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Movie Review: ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’

NEW YORK (OSV News) – A voyage through the forbidding landscape known to insiders as the Underdark is as jolly as a skip down the Yellow Brick Road in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (Paramount). In fact, this lavish reworking of lore from the well-known role-playing fantasy game maintains a jaunty tone wherever it travels.

The history of the underlying property hasn’t always been so upbeat. In its original format, “D&D” was suspected of preying on vulnerable personalities, enticing them to fall into its imaginary world so deeply that they could harm themselves or others.

When the quasi-cultish pastime was first brought to the big screen in 2000, moreover, the eponymous adaptation was widely panned. Two straight-to-DVD sequels followed. Wisely, co-directors and writers (with Michael Gilio) Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley leave all that baggage behind and get an entirely fresh start.

They not only plumb their odyssey tale for laughs — the comedy ranges from the broadly physical to the sly subtlety of a cocked eyebrow — but for as much kinetic energy as they can extract as well. Along with the humor, they throw in movie-star charisma and lavish special effects.

The labyrinthine medieval theme park thus constructed is a congenial locale. Indeed, the movie is so eager to be likable that viewers have little choice but to fall under its spell and be contentedly pummeled as the gags fly past.

Chris Pine is Edgin, an ex-spy-turned-imprisoned-thief. Given that the espionage outfit of which he was once a member was called the Harpers, it’s perhaps no surprise that Edgin will break into song whenever he’s given an opportunity. As for his pilfering, he’s careful to note that no one is ever physically harmed in these escapades.

Their mission is complicated by the fact that the Tablet is currently in the possession of smarmy villain Forge (Hugh Grant). Once an ally, Forge has gone over to the dark side and has used his influence as the temporary guardian of Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) to get the lass under his sway.

Edgin and Holga eventually acquire a trio of allies: half-human sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) and shape-shifting druid, Doric (Sophia Lillis). For his part, Forge is aided by an evil Red Wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head).

Stuff frequently explodes, some characters dissolve into dust, there’s a fire-breather that looks like Godzilla on steroids, solutions must be improvised in the nick of time, and the finale involves a huge maze inhabited by predatory creatures raring to take a bite out of any and all who come their way. A rollicking time, in other words, is had by everyone.

The “Princess Bride”-style charm even extends to a sequence in which the good guys have to interrogate corpses in a graveyard. Edgin plays this as a vaudeville routine in which he constantly forgets how many questions he’s permitted to ask before the cadavers return to their state in the great beyond.

Predictably, love and family values triumph in the end. But the real point is the journey itself and the bonds, insights and self-knowledge the characters who embark on it acquire. Appealing from the start, they end up smarter than when their adventure began.

The film contains occult themes, cartoonish violence and gore and occasional crude language. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Kurt Jensen is a guest reviewer for OSV News.

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Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Christian Movie Review)

Verdict: While the magic and sorcery may turn off some Christian viewers, the film is a delight, an endearing adventure with a refreshingly uplifting tone.

About The Movie

Before we begin our quest, let’s first address the big fire-breathing dragon in the room: Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is based on the popular role-playing game. Since its creation in the early 1970s, the fantasy tabletop game has had a somewhat loaded reputation within some Christian circles. My purpose here is to review the film, not to adjudicate D&D at large. But for Christians who see the brand as something inherently evil and satanic, Honor Among Thieves may not do much to change that opinion. But for those who see the collaborative storytelling game as harmless, fantastical fun—as I do—this movie is a delight, an endearing adventure with a refreshingly hopeful tone.

I am not well-versed in the lore of the D&D universe, but Honor Among Thieves embodies the joyful spirit of a group of friends telling a silly adventure story together. The plot is bizarre and almost intentionally convoluted. A band of thieves seeks to pull off a heist against someone who has betrayed them and to rescue one of the protagonist’s daughters. To do so, they must enter a dark underworld, flee from a humorously pudgy dragon, re-animate the corpses of fallen warriors to interview them, survive a Hunger Games-esque colosseum event, and much more. The story steadily moves forward, frequently throwing in new episodic action scenes that are inventive and interesting.

Of course, the plot of a D&D campaign is secondary to the communal aspect of creating goofy characters and spending an evening telling crazy stories with friends, and Honor Among Thieves is deeply character centric. In true D&D fashion, the band of rogues all receive backstories and have heightened character traits. The bard, Edgin (Chris Pine), is the charismatic, fast-talking leader; the barbarian, Holga (Michelle Rodriquez), is a blunt-force weapon with a surprisingly big heart; the down-on-his luck sorcerer, Simon (Justice Smith), has hilariously low confidence in his abilities; and the shape-shifting druid, Doric (Sophia Lillis), is a Jekyll and Hyde, morphing from soft-spoken and gentle to a violent “owl-bear” in seconds. They are joined by a scummy Hugh Grant who hams it up in every scene. Regardless of the bizarre settings in which they find themselves, it’s simply fun to watch these characters and their interactions, which is the driving force of the story.

I also appreciated the film’s positive tone. While some Christians may associate the D&D brand with darkness, Honor Among Thieves is an adventure/comedy. There is some darkness (evil is appropriately evil), but the movie is almost relentlessly optimistic and hopeful. In contrast to the tired sarcastic quips and humor of the MCU, Honor Among Thieves is refreshingly earnest. There are several legitimately hilarious gags that are free from the mean-spirited brand of humor that has become prevalent in many other franchises.

