Dungeons & Dragons
2023's unlikely hit
I did not have my hopes up for 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons. Frankly, after years of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, I was a bit dragoned out. Further, we’d seen an attempt at adapting the table top role playing game into film before. Twenty-three years ago (how is 2000 twenty-three years ago?) Jeremy Irons chewed scenery in a film that probably never should have left the editing room.
And then this film drops from out of nowhere featuring stars such as Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Hugh Grant—all terrific performers, but none quite billed as superstars. And the reviews were…good? Actually the reviews were really good. The film currently boasts ratings from critics and audiences of 91% and 93% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics hailed the casting, particularly Chris Pine’s “casual, unimposing swagger and a cheeky sense of frolic.”1 Many reviewers praised the film’s ability to not take itself too seriously and just have fun. In other words, this film zigs when Game of Thrones zags, something obvious in the trailer below.
But Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves had to do more than separate itself from both its precursor and the lot of sword and sandal epics in theaters and on demand; it had to satisfy a fanbase that can at times make even Star Wars fanboys look civilized. Dungeons and Dragons emerged literally out of a basement in the 1970s, unsurprisingly inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and others. In the subsequent four and half decades, the table top RPG not only developed millions of players and fans, but also set off influencing other games on its own. It also went through a string of ownerships and eventually emerged as a paragon of Nerdiness. There are podcasts and youtube channels devoted to the game, perhaps none more famous or influential than Critical Role, a livestreamed game run by Hollywood voice actors doing their thing. Celebrities who play include Joe Manganiello, Tom Morello, Tim Duncan, Deborah Ann Woll, Stephen Colbert, and, uh, me.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. And I wanted to give you something special for the final HATM Podcast of 2023. I invited on two absolute luminaries in the gaming world in Emily Friedman and Trevor Valle to talk not only about the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but about the world around D&D complete with the history of the game and the politics surrounding table top gaming. And folks, this is such a cool deep dive into D&D. Here’s a clip of Emily and Trevor taking about the paradox of parasociality in roleplaying games, a sentence I never thought I’d type.
Now, if you’re familiar with D&D, this pod has you absolutely covered. But if not, and you want some background on this, check out this piece Emily penned for the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/who-owns-dungeons-dragons/. The movie is also available right now on Amazon Prime if you wanna check it out before or after hearing the podcast. Speaking of which, you can find it below:
About our guests:
Emily C. Friedman is an Associate Professor of English at Auburn University and teaches courses on British literature, book history, and game narratives. Trained as a book historian, narratologist, and digital humanist, her work examines the history of cultural production outside of commercial mass media from the eighteenth century to today, from never-published manuscript fiction to emerging media. Now one of the senior scholars and public intellectuals in the field of "Actual Play," a new media form where roleplaying games are performed for audiences, her research on the topic has appeared in multiple academic books and journals, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and she is a regular contributor to Polygon. She is at work on two book projects on Actual Play: a field-defining history of the form online, as well as a multiauthored critical companion to major Actual Play Dimension 20.
Trevor Valle is an American paleontologist and wildlife biologist. In addition to his extensive career in paleontology he has also served as personality on several notable paleontology and wildlife television programs and documentaries. He is also a professional TTRPG Dungeon Master. He has been a guest on numerous podcasts including Breaking Bio, the Science Enthusiast Podcast, and the Joe Rogan Experience.
HATM Sunday
Finally, the Heat is on! Join in this Sunday, New Year’s Eve at 8pm eastern as we livetweet Michael Mann’s epic, HEAT. This is one of my favorite films and probably the best heist movie ever made. Hope to see you there.
Amazon Prime
As I was wrapping things up for the evening, news broke that Amazon Prime will now have advertisements in its films and series, meaning that the $140 per year I was spending for the service is really just padding corporate accounts. Combined with increased delivery time for Prime deliveries, I can’t do it. Since my account was set to renew in January, I have decided not only to cancel my account, but to discontinue showing films on Amazon Prime during HATM watch parties effective immediately. We will still use Netflix, Disney+, and I will consider Hulu moving forward.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/movie-reviews/dungeons-dragons-honour-among-thieves-is-the-adventure-quest-we-deserve/news-story/ea6981a78af1d4b69c869da29ad35f2e