… is sorely lacking in the new D&D movie. Which, after all, is based on what at its heart a risk and resource management game.
People assured me that this film adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons – the 4th overall, though it’s a reimagining/reboot – doesn’t insult its audience with overt Wokisms.
Those people don’t know when they’re being insulted.
For real, they’d have to be the type who’d go see Rodney Dangerfield, have him riff on their faults all night, and go away thinking he was just making small talk.
Maybe I’m starting off on the wrong foot here.
Look, I don’t want to give you the impression that D&D 4, or whatever we’re gonna call it, is Death Cult agitprop on the level of a Netflix series or a Disney live-action remake.
It’s not “Woke to the point of destroying every character and rendering the plot nonsensical.”
But it is just good enough to let fun-starved moviegoers turn a blind eye to the Death Cult box-checking that squandered the film’s potential.
And it had a lot of potential, which is all the more tragic.
We can’t have nice things, and the weird secular religion that almost all corporate managers submit to is why.
Hang on. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s start again from the top and look at actual movie stuff like plot, character, and themes, OK?
OK.
Alright.
Ohh, boy.
The best way to give you the gist of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is “The A-Team meets Ocean’s 11 on the set of Thor.”
Imagine a low fantasy heist flick written by Joss Whedon, Directed by Stephen Soderbergh, and produced by Stephen J. Cannell, and you’ve got the mood and tone.
That thought experiment also tracks this movie’s plot progression, since it feels like each of those three was in primary charge of one act, in that order.
“A band of outlaw misfits with complementary skills out to nab some loot,” you might say. “That sounds like fun.”
And it should have been. In fact, it still is at times.
But it’s nowhere near as much fun as it should have been.
Because we’re long past the stage when movies could just be movies.
Now they must meet the deranged managerial class’ bizarre moral purity laws.
Pointing this stuff out again and again is getting tiresome, so I’m going to bullet points.
- The DIE casting quotas are as bad as an NFL commercial.
- I’m serious. They do it with every couple in the movie. We’re talking Norwegian-married-to-Maori-tribesman levels of demographic absurdity here.
- Which you could chalk up to fantasy (though having to do so highlights the oddity), but not the beclownment of every white male character.
- ‘Tis true. We have to wait 2 acts for a male character to do any real heroics and 3 acts for a white male to act heroic.
- Meanwhile, strong independent female™ characters are pummeling 300-pound knights in full plate and tossing them around.
- Yes, one of them is an owlbear at the time. We can make allowance for owlbears. But the 5’4″ woman trouncing whole platoons makes no more sense for it.
The Grrrrl Power! is so pervasive, it removes any trace of dramatic tension from the movie’s first act.
No lie. It never feels like the characters are in real danger until Act II.
But then a diverse supercharacter shows up and handles the first real threat for the main party.
Fun fact: The supercharacter who’s dropped into the middle of the movie was supposed to be Drizzt Do’Urden. He was written out due to some unspecified “controversy” at Hasbro. If you know who he is, you can fill in the blanks.
So instead of Drizzt, we got an autistic paladin.
Who to be honest, is pretty cool. He at least understands refusing to cooperate with evil.
But even though he’s a holy knight, he never mentions any deity.
Neither does the other cleric-adjacent character, the druid.
Religion has always been a core component of every D&D character. So it’s super weird that D&D4’s writers never even mention Forgotten Realms’ fake pseudo-pagan gods.
That omission might be significant. Or it might not. I don’t know.
I do know that the film’s structure is a mess. It’s told in a disjointed combination of linear scenes and disjointed flashbacks that slip in, sometimes at random.
It’s like the film makers decided “While we’re ripping off Joss Whedon, we may as well ape Quentin Tarantino, too.”
But it doesn’t work.
Fine, the flashbacks during the parole hearing work. But the ones in the graveyard go on way too long. And the one at the end should have been moved to Act I. Placed at the end, it withholds necessary information that makes an important character choice confusing until after the fact.
I’m not being hypercritical here. The friend I saw the movie with brought most of this stuff up, too. And he has a lower opinion of the movie than I do.
Which, for the record, is that I think it’s worth seeing if you’re a D&D 3.5 or later fan – but not worth paying for.
Because there are 2 characters that the movie handles well.
The first is the druid.
Somehow, the film makers resisted the temptation to make her a tree-hugging, Academy Award-refusing Captain Planet extra.
Which they do tease before pulling a delightful twist.
And Sophia Lillis’ performance sells her back story.
That story being she’s the part-demon offspring of human parents who abandoned her in the woods as a child.
Shades of the Jersey Devil.
Knowing Current Year Hollywood, making her an actual devil may have been the only way to include a blue-eyed redhead.
Self-indulgent side note: Sophia Lillis has now replaced my original casting choice of Jane Levy as the female lead in my imaginary Soul Cycle movie series.
What was I saying before this?
Oh yeah, the sorcerer.
Credit where credit’s due. They nailed this one.
Every character except the paladin has some kind of arc. And Simon the mediocre sorcerer has the best.
He starts in a position of weakness and must overcome his own self-doubt to save the friends who refused to stop believing in him.
