. If you are going to make movies/tv shows off other stuff kids/teenagers are into then its computer games or Crunchyroll , I think all the lads in my son's class in school were sharing the one Crunchyroll account ( they might need to look into that ;-) , and we often had half the school rugby team in the house watching the latest episode of Attack on Titan , it was quite a thing, left later Marvel in the ha'ppeny place

the vibe I got when this trailer came out was, there was no point taking my son because he had no reason to be into it and looked a bit light/jokey

Fysh · 21-12-2023 11:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121524221#Comment_121524221

It's not just that BG3 was a massive success this year - there's also been 15 years of actual-play podcasts building up a new audience of D&D games (it started with Acquisitions Incorporated, which was a partnership between the Penny Arcade lads and Wizards of the Coast, but there have also been others like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone).

The analogy I'd make is Star Wars - if you're just thinking about films, you'd think Disney were mad to buy ILM for the Star Wars rights in the 2010s, because the last film was almost a decade ago and the Prequel Trilogy, whatever about paying for Lucas' divorce, were steaming arsegravy in story terms. But, even setting aside the Expanded Universe, there was a whole new younger audience being built up for Star Wars stuff by the Clone Wars animated series in the 2000s, who were potential audience members for new Star Wars films. I would estimate that there's a similar thing going on with D&D - there are people who've played the TTRPG since the 80s, people who've played the various PC games over the last 25 ish years, people who've listened to podcasts of it being played. All of them are part of the potential audience for a film adaptation, if it's done right.

I do 100% agree that the marketing for this film was poor - if I hadn't already been interested in seeing it, the trailers wouldn't have done a great job of selling it and combined with a poorly chosen release slot it did itself no favours. Whether that was bad luck or hubris is hard to say, but if there is a sequel they need to not make the same mistake again.

~Rebel~ · 22-12-2023 12:23am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121524221#Comment_121524221

I hope you've since given your kid a chance to see it, cause it's a great time!

silverharp · 22-12-2023 9:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121524427#Comment_121524427

Star Wars is a good example but it had a strong core to build around and its parent friendly, even though Ive no interest in it anymore I still dropped 100€ on SW Lego for one of my cousins last month, though the Lego was the important part. I think though D&D as table top games have a higher barrier to entry, especially if its not already viral among kids, youd be left as a parent trying to explain it to them and thats too much work, something like chess is far easier.

D&D is adult nerd culture as i see it, which no doubt makes a great business but is niche and siloed , if you want big movies it needs to be based on getting kids and parents for the hype, this didnt happen here, if there is a way in for the makers it needs to be via computer games which are going to be more specific than generic "D&D"

OwaynOTT · 23-12-2023 2:36pm

My local library has a junior DnD club and it does be packed. 3 tables going

I think it’s more popular amongst kids than you might realise.

CastorTroy · 23-12-2023 7:08pm

I'd say Stranger Things gave it a bit of a boost.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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