The film embraces silliness without blushing, and despite what the trailers suggest, there are no classic rock n’ roll songs or “modern” elements. It is a classic fantasy adventure story through and through. While it clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously, neither does it devolve into a self-conscious parody, as Thor: Love & Thunder did. It offers fantasy fun and asks audiences to go along for the ride.

In the end, whether you enjoy the film will depend largely on your mindset. The Dungeon and Dragons branding will perhaps be too menacing a gatekeeper for some Christians. On the other hand, I do think there is much here for Christians to appreciate. Yes, there is magic and sorcery and fantasy world-building, but these elements are merely the backdrop for an earnest and uplifting story about characters learning to work together as a team. It may not be a movie for everyone, but this is easily the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater this year.

For Consideration

Language: A handful of minor profanities (predominately “sh—”).

Violence: Characters die in various ways, but with little to no visible gore. At least one helmeted character is decapitated, but it is shown at a distance and without blood.

Sexuality: There is one brief moment that may be considered suggestive. A warrior woman holds a man by the legs as he dangles through a portal in the ground. Two other men pass by at a distance, and seeing only the woman and the two legs coming up around her, presumably attribute sexual actions to the scene. Thankfully, the gag—if that was indeed the intention—is not emphasized in an over-the-top sexual way.

Other: Magic features prominently throughout the story and is used by both good and bad characters. If there is any distinction, the evil magic clearly has dark or demonic roots, whereas the heroic magic-users use their spells more as magician “tricks.” Still, the world of the story is filled with magical powers that don’t reflect a biblical worldview. Also, a villain remarks that he has ascended to the level of being both a “god” and a “lord” (as in, the political ruler of his territory).

Engage The Film

Collaboration and gifting.

As with the role-playing game, the movie is all about collaboration and teamwork. Each of the characters has specific strengths and weaknesses, and each has an important role to play in accomplishing the mission. The film doesn’t minimize any of its characters. For example, Chris Pine’s Edgin lacks the brute strength and combat skills of Holga, and other storytellers may be tempted to emasculate his character or reduce him to a bumbling buffoon in order to celebrate her strength (again, see Thor: Love & Thunder) . But this movie takes a different approach, emphasizing that all have equal value and importance in the story.

In many ways, this theme is consistent with the biblical picture of the church: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” ( 1 Corinthians 12:7 ). To make a positive difference in their world, the team—like the church—must live and work in harmony. Yet, they are motivated to work together not just because they share a common enemy but because they actually care for each other. Partway through the film, when the characters are on the verge of giving up, it is not the mission but a confession of their hurts and brokenness to each other that sets them back on the right path. A scripture that came to mind was, “This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it” ( 1 Corinthians 17:27 ). Honor Among Thieves is no Sunday morning Bible study, but its main themes echo powerful biblical truths.

Fatherhood & Family

It has been interesting to see fatherhood as a recurring theme in many recent Hollywood blockbusters ( Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, etc.). This film also explores that theme and questions what it means to be a good father. Edgin is estranged from his only daughter, and his years in prison have only widened that gap. From the beginning, his mission is to reclaim his daughter, who has been left in the safekeeping of his enemy. His changing mindset toward that mission represents his primary character arc. In the beginning he is resentful, blaming everyone but himself for the loss of his daughter. By the end, he is able to confess honestly that he has been a bad father and take responsibility for his selfish choices, learning that fatherhood is a self-sacrificial responsibility and that he needs to mature in order to fulfill it.

As an added wrinkle in the theme, Holga assumes a maternal role in raising and protecting Edgin’s daughter, despite there being no romantic relationship between the two characters. Her own backstory reveals that she is divorced and grieves for the family life she never had. Yet, rather than being consumed by bitterness, she finds her purpose in being a mother figure to Edgin’s daughter. Honor Among Thieves celebrates families, and it also affirms that not all families are biological.

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I am amused that Christians have largely left their false claims about D&D behind. That’s what happens when your predictions fail. I”m going to guess that many of you would like to forget the nonsense that was claimed back in the 70s and 80s since it demonstrates that the religion isn’t what it claims to be.

Thank you for a nicely balanced, Christian review. Helped me decide whether to take my daughter to see the film. Much appreciated : )

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (Paramount)

Justice Smith, Chris Pine, Sophia Lillis, and Michelle Rodriguez star in a scene from the movie “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.” The OSV News classification is A-III -- adults. (OSV News photo/Aidan Monaghan, Paramount Pictures)

By OSV News

In reworking lore from the well-known role-playing fantasy game of the title, co-directors and writers (with Michael Gilio) Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley ignore a trilogy of previous adaptations to get an entirely fresh start.

Their lavish odyssey tale follows an ex-spy-turned-imprisoned-thief (Chris Pine) as he makes his escape and seeks to retrieve a totem which he believes has the power to bring his deceased wife back to life. As he battles the smarmy villain (Hugh Grant) who currently has possession of the object, and who has also gained sway over his daughter (Chloe Coleman), he’s accompanied and aided by a barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez), a half-human sorcerer (Justice Smith), a paladin (Regé-Jean Page) and a shape-shifting druid (Sophia Lillis).

A rollicking time is had by everyone and love and family values triumph in the end. But the real point is the quest itself and the bonds, insights and self-knowledge the characters who embark on it acquire along the path of their adventure.

Occult themes, cartoonish violence and gore, occasional crude language. The OSV News classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Click here for full reviews of this and other current movies by OSV News.

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Dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves, common sense media reviewers.

Cast elevates funny game-based adventure; action violence.