It’s the one element straight out of classic fantasy. And it culminates in the movie’s one genuine stand-up-and-cheer moment.
And then we get a final showdown lifted whole cloth from an MCU movie.
Then, for some reason, more misplaced flashbacks.
If you really have to go to the movies or you’ll suffer a psychotic break or something, John Wick 4 is still in theaters as of this writing.
Just go see that.
Or re-watch the 2010 A-Team movie. That one was ultra-underrated. And it has Bradley Cooper, too.
And if you absolutely insist on seeing the new D&D flick, find a (legal) way to not pay for it.
You’ll find a few suggestions here.
“Religion has always been a core component of every D&D character. So it’s super weird that D&D4’s writers never even mention Forgotten Realms’ fake pseudo-pagan gods.”
They’ve been steadily downplaying that element of the ‘divine’ classes (cleric, paladin, druid) for decades. 2nd Edition introduced the alternative of “Forces” or “Philosophies” as opposed to deities for those characters to follow, but there, it was meant as a world-building tool for DMs. 3rd Edition, though, explicitly foregrounded it as a player’s-side option, stating in the Player’s Handbook that clerics could choose not to worship a deity but instead devote themselves to an ideal. Currently, it’s reached the point where the iconic paladin Strongheart (from the old action figure line) was reintroduced with a note stating that he does not worship a god, but derives his paladin abilities from his conviction that evil and injustice can be resisted by those with courage. Yes, we’re about two steps away at most from the Paladin of Social Justice. (And the smaller, more ideological rivals at Paizo have scrapped paladins altogether and replaced them with generic ‘Champions’.)
3rd edition is where having a cleric have a specific deity became explicit. OD&D and 1st Edition are rather vague about the flavor of many classes, using archetypes to do the heavy lifting. It’s clear that OD&D clerics are implicitly Christian (note that they do not have “holy symbols” but wooden or silver crosses, and they have level titles like “Vicar” and “Bishop” with only “Lama” standing out as non-Christian.) In 1st edition clerics are said to resemble “religious orders of knighthood of medieval times” though it is also said that they worship “a deity, or deities” without any specifics being given.
The “ideal” stuff is made explicit in BECMI. I don’t have the earlier Basic editions so I don’t know if it appears there first. It’s pretty clear that this was done to avoid sticky issues about whether the game is promoting paganism. The description of the class reads: “In D&D games, as in real life, people have ethical and theological beliefs. This game does not deal with those beliefs. All characters are assumed to have them, and they do not affect the game” though it is said that clerics gain their spells “from the strength of their beliefs” (i.e. not directly from a deity.) The expanded BECMI setting has Immortals instead of deities but I’m not getting into that.
2nd edition is vague about what exactly clerics worship. The “priests of a specific mythoi” (like those listed in the Priests Handbook) do worship some specific deity OR (like druids) some concept. But it is notable that 2nd edition lists MORE examples of Christian clerics (such as Archbishop Turin from the Song of Roland, or a Knight Hospitaler.)
Parallel to this paladins are pretty explicitly Christian knights through 2nd edition, as befits their inspiration from Three Hearts and Three Lions. The Paladin’s Handbook is basically “here’s how you can be a holy Christian knight.” They might worship some other deity and they might need to confess to “lawful good clerics” rather than explicitly priests, but they act just like a good knight would.
What’s notable about 3rd edition is not the option to have a deity-less cleric; that actually had been around in BECMI and 2nd edition. No, the most notable thing is the complete stripping of Christian allusions that had been part of the class since OD&D. Things are worse for paladins. Paladins had always been part of knightly and religious orders, but now they are described more as lone wolves who just happen to be very righteous (and it is said that many do not have a religion since “devotion to righteousness is enough for most.”) Gone too are the references to the need to tithe regularly, or to confess sins and repent.
Thanks for filling in some of the gaps, although Gygax waffled on the importance of deities, sometimes talking about Deities & Demigods as a ‘fourth core book’ and stating that every character should have a patron deity.
B/X has clerics “serving gods and goddesses,” but without details. The BECMI approach is one I personally prefer, since it lets the cleric fill broader roles. And the 2E Complete Paladin’s Handbook is a personal favorite for its flavor, even if it may be wonky mechanically.
The stripping of the Christian allusions in 3E could have various sources. The corporate center of the game moved from Lake Geneva, WI, to Redmond, WA, and WotC’s cultural was notoriously libertine. Jonathan Tweet, lead designer of 3E, is a virulent atheist and promoter of Darwinism (and supporter of Planned Parenthood). And the overall vision of 3E was cut off from the tradition and started devouring its own tail as the game was designed with the deliberate intent of ‘being as D&Dish as possible,’ a philosophy to which 5E returned.
Corporate “Product Fantasy” has never been my bag in the first place, so there is no way that one with Current Year clichĂ©s and modern Hollywood production values would catch my interest.
I know a lot of us are desperate for good entertainment, but I’ve long since given up on finding it in the mainstream. It’s been far too long now. I haven’t been in a movie theater since John Wick 3 and, before that, John Wick 2.
