Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) Review: Holy Shit, it Didn’t Suck!
So, if you’ve been browsing my articles before, you’ve maybe caught my article on how The Rings of Power sucked or how House of the Dragon sucked, or possibly me griping about why sci-fi always outperforms fantasy, or maybe even how I think we deserve a better fantasy. Wouldn’t it be a fun change of pace if I actually had a genuine fantasy recommendation that wasn’t Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring from way back in 2001?
Well, you may not believe it but I actually do have a recommendation! I don’t know why it took me this long to write about it — I started writing this article in spring 2025, after all — but I actually really enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons - Honor Among Thieves. It came highly recommended by all of the TTRPG Actual Play performers that I love (AKA my current favorite actors/storytellers). It had fun, genuine characters, clever humor, and really made good use of its source material in a truly never-before-seen way.
So let’s talk about how us starving fantasy geeks have finally gotten a film that deserves our nerdery!
DISCLAIMER: Movie spoilers abound!
Why Fantasy Usually Sucks
Sweet, sweet fantasy, how many times have you disappointed me? Let me count the ways…
Legend of the Seeker: Solid premiere that covered half of the source book alone, followed by braindead filler that in no way captured the delightfully clever essence of the novels; season 2 got season 1’s ending for some baffling reason
Shannara Chronicles: Superficial beauty founded on very little substance and a bland, generic story based on bland, generic source material (no offense to Terry Brooks lovers)
Game of Thrones: Oh, we don’t talk about you, no, no, no…
The Hobbit: A dissertation on what happens when you force an uninspired director to step in at the last moment to clean up someone else’s mess
Harry Potter: Apart from Rowling being a horrible human being, the movies started okay but got progressively worse due to awful re-castings, too many director changes, and eventually they were cutting any plot substance for the sake of spectacle
Literally any other DnD movie: A failure to capture any of the essence of what makes DnD wonderful, with surface-level depth, weak characters, and bad CGI
Yes, in fact, the only time I actually tend to enjoy fantasy programming genuinely is in children’s cartoons like Adventure Time, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, and their ilk. And even then, children’s television that has half a brain is also pretty rare (though I do recommend Bluey).
Where DnD Movies Have Particularly Failed
The DnD movies that predate Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves are quite legendary in their own right for being utterly abysmal movies. First of all, they didn’t capture any of the essence of collaborative roleplay, the overall DnD lore, or its world and setting. Rather, they took generic fantasy tropes and slapped a DnD label on it, thus misleading and betraying fans, especially when any references to DnD were done poorly or outright wrong when held up against established lore and logic.
Then, the overall low-budget feel of the movies — particularly the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons, which had bargain bin acting and CGI — ruined any hope of immersion or engagement with the material. And, they lacked any of the character-driven hijinks and intimate moments that roleplay invokes.
Basically, they had poorly-executed spectacle on top of a sorry knockoff… not something that geeks generally get on board with. You should know how dedicated we are to accuracy—Dropout.tv has a whole series about it.
Why Did ‘Honor Among Thieves’ Work?
The million dollar question is, why did Honor Among Thieves work as a movie when most other fantasy films and series fail? What did it succeed at where its accolades crash and burn?
Well…
It’s Diverse without Wokewashing
The cast of the movie is fantastic, with your usual background of white folks well-dappled with Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Regé-Jean Page all shining stars in their roles. It also doesn’t triple underline in highlighted bold that it’s doing everyone a favor with these cast inclusions… they just clearly found the best people for their roles. This creates a feeling of genuine willingness to hire a diverse cast without making it feel performative for attention or money.
Let’s Talk Narrative!
Now here’s the thing… fantasy stories themselves don’t need to be reinventing the wheel. We can lean on known tropes a bit while shaking them up.
This is exactly what D&D: Honor Among Thieves gets right. It understands its source material: a roleplaying game (that’s adult make-believe, if you need it dumbed down) about adventurers — who generally have no idea what they’re doing or how to accomplish it — trying to solve a problem. The heart of DnD is having silly adventures with your friends, and that’s exactly what the heart of the movie was crafted around as well.
If you’ve ever played a long TTRPG campaign, it differs from fantasy stories in that most of what happens is some form of chaos. The GM (game master) makes plans, but they never happen the way the GM or characters expect. It’s episodic, with the GM crafting scenarios for each game night that they players then take over. This film follows that logic — escape prison, find the daughter, escape the castle, find a crew, escape again, find a helmet, escape again — each chunk of the film feels like a GM scenario for a DnD campaign, which is what makes it so familiar and endearing to viewers who’ve played TTRPGs before. It even includes some NPCs, because why not?!
The beauty of most roleplay scenarios is that there’s not a clear answer for how to solve problems. You don’t have a curated Ocean’s Eleven team of heistmasters with a sweet plan… you just have a bunch of idiots (aka your friends) bumbling their way through things with die rolls. And that is exactly what feels authentic about this film — the characters are skilled in certain ways, but that’s not always relevant or helpful, much like with character stats in-game. You can tell, in the film, when someone’s implied to be rolling well or rolling poorly, which is a nice touch.
Love Is Important, but Not Generic and Not the Endgame
Love is a pretty constant motivator throughout the movie, with main character, Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) having lost the love of his life and then is betrayed and imprisoned by one of his party. The rest of the motivation in the movie is based on his love for their daughter and a desire to revive her mother so she can have her full family again. However, while Edgin does have a female BFF, Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), and his love for her does play a significant role in the overall plot, it is not romantic love between the two of them that wins the day, which is a necessary and welcome change of pace from the usual “man and woman cannot be friends without inevitable love.”
Really, It’s Just Enormous Amounts of Fun
As a TTRPG nerd who knows my DnD lingo and the usual common spells, the entire movie was a spectacular Easter egg hunt where I would squeal excitedly every time I noticed a spell, like green flame blade or mage hand, or a feature, like Holga going into a barbarian rage.
Furthermore, the action is glamorous, without being overdone or bad. It doesn’t suffer from funky CGI and even plays with some modern humor by utilizing bad CGI intentionally to show magic spells malfunctioning.
While yes, it could benefit from more real-world settings — even decent fantasy like this still relies too heavily on CGI these days — the overall atmosphere is magical and whimsical and fun, like you’re sitting around at the table with your friends. And on that note, even the humor feels less like realistic adventure banter and more like a bunch of idiot friends shooting the shit together, which would be annoying in any other type of fantasy film, but in this case, it’s actually just right for a DnD movie.
So, if you’re looking for a fun fantasy film that feels like a great adventure but doesn’t demand too much of you, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is possibly one of the best fantasy films released in the past decade. If you haven’t seen it by now, do give it a chance!
