Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is probably my favorite movie thus far in 2023.

I've now seen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves twice now in the theater. It's a superb movie, and I strongly recommend you go and see it. It is worth full price. Now for my spoiler-laden review. Sorry, folks if you haven't seen it. But now's your time to head out if you intend to watch it on your own.

I want to begin by saying that I think I've waited a long time for this moment to arrive. Dungeons & Dragons has never been more popular than it is now, and I'm actually not sure what happened to create this popularity. But walking into a game store on Wednesday evening here in Salt Lake, I was amazed to see that there were four tables packed with people busily playing it, and they encompassed all ages. I've never seen that before, and it felt really self-validating to be part of a phenomenon that seems to be so important to so many kinds of people from all walks of life.

D&D has also not been without its stumbling blocks. The parent company of D&D named Wizards of the Coast has tried to license its intellectual property before for movies, and these have all been disastrously bad. What happened with Honor Among Thieves though was that it was clear that the director knew what kind of movie they were making and decided to embrace the silliness and fun of it all rather than try to make some high fantasy that would stand on the same shelf as The Lord of the Rings. The movie was constantly poking fun at itself, and that was its charm. Enough so that when the serious moments did arrive, they landed perfectly and with poignancy that left me verklempt at what I was watching on the screen. Honestly, the storyline for this thing is a real gem, especially if you are well-versed in the lore of Faerun (the D&D world in which most of their materials reference). However, if you don't know anything about Faerun, that's okay. They give you everything you need to know in the movie, and it is handled so expertly that it doesn't come across as an infodump. Rather, it is wildly entertaining.

Looking back on my viewings of the movie, I think that my favorite part of it was the resurrection of Holga, who is the barbarian main character played to a tee by Michelle Rodriguez. Her story arc is a full circle of carefully interwoven emotional moments thick with loyalty and heartbreak and then peppered with strong symbolism. For example, a dragonfly that you see throughout the film comes to represent Edgin's (Chris Pine's) deceased wife. In a touching moment in the movie, it is revealed that Edgin tried to catch one that had strayed into their home in some quaint village called "Rock Bottom." But rather than catch it, his wife tells him that the secret is to just open a window and then the dragonfly finds its way outside. She tells him something like, "You need to just let it go."

Well when Holga suffers the same fate that killed his wife, Edgin has to make a choice with a powerful magical item he procured that can only bring back one person that he loves dearly. It can either be his wife (the driving force behind Edgin's decisions for the entire movie), or he can choose to bring back his best friend Holga, who has always been there for him and helped him to raise his child. Edgin (the bard character played by Chris Pine) grows so much in this one scene in the film, and it's an incredibly attractive and satisfying thing to observe (when a character experiences emotional growth). And then Edgin sees a dragonfly, and he makes the decision to bring back Holga because he knows he needs to let the memory of his wife (which is all that she is now) go.

This kind of storytelling that loops back on itself seems like it would be easy. But having written books, I can tell you that it isn't. A lot of the times it can land cheesily or it is difficult to pull off with any kind of style. The Honor Among Thieves cast manages to land this thing with apropos grace, and I think they are able to do this because they have the audience laughing along with them in so many other areas of the film that (by the time this moment arrives) the audience is now ready to accept something serious, poignant, and beautiful.