‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’: Monsters, Easter eggs and subverting fan expectations

In bringing Dungeons & Dragons to the big screen, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley faced the challenge of paying tribute to a beloved, extremely expansive game. With nearly 50 years’ worth of lore, spells, classes, and monsters at their fingertips, how would they know what to include?

“It’s a daunting menu to choose from. It’s like one of those deli menus where they have everything on it,” Goldstein told Mashable in a Zoom interview. “We actually asked Wizards of the Coast, who are the brand holders. We said, ‘Give us your top 20 or so fan favorite things, so we know what people will love.'”

That conversation led to the inclusion of fan-favorite monsters like Owlbears, one of Daley’s favorite creatures in the final film.

“Just from an aesthetic sense, the Owlbear, I thought, was depicted really well,” Daley said. “The geniuses at [visual effects company] Industrial Light & Magic went through this painstaking process of figuring out how it would look in a 3D space, because it’s never really been depicted before. It was our idea to make it a snowy owl, just so that it pops in this beautiful but also terrifying way.”

Goldstein also shouted out another classic monster: the Mimic, which disguises itself as a treasure chest before lashing out at unsuspecting treasure seekers.

“The Mimic was a perfect blend of practical and CG effects,” said Goldstein. According to him, the trunk and parts of the Mimic’s long tongue were achieved practically, while the rest was computer-generated.

“The concept of [the Mimic] is so funny, and specifically D&D,” he continued.

“It totally exemplifies the tone of Dungeons & Dragons, and how it sets itself apart from the typical monsters and creatures that you would find in other standard fantasy fare,” added Daley.

However, Goldstein and Daley also had wanted to make sure they could incorporate some deeper cuts, such as the Intellect Devourers our heroes encounter in the Underdark. Daley credits the appearance of Intellect Devourers in the film to Chris Perkins, a game and story designer with Wizards of the Coast.

The deeper cuts continued with Easter eggs for eagle-eyed Dungeons & Dragons fans. One of the film’s climactic action sequences involves characters from the 1980s animated Dungeons & Dragons series. Elsewhere, statues and carvings depict important moments from the city of Neverwinter’s history.

Plus, there’s no written English in the film: Everything is written in Thorass, one of the languages of Faerûn.

“People have already translated it,” Goldstein noted.

But Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves isn’t just a non-stop barrage of references. Instead, Goldstein and Daley had fun messing with audience expectations in much the same way Dungeons & Dragons can mess with player expectations. After all, how many times does a session go exactly as planned?

One example of this playful subversion comes from the sequence involving the Mimic (which I’m about to spoil, FYI).

We see characters grabbing items from trunks — a move that immediately put me on edge, having been attacked by a Mimic in a similar way in a prior game. However, when the first trunks turned out to be normal, I let my guard down… only to immediately watch barbarian Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) encounter a Mimic chest.

“We love the setup and payoff of [that moment],” said Daley. “We show someone successfully removing something from a trunk to get people off of the idea that it could be a mimic, so that when it does rear its ugly head at Holga, you get a bit more of a surprise. Being able to play the audience like that throughout the film was something that we got a kick out of and made sure to do as much as possible.”

Goldstein pointed to the bridge scene in the Underdark as another example of this. In that scene, paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) describes a very elaborate puzzle that will allow the adventuring party to cross a bridge safely, only for sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) to step on the wrong brick and destroy the bridge immediately.

“The bridge collapse sequence is a classic kind of D&D situation where you’re told a whole bunch of rules and then you have to follow those rules. It’s kind of an homage to Indiana Jones, too,” said Goldstein. “And the fact that Simon just puts his foot on the thing and all that description was for no reason — that’s the kind of thing that makes us laugh.”

But perhaps the subversion that will feel most crushingly familiar to players comes at the end of a long montage: Our heroes place a portal into the frame of a portrait, and sneak that portrait into a protected carriage, which will bring it right into a highly protected vault. All the heroes need to do to get into the treasure trove is step through the portal. Unfortunately, at the very last second, the portrait topples onto its face, leaving our heroes facing an impenetrable stone slab.

Even though Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is chock-full of well-known monsters and spells, it’s sequences like the portal mishap that greatest capture the spirit of the game. Since the dawn of Dungeons and Dragons, players and Dungeon Masters alike have concocted wild and elaborate plans only to see them fall apart due to bad luck.

“At face value, it’s such an underwhelming conflict that they end up facing,” Daley said. “But it’s something that feels so D&D, in that they set up all of these pieces to pull off this incredible heist, and one bad roll of the die causes it all to go out the window.”

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is now in theaters.