Dungeons & Dragons Movie Poster: The characters stand in a circle, looking down/out of the frame

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie, like game that inspired it, values teamwork

The team might be thieves, but they're brave and l

The ensemble of characters is racially diverse, wi

Lots of fantasy action violence, with many perilou

In flashbacks, a married couple court, embrace, an

Occasional but not frequent use of words including

Inspired by a game/product line. Also lots of offl

A few scenes of the team in taverns where adults d

Positive Messages

Movie, like game that inspired it, values teamwork, perseverance, courage. The plot demonstrates that even thieves can act according to a code of honor and be loyal, as well as act toward a greater good. One character's story arc conveys that it's important to have confidence in yourself in order to achieve desired results. One subtle message, thanks to Edgin and Holga, is that men and women can be close platonic friends.

Positive Role Models

The team might be thieves, but they're brave and loyal. They're flawed, but each has reasons to work together. Edgin and Holga both love Kira and want to keep her safe. Doric wants to protect the tribe that took her in. Simon wants to prove he's capable of something greater than he imagines.

Diverse Representations

The ensemble of characters is racially diverse, with people from different backgrounds, species, and/or communities. The actors who play them are similarly diverse: Chris Pine and Sophia Lillis are White, Michelle Rodriguez is Dominican, Justice Smith is multiracial, and Regé-Jean Page is half-Zimbabwean, half-White. The women on the team are confident and physically powerful, and discuss more than romance with each other. The villain is a woman.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Lots of fantasy action violence, with many perilous life-or-death moments that lead to destruction and death (including one major character). Several brawls, battles, and one-on-one fights using knives, swords, fists, crossbows, and magic. A woman is such a strong warrior that she routinely takes on multiple people at a time. A red wizard uses magic to cause lots of damage to people and places; she kills people with a magical spell that ends them nearly instantly. Poisoning. A character has flashbacks to how his wife was poisoned by a wizard's blade. A beloved character is seriously injured.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

In flashbacks, a married couple court, embrace, and kiss. In two scenes, they're shown in bed together, talking and cuddling. The youngest team members flirt with each other and by the end are clearly interested.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional but not frequent use of words including "s--t," "stupid," "bastards," "son of a bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Inspired by a game/product line. Also lots of offline merchandise and tie-ins.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A few scenes of the team in taverns where adults drink. One character makes references to another character's drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is an action-packed comedy/fantasy adventure based on the classic role-playing game. The story follows a team of misfit bandits led by Edgin the Bard ( Chris Pine ) and his warrior best friend, Holga ( Michelle Rodriguez ), who must work together to stop an evil wizard. Expect lots of fantasy action violence, including sword, crossbow, and fistfighting; poisoning; and magical battles that instantly injure or even kill. Lots of life-or-death moments lead to death and destruction, as well as one major character death. Occasional strong language includes "s--t," "bastard," and "son of a bitch." Romance is limited to flirting and flashbacks that show a married couple affectionate, kissing briefly, and lying in bed cuddling. The story features a diverse cast and powerful women characters. Although they're thieves, (most of) the characters are loyal to one another and help more than just themselves. Hugh Grant , Justice Smith , and Regé-Jean Page co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

Parents say (23)
Kids say (26)

Based on 23 parent reviews

What's the Story?

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES introduces viewers to imprisoned best friends Edgin ( Chris Pine ), a disgraced harper, and Holga ( Michelle Rodriguez ), a disgraced barbarian, who are pleading their case for early release to a judicial board. Edgin explains that they were caught after being double-crossed by a villainous wizard, Sofina ( Daisy Head ), during a heist that they only agreed to do in order to raise Edgin's late wife from the dead. After escaping from prison, the friends try to reunite with Edgin's tween daughter, Kira ( Chloe Coleman ). But they discover that their former partner-in-crime, Forge ( Hugh Grant ), now lord of Neverwinter, has been acting as Kira's adoptive father and has kept all of the old gang's stolen riches, including the much-needed resurrection amulet. After surviving an assassination attempt, Edgin and Holga put together a team of misfits -- including their old half-elf friend Simon ( Justice Smith ), shapeshifter druid Doric ( Sophia Lillis ), and ageless paladin Xenk ( Regé-Jean Page ) -- to steal back the relic and stop Forge and Sofina.

Is It Any Good?

This entertaining, star-studded comic adventure takes full advantage of its "ragtag misfits on a mission" theme. Writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley far exceed expectations -- which, admittedly, are pretty low for game-based genre movies. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ' story manages to be engaging, funny, and occasionally moving, but also lighthearted and not overly violent. And it's significant that the main male and female characters are platonic best friends who aren't romantically interested in each other. The writers give Edgin and Holga a sibling-like bond: They tease and taunt each other but also unconditionally support and love each other, leaving the (refreshingly light!) romantic tension to their younger pals Simon and Doric. Pine is a pitch-perfect lead, and Rodriguez has played so many versions of a woman warrior that you just expect her to fell lots of foes. The supporting characters are equally well cast. Grant is hilarious as the greedy Forge; Page (of Bridgerton fame) is clearly adept at playing humorless, seemingly perfect characters; and Head does a fine job pivoting from her beautiful Shadow and Bone character to play a villainous wizard who's trying to take over the world.

