Dungeons and Dragons : Honor Among Thieves is a recently released movie based around the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), released March 31st, 2023.  The movie is currently being exposed to fantastic critical reception, with scores of 90% or over from both audiences and critics on the movie rating website rotten tomatoes, receiving a certified “fresh” rating.  This movie is an action adventure film following the adventures of a merry band of misfits in their quest to find the Tablet of Reawakening to revive Zia (played by Georgia Landers), wife of Edgin the Bard (Chris Pine).   The party Edgin travels with is made up of Holga the Barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon the Sorcerer (Justice Smith), and Doric the Druid (Sophia Lillis), with an appearance from Xenk the Paladin (Rege-Jean Page) to guide them through the midpoint of their journey.  While the movie has gotten exceedingly positive word of mouth from fans of the game Dungeons and Dragons, has it been able to achieve mainstream appeal?

Sophomore Bailey Xie began playing D&D recently, but quickly became passionate about the game.  He praised Honor Among Thieves as a movie for all audiences, saying that, “as a D&D player you could point out and say “woah I know what that is” and “I’ve seen that reference before,” but it made sure you could get by with little to no knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons”.  He also commented that, “the jokes were decently good,” saying the movie was able to, “curveball some of the predictable action and jokes.”  He concluded his review by saying that, “The characters were also likable and it was decently action packed.  8.5/10 for me.”  

It is not just D&D players who enjoyed the movie.  Sophomores Nathan Parker-Feng and Hadassah Bolden saw the movie, despite neither of them being fans of D&D.  Nathan says that, “Even if you aren’t a really big D&D nerd it was still just a good movie,” saying that, “the acting and dialogue was pretty good…the central story was not exactly original but pretty compelling,” giving the movie an “Overall 8/10.”  Hadassah said that she “played D&D twice and hated it,” but still decided to go out and see the movie.  She said that she “really liked this movie, more then [she] thought [she] would honestly,” going on to say that the movie had, “pretty decent character development,” and that she “thought they did a pretty good job balancing action and more emotional scenes.”  While they “didn’t really get the references” they still “thought it was a good movie otherwise” and gave it a 7/10.  

Honor Among Thieves is a bombastically fun action-adventure movie with solid emotional beats and a fantastic cast of characters.  While D&D fans will be more capable of appreciating the film’s references and mechanics, both the most obsessive dungeons and dragons player and those who have never explored dungeons, nor slain dragons, will enjoy this movie for what it is ; a solid film with fun action and clever writing.