Remake/Remodel

Confession: for all of my nerd bona fides, table-top gaming and things like Magic: The Gathering have never quite made it across my radar. I knew of them, their loyal fanbases, dense tomes of lore, their infinite possibilities in gameplay, but I just never partook.

Where does one even begin with something as expansive and massive as Dungeons & Dragons? Find a fellow group of novices and pick up the table-top game? The brief 1980s animated series? The vast catalogue of novelizations? (And I do mean VAST.) The IDW comic series?

There are numerous avenues for entry into the expansive world as created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and expanded upon by numerous others. Mine was less than auspicious. Actually, it was downright terrible.

That’s right: it was the planned franchise builder released in 2000 that failed so spectacularly that the sequels, using that word loosely here, were regulated to direct-to-video infamy. 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons was released after roughly twenty years of development hell. Based on all of the information available, film studios first expressed interest and tried to buy the rights to the property sometime in the early 1980s. Apparently, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was being eyed to provide the source material and framework for the potential film.

Nothing came from that, obviously, because the film’s active production did not begin until roughly 1990. Eventual director Courtney Solomon is responsible for the entire creative vision of the final film, because it was his efforts to start negotiations with the game’s publisher that kicked off the earnest film development. Solomon’s enthusiasm for the game (he was an avid player), familiarity with the industry (his mom was a Toronto-based production coordinator), and 30-page treatment impressed them and allowed him to seek financing.

Around 1992, Solomon met businessman Allan Zeman, who was so impressed by his passion for the project that he agreed to help fund the project. They setup a production company hoping to sell the project to other investors. It was also around this time that Solomon completed his script, something that attracted the interest of the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Renny Harlin, and Stan Winston, all of whom expressed interest before passing on the project. God, what I wouldn’t give to see Coppola’s take on a high-fantasy story, Cameron’s pop bombast applied to it, or creature-effects from Winston.

Studios and directors kept circling the project before backing away citing the lack of success in the genre and a hefty price tag to make it. That is, until Joel Silver, producer of the Die Hard franchise among many other successes, came along. Once Silver was attached in 1997, things quickly materialized. They realized they could save costs by filming it in the Czech Republic and Prague, have Solomon direct it, and cast it with largely unknown actors. (There was also the brief moment when Silver thought the material would make for a better TV series than film, and maybe he was right.)

Thus, we wound up with 2000’s notorious disaster. And boy, what a disjointed experience it is. If Solomon wanted to create “the Star Wars of fantasy genres,” which Star Wars is already a fantasy film but that’s another matter, then he failed spectacularly.

Instead of crafting an engaging story or characters, he assembled a hodge-podge of generic templates that feel borrowed from other properties and shoved together. Attempts at humor feel discordant with their surroundings, and a cheapness permeates the entire thing. The basics follow two teenage thieves hired by the empress to steal a magical rod that will help her fight off an evil wizard. Oh, and the rod also controls gold dragons, which are some of the most powerful creatures in this world. Pretty standard stuff for the fantasy genre with the bones of a decent story/film buried somewhere within.

 So, why exactly is a wizard trying to seek this rod to overpower and dethrone the empress? She wants to give more power to the common people, but the ruling class does not want to give an inch of their wealth and privilege. How and why dragons play a pivotal role in this, aside from being half of the game’s title, is anyone’s guess. There are plenty of dungeons in the film, so I guess we needed dragons in some capacity otherwise the audience may have felt cheated.

The problem is that the majority of the cast lacks sufficient star power to keep your interest whenever the dialog clinks along. Are they photogenic? Sure, but that is not enough. None of them appear as diamonds in the rough, except for Marlon Wayans who was already a name at this time and sticks out like a sore thumb. He essentially does his typical comedic shtick, but in a generic fantasy world that seems medieval adjacent. It does not work.

Poor James Whalin, Kristen Wilson, and Zoe McLellan. They try valiantly to work with what they have been given, but they just don’t have the gravitas, humor, or persona to fill in the gaps and make the material play. Several of them also have that curious iPhone-face thing going on where you can look at an actor in a period or fantasy production and just know that they’ve seen modern technology. Perhaps they are sunk by having to do so many scenes opposite Wayans who offsets the vaguely medieval pageantry with his discordant modernity. A similar thing happens with the aggressively American Thora Birch who looks like a variant of the Childlike Empress and is hampered with a lion’s share of the worst dialog and exposition dumps.

It is the veterans and British character actors like Tom Baker, Richard O’Brien, Bruce Payne, and Jeremy Irons who find the right campy note and hit it hard. Payne in particular with his metallic blue lips and hissing does his best to inject some pizzazz into his scenes. While I hope that the renovation and/or vacation home that Irons got for his time was/is lovely. God knows he plays everything like Homer Simpson during his Broadway run mentioned during “Behind the Laughter.”