Goldstein and Daley's script is full of zingers and ongoing jokes, but it's also earnest and sweet, reminding viewers that these are indeed deep-feeling characters with kind hearts. In one scene, Holga visits her ex-husband, whom she still loves. He's played by an A-list actor in a small but impactful cameo (no spoilers here!), and their conversation is surprisingly substantive for a relationship talk in an action movie. Speaking of which, the action sequences are slick without being overwhelming, with brawls making up most of the fights until the third act. There's a funny moment when Holga faces off with six or seven opponents on her own, and Edgin is so confident in her chances that he's on a completely different mission. The scenes between Edgin, Holga, and young Kira also pack a punch, as the thieves must reconcile their motives with what the girl actually needs from them. And the world-building, while not as thorough as Lord of the Rings , is enough to make audiences eager for a sequel to this fun, funny family movie pick.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Is it realistic, or stylized? How does the type of violence affect its impact?

Do you consider any of the characters role models ? Are some of them worthier of respect and admiration than others? Why, or why not?

How does the storyline demonstrate themes of courage , perseverance , and teamwork ?

If you're a fan of the D&D games, how does this movie live up to your imagination of what it might be like to see D&D characters come to life?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 31, 2023
On DVD or streaming : May 2, 2023
Cast : Chris Pine , Michelle Rodriguez , Regé-Jean Page , Hugh Grant
Directors : John Francis Daley , Jonathan Goldstein
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors
Studio : Paramount
Genre : Fantasy
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 134 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : fantasy action/violence and some language
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : September 2, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

Performing Arts
Pop Culture

Rollicking 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' scores a critical hit

Glen Weldon

L to R: Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith) and Edgin (Chris Pine) are hot to trot. Paramount Pictures and eOne hide caption

L to R: Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), Simon (Justice Smith) and Edgin (Chris Pine) are hot to trot.

Even if you don't know a halberd from a hezrou , you'll probably go into Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves thinking you know what to expect.

Because even if you've never experienced the beloved tabletop role-playing game on which the film is based yourself, you do know what a putative blockbuster franchise film looks and feels like in 2023.

You know, in particular, that it can be counted upon to adopt a specific, unvarying and very familiar tone, which by now we can all agree to call Marvel Funny.

Marvel Funny occurs along a spectrum adjacent to, but meaningfully separate from, Actually Funny because it's colder and more calculated. It is calibrated to wink at the audience conspicuously and unceasingly, to encase the spectacular and fantastic action of a given film — super powers, or space battles, or in the present example, spells and monsters — in a protective coating of ironic detachment.

This allows filmmakers to lean into the bombastic, over-the-top spectacle they spend so much money to deliver while ensuring audiences know that everyone involved with the film is in on the joke, that very soon some character or other will come along with a quip — an arch, sardonic, too-writerly quip — to prove that nobody's taking any of this stuff too seriously. It's a formula, a ritual, an attempt to dispel the grim specter of Cringe.

Rolling the dice on race in Dungeons & Dragons

(It's only reasonable to acknowledge that this cinematic formula is wearing thin. And that it's not entirely fair to call it Marvel Funny, as this approach has been coded into the genetic material of the blockbuster itself from the beginning; you can detect trace elements of it in Jaws , Superman: The Movie and Star Wars .)

So, you're in the theater. The lights go down, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves begins (if you're me, you at this point maybe think to yourself, "We come to this place ... for Magic Missile"), and sure enough, there it is, manifesting right there in the opening seconds of the very first scene: that same, predictable, inescapable approach. Marvel Funny. You were right.

But then, a few seconds later, you start to notice that the film's copious jokes — the quips, yes, but also the visual gags and the dialogue itself — are better, stronger, and funnier than they strictly need to be.

And then, should you allow yourself a moment of reflection, it likely occurs to you how weirdly right it seems, how well that familiar approach seems uniquely attuned to the film's subject. After all, any Dungeons & Dragons session unfolds on two levels simultaneously. There is the world of the game, in which your characters experience epic struggles and extreme violence and suffering unto (and sometimes beyond) death, while above it, there is the world of the table, around which you and your friends sit scarfing hard sourdough pretzels and joking about how badly you're all about to get boned.

So here, Marvel Funny works . It makes a kind of ironclad, ruthlessly meta sense. It helps tremendously that the cast is so deft at tossing off the film's many jokes so they seem like the legitimate product of their given situation instead of some mid-afternoon punch-up session in a dingy Burbank writers' room.

L to R: Doric (Sophia Lillis), Simon (Justice Smith), Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) roll for initiative. Paramount Pictures and eOne hide caption

L to R: Doric (Sophia Lillis), Simon (Justice Smith), Edgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) roll for initiative.

A game cast fit for a role-playing game movie

The adventuring party at the center of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is led by Chris Pine as Edgin, a bard far too convinced of his talents. It's the kind of role Pine was engineered in some secret subterranean Hollywood breeding facility to play: a character who not only rides the razor's edge between charm and smarm but who sets up housekeeping there.

And speaking of smarm: Hugh Grant, as a rakish rogue, is once again serving us the kind of full-bore, insufferably plummy poshness he gifted the world within Paddington 2 . He's reached the stage of his career where he can spread the ol' smarmalade thick and more power to him. He sure looks like he's having a ball.

As the sullen barbarian Holga, Michelle Rodriguez doesn't get the chance to do a lot that you haven't seen Michelle Rodriguez do before, but she remains great at it, and this time out, she does it in braids. So. There's that.

It's Been a Minute

The game has changed for d&d and 'a league of their own'.

But it's Regé-Jean Page who makes the most of his (too-limited) screen time here. As the noble paladin Xenk, he radiates an amusingly galling breed of virtuousness. (Paladins, for those unfamiliar, are the smug, preening, condescending white knights of the D&D world — a bunch of Frasier Cranes in plate mail.) Page nails the necessary hauteur and supreme confidence while layering them with a guileless sincerity that turns his character into a weapon aimed at Pine's character's every insecurity.

