Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s 2023 film breaks the bard Edgin and the barbarian Holga out of the prison Revel’s End. Their old partner Forge Fitzwilliam now rules Neverwinter and holds Edgin’s daughter Kira, so they gather the sorcerer Simon and the druid Doric to steal a tablet that raises the dead. Most of the comedy turns tabletop rules into plot. In the graveyard scene, Simon’s spell allows five questions per corpse, the party wastes them, and a credits scene finds that corpse still waiting for the fifth. The practical and digital work is separated cleanly. Legacy Effects built the aarakocra Jarnathan as a suit worn by Clayton Grover, with a radio controlled animatronic head, taloned stilts and a wingspan close to four metres, and puppeteer David Covarrubias drove the dragonborn chancellor’s face live from a camera rig. The owlbear, displacer beast and gelatinous cube are entirely digital; for the displacer beast, stunt performers in black suits stood in for eyelines. Pandemic rules kept the cast out of Iceland: the plates were shot from a helicopter, figures added later. A good fit if you want the rule stated aloud before it is broken, and the fighting handed to Holga. Not for viewers who want the hero to end the fight himself: Edgin is a bard and barely punches.