Last newer movie I remember enjoying was VFW, and that is not a mainstream one. It was deliberately made to be in the 1980s John Carpenter style, which made it not visual garbage. A rarity these days.
Talk of Hollywood undergoing an anti-Woke renaissance is making the rounds. I think such rumors are premature at best.
(mild spoiler)
It’s too bad Simon shoots down his own character arc in the last scene: He’s gone back to simp beta mode, practically begging the druid for a date.
That unforced error would have been easy to fix with one more line, too.
I saw this movie with my son. It was fun. I noticed what you did, and in fact anticipated it before going into the movie. Everyone talked like they were from Seattle, Holga the barbarian lady beats up everyone, etc. However, that latter part was not too offensive for me because in the current edition of D&D, barbarians have “rage” abilities and all of that–maybe she rolled a natural 20. Whatever. The interracial relationships too–whatever. I didn’t find them offensive because interracial relationships don’t offend me and it’s not like they, oh, I don’t know, cast a black actress to play Cleopatra, who was GREEK (makes my Hellenic blood boil). So whatever.
But man, you nailed your analysis. I’m going to push back on one thing: I didn’t find that Edgin, the one white male hero, did nothing heroic until the end. I found him a pretty likeable character with a solid motivation who was brave and heroic. Maybe I forgot where he gets beclowned. The scene where his hands are tied while Holga beats up their guards? I didn’t see that as beclownment for a few reasons: in the meta-narrative of a movie based on a TTRPG, he’s a bard and Holga is a barbarian. He isn’t going to be as strong but he’s going to be more resourceful. He was trying to escape the whole time; once he did, he took out the final guard, and I don’t remember Holga retorting with some nasty, emasculating comment. Also, Forge kept lying to his daughter about him, so it’s not like Edgin was a bad father; and no, I don’t see wanting to resurrect his wife as a bad thing. If my wife died and I had a chance to resurrect her, you bet I’d risk everything for that (in a D&D world of course–in real life I’d never remove her from the bosom of the Lord). Also, Edgin had a never-say-die spirit, which I liked.
The paladin helping out? Again, getting back to this being a TTRPG, I saw that like characters finding a high-level NPC to help out with stuff that they are too low-level to do on their own. DIE aside, I also liked that character and thought the actor pulled it off really well.
I think we know each other well enough to know I’m not trying to start an argument. I just like your movie analyses and am curious to see what you saw that I didn’t, or vice versa. Anyway, great write-up.
Thanks for reading.
One point to keep in mind about the entertainment industry’s current mania for improbable interracial couples is that it’s not about offending normal people. It’s about signaling adherence to Cult dogma to other cultists. One of those dogmas, which they make no secret about, is that white people are uniquely, irredeemably evil and must be erased from the book of life.
The other Death Cult dogma to remember is their firm belief in consensual reality. They really are sure that if they push a narrative hard enough, it will become real.
You may not be interested in the unofficial state religion, but it has a deep and particular interest in you and your kids.
One of the normally excellent Michael Lofton’s flaws is that due to having a black đź‘ fenhe either can’t see or won’t admit that interracial couples are a leftist psyop.
Geez, no idea what blogspot did. The…weird high heel thing is supposed to be the word “wife” followed by the word “he”
Many such cases.
Yes, correct. You articulated that part better than I could have. Of course it’s a normalization effort, or at least a promotion of it. It’s the same thing on TV commercials and, to the same degree on different cultural topics, the classic “Burgers?” Stonetoss bit.
A “legal” way to not pay. . . just buy me gift cards. Lots of them.
Maybe I’m getting crankier in my young age, but at this point there’s few movies which I should be interested in that I’m not. I’d rather save my time and money to get better at storytelling so I can animate the kind of films I’d want to see.
Happy to hear the DnD movie is decent enough to go see, but something just barely acceptable enough to see feels like I’m just accepting an even more insulting backhand from Hollywood. It’s one thing to be on the nose so I can avoid it, but disguising it behind ok quality stuff just makes a bigger fool out of me.
Simon’s arc was fine but it was very specifically presented as him living up to the high standards of his female love interest, who is already arguably the most competent person in the whole group.
That’s hypergamy for you. Her conditional rejection of Simon due to his not living up to the potential only she and Edgin knew he had was pretty red pilled.
What was cringeworthy was Simon growing as a man to eclipse the hypercompetent druid, only to swallow a whole bottle of blue pills in the last scene.
My friend saw how to fix Simon’s ending: Just follow up by having him tell Doric, “Great, thanks for the drink,” getting up, and striding off to join the other revelers. Bonus points for the callback to Edgin leaving him with the bar tab earlier.
Yep, would have fixed everything.
That would have been a fantastic capstone on his arc.
WotC as a whole is so bizarrely woke-converged its surprising they didn’t feel the need to apologize for being too anthropocentric by having the main roles filled by humans.
If any culture had the levels of racial diversity and intermarriage seen in this film (or pretty much all fantasy cinema now) the whole culture would become essentially racially homogenized in about three generations anyway. It’s highly unbelievable.