But what will the Normals think?

If the film does well, a large percentage of its audience, perhaps a majority of it, will have come to it unfamiliar with the densely interconnected network of rules, stats and bylaws that make the game what it is. So an important question becomes — what will those uninitiated into the nerdy number-crunching of D&D possibly make of this thing?

The filmmakers — Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who together directed the excellent 2018 film Game Night and co-wrote this script with Michael Gilio — smartly use the game's deep lore to buoy the script, not weigh it down.

'Game Night' Is Winning

If you go into the film knowing the internecine mechanics of D&D gameplay, you will certainly recognize them playing out onscreen — but you miss nothing if you don't.

Worried you'll be bombarded with obscure references to places and characters from the game? You will. But just because the film's so stuffed with Easter eggs you could mash it up with mayo, mustard, onions and celery and serve it on wheat toast, your enjoyment of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn't depend on recognizing them.

Sure, the characters can and do toss out references to, say, a Baldur's Gate here or a Mordenkainen there, but they're only in the script so the nerds in the audience can turn to one another and share knowing looks. If, in their adventures our doughty heroes run into a displacer beast or two, or if a rust monster scuttles over their heads in a dark alley, those Easter eggs for eager D&D fans will serve only as background detail, mere ambience, for everyone else.

With 'The Legend of Vox Machina,' a Dungeons & Dragons web series rolls the dice

The fetch-quests and the furious.

The film's plot is purely, ruthlessly episodic – it comes down to a series of fetch quests: They must go to [place] to talk to [person], who sends them to [other place] to secure the [magical item] that will allow them to access to [still another place], etc. But to complain about the number of fetch quests in a D&D film would be like complaining that a movie about Scrabble features too much spelling.

Given how gleefully Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieve s embraces and exults in its genre elements, it's interesting to note that it's all the stuff geared to making the film accessible to the mainstream that is the most dully generic thing about it.

A plotline involving Edgin's daughter (Chloe Coleman) and his dead wife exists to up the stakes and motivate his actions in the thuddingly predictable manner of Hollywood action movies. There's also so much wet-eyed, lip-quivering dialogue about "family" you can't help but suspect that Michelle Rodriguez brought it with her when she crossed over from the Fast and Furious franchise. Who knows; maybe she didn't quarantine correctly.

But the movie even manages to shake off that mild complaint, given its nature. After all, the game of Dungeons & Dragons is what happens when wildly disparate people come together — both in the fantastical realm of Faerun and around a rickety folding table in your friend Dana's sunken living room.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn't just know that; it finds room to honor it and fully, freely embody it.

Correction March 31, 2023

An earlier version of this review misspelled Faerun as Fearun.

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The introductions to “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” at the SXSW Film Festival emphasized that they “made this movie for everyone .” There’s clearly a concern that the film may not reach outside the demographic of people who once played or still play the wildly influential role-playing game. And there should be because branding can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it targets a massive fan base already familiar with an IP. On the other hand, a film has to be good enough to break out of that familiarity to reach a wider audience—think of how well “The Last of Us” is playing to viewers who never played the game. So how will fans of Dungeons & Dragons respond to this expensive foray into their favorite fantasy experience? Paramount is rolling a 20-sided die and hoping to get the right number, but the fickle Dungeon Master of Hollywood may have a fatal surprise around the next corner.

The truth is that the game Dungeons & Dragons is often at its best when it’s at its most ridiculously unpredictable and downright silly. Co-writer/directors Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and co-writer Michael Gilio attempt to recreate that “we need a plan” structure of the game in a script that feels like it's often making itself up as it goes along. Or pretending to do so. While that’s an ambitious way to approach a fantasy film, it can make for oddly unsatisfying stretches of the final product by eliminating stakes and forcing lightheartedness. Manufactured spontaneity is almost impossible, and too much of “Honor Among Thieves” feels like it’s unfolding with a wink and a nod instead of being legitimately rough around the edges, in-the-moment, and fresh. There are stretches of “Honor Among Thieves” that have the whimsical chaos of Sam Raimi ’s “Army of Darkness”—including a great sequence involving the talking dead—and the film often recalls the “ragtag team of saviors” tone of “ Guardians of the Galaxy .” Still, the film often plays out like it’s faking what the creators love about the game instead of trying to translate it from one medium to another.

The typically charming Chris Pine plays Edgin Darvis, a former member of a group called the Harpers. After his wife is killed by an evil group known as the Red Wizards, Edgin tries to execute a heist to retrieve an item that can bring her back to life, but he’s betrayed, imprisoned with his BFF Holga Kilgore ( Michelle Rodriguez ), a stoic barbarian. In a clever sequence, the pair escapes and discover that Edgin’s daughter Kira ( Chloe Coleman ) has been taken in and lied to by their team’s former ally Forge Fitzwilliam ( Hugh Grant ). The rogue betrayed Edgin and the team in several ways, including partnering with a vicious Red Wizard named Sofina ( Daisy Head ).

Edgin and Holga have several missions in this D&D campaign: Save Kira, get revenge on Forge, stop the Red Wizards, and maybe find some loot along the way. The mission will reunite them with an unconfident wizard named Simon ( Justice Smith ), a shapeshifting druid named Doric ( Sophia Lillis ), and a charming paladin named Xenk ( Regé-Jean Page ). Like any “team of heroes” movie, these characters each bring different skill sets that the group will need to accomplish their goals, and the writers pepper the film with odd hurdles for the group to overcome, including a clever sequence involving some undead enemies and a chubby dragon in a dungeon.

