Brief Thoughts on the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Trailer

First off, a bit of context and history because that is the way we do things around here; some of which I have already talked about, but I am putting it down here (again) for contextual reasons.

I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since around 1992 when Dellanos introduced the game in its 2nd Edition D&D form to myself and Dr. Potts after we finished playing the main campaign of Hero Quest.  This seemed like a natural transition and I have been in love with D&D (for the most part) ever since.  I have played 2nd Edition D&D, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition, 3.5, a couple of games of 4E, and a lot of games, albeit mostly home-brewed games in 5E.  I played a lot of Baldur's Gate games and the bejeezus out of Neverwinter Nights.  I only recently started reading books that take place in the Forgotten Realms (written during the AD&D era), but I have a whole shelf dedicated to Ravenloft novels and the Ravenloft campaign setting and modules at home.  

When the first Dungeons & Dragons movie was announced sometime in 1995, I was pretty excited.  When I saw the initial poster for Dragonheart at a Star Trek convention that same year, I thought it was for the D&D movie, although that movie did not come out until 2000; I seem to recall that we thought maybe it was going to be a movie in the Dragonlance campaign setting because of the title.  When the Dungeons & Dragons movie did come out, I was fairly disappointed.  I wasn't a fan of the story, I thought Jeremy Irons should have had long hair, I thought the casting choices were off, and abhorrent that the director gave the evil guard patrols Beholder companions (although I thought the Beholders looked great, but the Dragons looked like they were drawn by a 10-year-old with jumbo Crayola crayons).  There were a lot of other issues I took with the movie, but that could be its own rant fest that no one wants to read that article about a 22-year-old movie.

When this new Dungeons & Dragons movie was announced, I was pessimistically hopeful, with my one internal caveat being that they not have the main character be a thief/rogue because that was the angle that the first D&D movie took and I still had a sour taste in my proverbial mouth from that.  Then last year it was announced that the subtitle for this move would be "Honor Among Thieves," and my hopes dropped, despite knowing that Michelle Rodriguez and Chris Pine were cast (and eye-rollingly Hugh Grant as well).  But I was going to hold off judgment until at least a trailer was released.  And today (possibly because of SDCC?), the trailer was released.

And I thought, "Huh, this actually looks pretty good; even if they didn't use my growl as inspiration for the Owlbear.

Sure there are things that made me go, "Now wait a minute," like people intentionally diving into a Gelatinous Cube or a Black Dragon that looks as if it is siding with a particular army and not of its own accord, but again, I am withholding judgment until I actually see the movie.  But using Led Zepplin as the backing track for the trailer was a nice touch as I felt it didn't overshadow the trailer itself.  There seems to be a decent amount of humor and that makes sense that the trailer would highlight that aspect of the movie because if anything, a lot of the D&D campaigns I have played in have been rather amusing and not always as serious as the cover art would have you believe them to be.  I do not think that I will be as anal retentive as some people might be regarding how close the movie sticks to a specific edition or react like "that's not a spell in D&D!!"  I have already read some people upset/annoyed that a druid-like character Wild Shape into an Owlbear where the rules say that druids can only Wild Shape into "beasts" and an Owlbear is categorized as a monstrosity so they shouldn't be allowed to Wild Shape into an Owlbear and therefore the movie is trash.

I like what looks to be the inclusion of the Red Wizards of Thay, the Underdark, the rest of the monsters look fantastic, and what I am hoping for is just a good two-hour-long adventure with characters that I enjoy spending time with on an adventure that is enjoyable. And that Conklederp and I can say to each other, "Must've failed their Dex save" on our third viewing (because we all know me and talking during movies).  But based on the trailer, this does look like it could be a fun adventure.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  And just for ease of accessing the trailer from Paramount Pictures, here it is below:

P.P.S.  I also recommend checking out the accompanying "Monster Manual" that the Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel put out about creatures and locations in the movie because hearing Chris Perkins talk about Waterdeep and Neverwinter was pretty great.