Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
In the year of Barbie and Oppenheimer, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was the best pure adventure film Hollywood released and the one most people forgot to include in that conversation.
Full analysis belowNOT A WOKE TRAP. Honor Among Thieves is a crowd-pleasing fantasy adventure that delivers exactly what it advertises: a funny, warm, and entertaining quest film with a party of charming misfits. The marketing accurately represented the tone, the humor, and the ensemble. Conservative viewers curious about the D&D adaptation will find a film rooted in traditional values around family, self-sacrifice, and redemption with no political lecture. The diverse cast is visible in the trailers, the film's moderate progressive surface is front-loaded and non-intrusive, and the story's emotional core is the most traditional thing possible: a father willing to sacrifice everything to bring his daughter back.
In the year of Barbie and Oppenheimer, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was the best pure adventure film Hollywood released and the one most people forgot to include in that conversation.
It should not work. The D&D brand carries decades of geek-culture baggage, a catastrophic 2000 film adaptation, and the cultural assumption that anything derived from a tabletop roleplaying game is too niche for mainstream cinema. Writers and directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley ignored all of that, made a genuinely funny ensemble quest film rooted in family love and self-sacrifice, and delivered one of 2023's most warmly entertaining blockbusters.
The plot: Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) is a former Harper agent turned petty thief, currently imprisoned in the frozen north alongside his barbarian partner Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez). They escape. Edgin needs to reclaim a magical tablet that can resurrect the dead so he can bring back his murdered wife. To get it, he needs to reassemble his crew: a hapless sorcerer named Simon (Justice Smith), a tiefling druid named Doric (Sophia Lillis), and reluctantly, the assistance of a paladin named Xenk (Rege-Jean Page). The complication: Edgin's former partner Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) has stolen his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman), convinced her that Edgin abandoned her, and installed himself as Lord of Neverwinter with the help of a Red Wizard of Thay named Sofina (Daisy Head).
That is the setup. The execution is what matters.
The screenplay is the best adventure comedy script since The Princess Bride. It is genuinely funny in the structural sense, not just in the 'here is a quip' sense: the jokes are built from character, consequence, and setup-payoff logic. The five-questions scene is the film's showcase sequence, where Edgin is granted five questions to ask the dead, makes predictably foolish choices with each one, and the increasingly desperate comedy is built entirely from who Edgin is and what he wants. The undead crypt sequence is the next best: timed gags, callbacks, and physical comedy at a level the live-action Disney remake era has never achieved.
But here is the thing that the film's marketing did not emphasize enough: Honor Among Thieves has a genuine emotional core. Edgin's real arc is not about retrieving a magical tablet. It is about whether he can be present for his daughter rather than lost in grief and self-deception. Pine plays this with full commitment. When the film's climax arrives, the choice Edgin faces is real and the cost is real and the scene works because Pine has done the emotional work across the preceding two hours.
For conservative viewers: Honor Among Thieves is ideologically nearly clean. The VVWS scoring shows +9 TRAD margin, which is the film's honest position. The traditional elements are genuine and central to the story: family love as the engine of heroism, self-sacrifice as the climactic resolution, redemption through taking responsibility rather than running from it, and the consistent punishment of greed and betrayal.
The woke elements are mild and front-loaded. The ensemble is diverse, but the diversity is genre-appropriate for a fantasy setting that inherently includes elves, tieflings, and wizards alongside humans. Doric is a tiefling druid with blue skin and horns; the visual diversity of a fantasy world is inseparable from its genre conventions. Simon's character arc involves overcoming self-doubt, which is universal rather than ideological. There is no political messaging, no social justice subplot, no lecture.
Hugh Grant's Forge deserves special mention. He is playing a conservative audience's nightmare: the charming, well-dressed establishment figure who has captured the city's institutions, convinced everyone he is their benefactor, and been systematically looting them the entire time. The film frames this as straightforward villainy, not as critique of any specific contemporary political position. Forge is punished not by being exposed as ideologically wrong but by being exposed as personally dishonest. The resolution, public humiliation at the hands of a working-class thief and his friends, has a populist energy that plays well across political lines.
The action is inventive, the Forgotten Realms world-building is confident without being encyclopedic, and the film trusts its audience to keep up with fantasy genre conventions without stopping to explain everything. The result is a blockbuster that respects the intelligence of its audience while remaining genuinely accessible.
Box office note: Honor Among Thieves grossed $208 million worldwide against a $150 million budget. It was considered a disappointment by studio standards. It should not have been. The film deserved a bigger audience than it got, and its home video life has been kinder. If you missed it in theaters, fix that.
Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier
🔴 Woke Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diverse Ensemble Cast with Female Co-Lead | 2 | Moderate | Moderate | 2 |
| Non-Human Character / Marginalized Identity Metaphor | 1 | Low | Low | 0.7 |
| Institutional Corruption as Central Obstacle | 2 | Moderate | Low | 1 |
| TOTAL WOKE | 3.7 | |||
🟢 Traditional Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parental Love as Heroic Engine | 4 | High | High | 5.04 |
| Self-Sacrifice as Climactic Resolution | 3 | High | High | 3.78 |
| Redemption Through Taking Responsibility | 3 | High | Moderate | 2.1 |
| Greed Punished / Virtue Rewarded | 2 | Moderate | Moderate | 2 |
| TOTAL TRADITIONAL | 12.9 | |||
Score Margin: +9 TRAD
Director: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
APOLITICAL. Goldstein and Daley are a writing-directing team known for comedies. Their public profiles are politically neutral. Their work includes Spider-Man: Homecoming (screenplay), Game Night (2018), and Vacation (2015). They have made no public political statements and their work shows no consistent ideological pattern beyond a preference for comedic ensemble dynamics.Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley began their collaboration as screenwriters before transitioning to directing together. John Francis Daley is best known to some audiences as Sam Weir from Freaks and Geeks (2000). Their screenplay credits include Horrible Bosses (2011), The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, with Jon Watts and others), and Vacation (2015). Their directorial debut was Game Night (2018), a critically well-received ensemble comedy that demonstrated a gift for timing and genuine warmth alongside genuine comedy violence. Paramount approached them with the D&D adaptation after multiple attempts to develop the property failed. Their approach was to treat the source material with genuine affection while making a film accessible to non-players.
Writer: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio
Goldstein, Daley, and Michael Gilio co-wrote the screenplay. The script is the film's primary strength: it is genuinely funny in a way that Hollywood adventure films rarely achieve, the character dynamics are well-established and consistent, and the emotional arc involving Edgin's daughter Kira is surprisingly affecting. The screenplay manages multiple narrative threads (heist, quest, family reunion) without losing track of any of them. The comedy is physical, verbal, and sometimes meta but never breaks the film's internal logic or undercuts the emotional stakes.
Adult Viewer Insight
Conservative adults who have written off the D&D adaptation for geek-culture reasons are missing one of the best-executed adventure comedies of the decade. The film has no political agenda. It has a father who loves his daughter, a group of misfits who choose each other, and a villain who is punished for greed and treachery. These are the oldest story values in Western literature. Honor Among Thieves delivers them inside a genuinely funny, genuinely warm package. Hugh Grant alone is worth the rental.
Parental Guidance
Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence. Appropriate for ages 8 and up. The violence is stylized and consequence-light. The undead sequences are the most potentially scary for young children. The emotional death scene may affect younger viewers. No sexual content. No drug use. Brief mild language. One of the cleanest and most family-appropriate blockbusters of recent years. Conservative parents have nothing to worry about.
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