If it all sounds like it’s more for fantasy gamers than “everyone,” well, it undeniably is. The film is filled with references to D&D—name drops like “Baldur’s Gate” and “Neverwinter” created audible responses during the premiere—but I wouldn’t go as far as to say the film won’t work at all for people who have never made a character for a campaign. Most of the references here will sound like depth for non-gamers who may see more parallels to products like “ The Lord of the Rings ” or “The Witcher” than their actual source. It’s a film that’s rich in fantasy terminology in a way that seems like its creators affectionately remember creating characters in their mom's basement when they were young. That genuine interest in the lore of D&D may be enough for some people. But what about everyone else?

Affection for a source doesn’t always translate to execution in terms of craft, and the filmmaking here is shoddy. In terms of the flashes and bangs, "Honor Among Thieves" works much better when it focuses on practical effects (or at least ones that look practical—everything is CGI nowadays) and can find a tactile quality that the CGI-heavy sequences lack. When Edgin and his team are waking up corpses to get information, or Sofina is merely scowling in her malevolent makeup, the film is more grounded than when it’s drifting off in magic-driven sequences of people casting spells both willy and nilly. There’s also a lack of world-building in a movie that should be dense with it when it comes to design. Forge’s city looks like a generic fantasy video game setting, and the opportunity to craft interesting backdrops for these varied characters is rarely taken. It looks like a film that's going to age poorly visually.

The cast is reasonably strong, with Pine leaning into the rough charisma I’ve always thought would have made him a massive star in the ‘60s. All of the cast was clearly chosen to play to their strengths, with Grant amplifying his smarm and Rodriguez kicking ass when needed. Relative newcomers Smith and Lillis are effective, too, with the former finding some vulnerability and the latter being consistently engaging as she uncertainly becomes a hero.

What’s most shocking about “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is how little meat there is on these reanimated bones, even with a bloated 139-minute runtime. When a cast of characters runs from plan A to plan B and back to plan A, the constant motion doesn’t allow for much else. Most of this film is “What we do now?” Again, that's fun with friends, less so when you have no control over the answer.

This review was filed from the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" opens on March 31.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie poster

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Rated NR for fantasy action/violence and some language.

134 minutes

Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis

Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore

Regé-Jean Page as Xenk Yendar

Justice Smith as Simon Aumar

Sophia Lillis as Doric

Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam

Jason Wong as Dralas

Chloe Coleman

Daisy Head as Sofina the Red Wizard

John Francis Daley
Jonathan M. Goldstein

Writer (story by)

Chris McKay
Michael Gilio
Jonathan Goldstein

Cinematographer

Barry Peterson
Dan Lebental
Lorne Balfe

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‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: They’re on a Roll

An ensemble cast aims to bring comedy and adventure to this film made in the image of the popular role-playing game.

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A woman in battle gear and a man in a dark jacket kneeling in a castle.

By Amy Nicholson

In the earliest decades of Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy-loving role players often hid their passion for the game. To the dominant culture, they were dweebs, then Satanists, then back to dweebs. Things changed after Jon Favreau kick-started the modern Marvel franchise in the summer of 2008 and, during the “Iron Man” promotional tour, publicly credited his years spinning tales about goblins and lizardfolk for teaching him to create “this modular, mythic environment where people can play in it.” Since then, D&D fans like James Gunn, Joss Whedon and the Russo Brothers have transformed the multiplex into their rec room where magical supersquads embark on perpetual campaigns. They are the dominant culture — and filmgoers who have never clutched a 20-sided icosahedron are subject to their throw of the dice.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” an amiable romp by the directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Gilio, comes clattering along just as the public has grown weary of caring about gewgaws with names like the monocle of Bagthalos. It’s late to its own party with good reason. The game hinges on cooperation and imagination — on the joy of friends inventing a creative way to trap an orc — and how in Hextor does that translate to sitting passively before a screen?

After a decade in development , the project that made it to the screen is a noisy, pixelated smash-and-zap that does manage to capture the spirit of play. The story starts with a silver-tongued bard named Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), a divorced barbarian named Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) and a simple challenge. Edgin and Holga must escape a fortified tower — a donjon in Old French, before the English redefined dungeon as someplace underground — to reunite with Edgin’s daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman). When they learn that Kira is under the thrall of a con man (Hugh Grant) who is himself under the thrall of a wizard (Daisy Head), our heroes’ gang expands to include an anti-establishment druid (Sophia Lillis) and a defeatist sorcerer (Justice Smith). Like the game, the team’s initial mission rapidly spirals into detours; the goal is less interesting than the brainstorming sessions that get them to the finish.

Having sat in on my share of D&D campaigns, my personal idea of purgatory is five people debating whether to open a door. Luckily, the film moves faster. Castles, volcanoes and yurts — oh my — whiz past at a clip that would make a dice-roller drool. Plans are quickly made and just as quickly fail. “This is what we do!” Edgin yelps. “We pivot!”