Yet there is still one thing to commend the film for: a diverse cast. How often do you see Black folks in fantastical roles? While it is a damn shame that practically nothing works in this film as intended, it is still nice to see the diversity of our real world reflected in this magical one. But oh, what could have been. 

When it was finally released, the film not only bombed critically (a whopping 9% on Rotten Tomatoes/14% on Metacritic for its aggregate score), but financially. Costing an estimated $45 million, it managed to only scrape up $33 million in worldwide gross. The failure of this film was so pronounced that it took over a decade for anyone to start development on another crack at the material. Pretty strange considering that the following year saw the release of the first The Lord of the Rings film, which showed how to properly adapt a high-fantasy property for the big screen on a limited budget.     

The earliest news about development on a new D&D movie that I could find started in May 2013 with Solomon’s production company and Warner Brothers announcing their tentative plans. Hasbro quickly sued them stating that they were developing their own D&D film with Universal Pictures. By 2016, the lawsuits were settled, development was continuing at Warner Brothers with Joe Manganiello (yes, you read that right) co-writing a script that he was shopping to the studio. By 2017, Hasbro had moved the production to Paramount, which is ultimately where the film was completed and released.

But somewhere along the way, and I cannot find exactly where, Manganiello dropped out of the production, there was a revolving door of writers and directors in talks and/or various levels of attachment until 2019 when creative partners John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were in talks to direct. Eventually, the bumpy development of the film smoothed out and the production kicked into high gear by December 2020 as the main cast was put together, the script was completed, and a shooting schedule was announced.

2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the exact type of fun big budget studio film that we desperately need more of in our present era. Vibrantly colored with distinctly written and conceived characters, the film works best when we simply hangout with these appealing actors and they riff off of each other. Sure, the running time is a little bloated and some of the effects work leaves something to be desired, but the overall impact of Honor Among Thieves is a highly positive one.

This is the type of movie that I wanted to be made from the material. Less self-serious and somber, more infectious with its sense of playfulness and distinct personalities that each have clear motivations and chances to shine. It was lurking there in the material somewhere.

Perhaps the smartest thing that Honor Among Thieves does is not assume everyone is steeped in the lore and clearly explains the rules of the world it is building and is smart enough to know when to leave it up to the audience’s imagination. A common problem with a lot of modern franchise builders is the assumption that everything needs an explanation whereas a little mystery has always been a good thing and served a story well. It also understands the concepts of planting and payoff, and trusts that the audience doesn’t need incessant reminders about who holds what magical trinket to complete the task.

But do not mistake its fun tone for condescension towards the material. For all the cute jokes aimed at diehard franchise fans (a quick cameo from characters dressed as the animated series ensemble), its irreverence is operating from a place of love. It does not mock the beloved institution so much as affectionately riff on it while communicating actual emotional stakes for its various players. 

I, for one, am completely obsessed with Themberchaud, an obese dragon from a 2015 edition of the game. Given that “dragon” is half of the title, you would expect one to show up, but that particular chonky boy? It was a pleasant, humorous choice that offered a solid visual gag and a deep cut of lore for long-time fans. Same goes for the protracted scene of communicating with the dead that ends with the characters essentially digging up an entire graveyard to get the information they need by the time it is over.

Although, it does have the problems plaguing so much of blockbuster filmmaking like a bloated running time (did this need to be nearly 2.5 hours?) and CGI that at times looks/feels more rubbery than immersive, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves feels nearly retro in its overall tone and vibe. After all, we do get several creatures and ancillary characters that are done with practical effects work, something we need more of in these things. I would happily watch more animatronic dragonborn creatures wearing a pince-nez instead of physics defying bodies bouncing around some dimly lit scene while a laser shoots into the sky and rubble levitates everywhere.

It is a damn shame that this underperformed at the box office which leaves its potential sequels in a limbo state. Paramount’s then head stated that a continuation was not out of the question but the cost would have to be severally reduced. We now have had two vastly different kingdom in peril stories. Maybe a smaller-scale quest isn’t such a bad idea. I would be welcome to seeing what happened if they made it.

Dungeons and Dragons remains a partially successful film exercise. We now have an idea about what a successful iteration of it could look like on the big screen. I would be open to seeing more of it, but apparently the taste from the general audience for fantasy films is low. Maybe that will change as the stranglehold of comic book properties and interconnected universes seems to be waning.

I recently watched Return to Oz for the first time in years, and I was struck by how much I miss the mid-budget dark fantasy film. I clamor for their return. Dungeons & Dragons seems like a ripe property to Trojan horse their return, no? Then again, some of my favorite films of the decade so far include the likes of The Green Knight, The Northman, and Wolfwalkers, so my tolerance and taste for fantastical spectacle and magical narratives is perhaps much higher than the average moviegoer.

Still, I want to Hollywood to keep rolling the dice on properties like this. And maybe I just really want to see a Beholder on the big screen. Is that so wrong?