Can a C.G.I.-laden juggernaut evoke the freedom of improv? Not really — though there is a nifty one-shot chase sequence where Lillis’ druid hastily shape-shifts among a housefly, a mouse, a cat and a deer. Daley, a former child actor, once played the nerd on the TV show “Freaks and Geeks” who convinced James Franco’s character that D&D is cool because you can crack jokes and fight dragons. That remains the height of his ambition. There’s no momentum behind the father-daughter story line, so the closer the plot lurches toward all those hugs and tears, the more excuses the cinematographer Barry Peterson seizes to send the camera on a loop-de-loop. I’d rather cheer for a kooky blockbuster that’s all fiascos, like the midpoint Monty Python-esque sequence where the crew botches the resurrection and interrogation of craggy old corpses. Compared to that, the emotional climax is a bowl of cold groats.

The film, produced in part by Hasbro, makes no direct reference to the actual game outside the frame. Yet its mechanics are felt in ways both affectionate and sarcastic. During one brawl, the editor Dan Lebental cuts again and again to Edgin stuck on the sidelines struggling to abrade his rope cuffs. You can sense the character’s frustration to be rolling ones and twos. Later, when Regé-Jean Page strides into the action as a humorless, hyper-competent paladin, Goldstein and Daley permit our eyes to glaze over as he drones on about arcana that’s impossible to absorb. Instead, we snicker as Page solemnly cautions us against “ill-gotten booty.”

For a film about collaboration, the actors aren’t in tonal agreement about the movie they’re in. Grant’s commitment to his dastardly rogue barely goes beyond his cravat — he’d rather guffaw than feign gravitas. By the time a multiple Oscar nominee cameos in a scene played like a Noah Baumbach marital drama, you might wonder if these personality swings are the point? Now that fantasy adventures aren’t dweebs-only, there’s room at the table for all types.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Rated PG-13 for cartoonish violence and mild profanity. Running time: 2 hours 14 minutes. In theaters.

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Movie – ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’

By Kurt Jensen | OSV News

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

They not only plumb their odyssey tale for laughs – the comedy ranges from the broadly physical to the sly subtlety of a cocked eyebrow – but for as much kinetic energy as they can extract as well. Along with the humor, they throw in movie-star charisma and lavish special effects.

At a pardon hearing, Edgin escapes captivity, accompanied by his barbarian accomplice Holga (Michelle Rodriguez). Together they set out on a quest to retrieve a totem known as the Tablet of Reawakening, which Edgin believes has the power to bring his deceased wife back to life.Their mission is complicated by the fact that the Tablet is currently in the possession of smarmy villain Forge (Hugh Grant). Once an ally, Forge has gone over to the dark side and has used his influence as the temporary guardian of Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) to get the lass under his sway.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

2023, Fantasy/Adventure, 2h 14m

What to know

Critics Consensus

An infectiously good-spirited comedy with a solid emotional core, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves offers fun fantasy and adventure even if you don't know your HP from your OP. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves entertainingly blends action, fantasy, and comedy -- all while respecting the source material. Read audience reviews

Where to watch dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves.

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Dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves videos, dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves photos.

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.

Rating: PG-13 (Some Language|Fantasy Action/Violence)

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Action, Comedy

Original Language: English

Director: Jonathan M. Goldstein , John Francis Daley

Producer: Jeremy Latcham , Brian Goldner , Nick Meyer

Writer: Jonathan M. Goldstein , John Francis Daley , Michael Gilio , Chris McKay

Release Date (Theaters): Mar 31, 2023 wide

Release Date (Streaming): May 2, 2023

Box Office (Gross USA): $93.2M

Runtime: 2h 14m

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Production Co: Allspark Pictures, Paramount, Hasbro Studios

Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Digital 2.39:1

Cast & Crew

Michelle Rodriguez

Regé-Jean Page

Justice Smith

Sophia Lillis

Chloe Coleman

Jonathan M. Goldstein

John Francis Daley

Screenwriter

Michael Gilio

Chris McKay

Jeremy Latcham

Brian Goldner

Denis L. Stewart

Executive Producer

Zev Foreman

Greg Mooradian

Barry Peterson

Cinematographer

Dan Lebental

Film Editing

Lorne Balfe

Original Music

Production Design

Jennifer Bash

Art Director

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‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: The Role-Playing Fantasy Game Becomes an Irresistible Mash-Up of Everything It Inspired

Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page rule in an adventure that turns pop-fantasy derivativeness into its own form of fun.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Rege Jean Page plays Xenk, Michelle Rodriguez plays Holga, Chris Pine plays Edgin, Sophia Lillis plays Doric and Justice Smith plays Simon in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves from Paramount Pictures and eOne.

Introducing “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” the lavish hyperkinetic popcorn fairy tale that kicked off SXSW this evening, the film’s co-directors, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, told the audience that they had designed the movie to appeal to hardcore D&D players — and also to those who know absolutely nothing about the game. This came as a relief to me, since what I know about Dungeons & Dragons you could put on the head of a…well, I know so little that I can’t even come up with a proper D&D reference with which to spin that cliché.

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Kira, however, has come under the spell of Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant, chewing voraciously on every line), a scoundrel who rules over a walled city, and has convinced Kira that he can be a better dad to her than her own duplicitous father. Edgin wants to put his family back together, and if he can lay his hands on the Tablet of Reawakening, he’ll have the ability to bring his wife back to life and restore all that was lost. But the Tablet is locked up in a vault in the city, and he needs to find the Helmet of Disjunction — which can stop time — to do it. Are you with me?

“Honor Among Thieves” keeps introducing rules and gambits that interlock with pleasing logic but, as often as not, turn out to be MacGuffins. Yet they do their job — they seduce us, for a few scenes, into seeming as if they matter, at which point the film is only too happy to move on. Daley and Goldstein work with a precision that satisfies our inner megaplex classicist, yet it’s part of the film’s design that it never stops throwing things at us.

As Edgin forms a fellowship with such winningly offbeat characters as the insecure sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and the shape-shifting druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), “Honor Among Thieves” becomes a gallivanting magic-trick action movie with a dragon so pudgy the characters make a joke of it, an undead cult of Red Wizards who rule their minions with billows of crimson smoke like something out of “The Wizard of Oz,” and a scene of crowd-pleasing macabre cheekiness in which old grey skeletal corpses are raised from the dead so they can be asked five questions, at which point they collapse back into oblivion. The dialogue in a scene like this one has a precocious snap. The script is by Daley, Goldstein, and Michael Gilio, who invest each encounter — even if it’s with a corpse — with a charge of ego.

That said, there’s enough snark and visual zap on display that we may feel like we’re gorging on candy corn, and that we’re hungry for something a little more soulful. It arrives, in the person of Regé-Jean Page , who shows up as Xenk, who is noble in such an old-fashioned stoic corn-dog way (he can’t process irony, let alone a phrase like “son-of-a-bitch”) that he lends the movie the note of romantic valor we want. Page acts with a dark-liquid-eyed savoir faire that’s delectable, and for a while he and Pine become an ace comedy team: Xenk the man too suavely heroic to crack a joke, Edgin the one who makes a joke out of everything, including Xenk’s nobility.

There’s an intricacy to the staging of “Honor Among Thieves” that helps balance out the roller-coaster derivativeness of the plot. We go with it, even as we know we’re gorging on a succulent overdose of fantasy dessert. The gladiatorial battle inside a maze at the climax is sensationally well done, from the panther with Venus-flytrap tentacles to the treasure boxes along the way to the giant cubes of Jell-O that help save the day. The monster at the end? To me that was one demon too many. But no matter. “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” should be a major hit, because it knows how to tap into our nostalgia — not just for a game, but for the entire fantasy culture it helped to spawn. It’s the movie itself that’s role-playing.

Reviewed at SXSW (World Premiere), March 10, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 134 MIN.

Production: A Paramount Pictures release, in association with Entertainment One, of an Allspark Pictures, Hasbro Studios production. Producers: Jeremy Latcham, Brian Goldner, Nick Meyer. Executive producers: Denis L. Stewart, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chris Pine, Zev Foreman, Greg Mooradian.
Crew: Directors: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley. Screenplay: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gillio. Camera: Barry Peterson. Editor: Dan Lebental. Music: Lorne Balfe.
With: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head, Jason Wong.

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‘dungeons & dragons: honor among thieves’ review: chris pine anchors a buoyant and accessible adaptation.

The actor stars alongside Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, Regé-Jean Page and Sophia Lillis in Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley's highly anticipated adaptation of the popular game.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Fr. Ripperger, Harry Potter, and Healthy Skepticism

Trent got a lot of feedback from his previous episode on Harry Potter, including many people who said he should examine what exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger has to say about the matter. So, in this episode Trent analyzes a popular video containing Fr. Ripperger’s reasons for why people should always avoid Harry Potter.

Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Well, I got a lot of feedback on my previous episode dealing with Harry Potter, which is to be expected. There are people on both sides of the Harry Potter debate who have some very strong feelings about the issue. I don’t have as many strong feelings because, as I said in the previous episode, I wasn’t really that into Harry Potter growing up. I didn’t read the books. I went to one of the movies with a group of my friends because they all wanted to go to the movie, and I haven’t watched any of them since.

However, what I do care about are Catholics who say that there are books or movies or television shows that are off limits to us, that are spiritually dangerous, and put up these warnings and burdens on people’s consciences that don’t actually have to be there, especially if they use exaggeration or false statements to bolster their view, because that can place an unnecessary burden on Catholics who are worried about sin, and it can make us look silly to non-Catholics. People will say that we overreact, we’re irrational, we’re detached from reality, that our faith isn’t worth taking seriously because we overreact to things. That’s why I want to return to the topic of Harry Potter and how Catholics should look at this, and especially talk about a resource that was just sent to me after this episode and what my thoughts are on it.

Before I get to that, though, I want to remind you to continue supporting the podcast at trenthornpodcast.com. I got a whole slate of guests that we’re bringing in. Many of them are traveling here to the studio to have long conversations with me about why they disagree with the Catholic faith. I think this is so important to be able to share with people. I don’t know any other podcast, at least in the Catholic world, that’s doing this, and there’s hardly any in the Protestant world, where you have someone who represents the faith sitting down for a civil discussion with someone who disagrees with him and talking it out.

In England, they have a show called Unbelievable? with Justin Brierley, though on their adverts they always say, “You’re listening to Unbelievable? with Justin Brierley.” It’s a great show, where people sit down who disagree, Christians who disagree with each other, and Christians and non-Christians. We don’t have anything like that here, so I’m trying to expand on that.

I actually just finished today a 100-minute-long interview with Brandan Robertson, who is a pastor. He’s only 27 years old, but he’s a pastor. He’s written several books, including one called The Gospel of Inclusion: A Christian Case for LGBT+ Inclusion in the Church. So we discuss the question, is homosexual behavior sinful? Robertson says no. I said yes. We had a good dialogue, and I think at the very least it’s a good example about how to have a sensitive, compassionate, yet vigorous dialogue about a very important issue that divides people.

You’ll want to check that out. It’s going to be released next Tuesday, so what I’m going to do, it’s over an hour and a half long, I have three 33-minute episodes it’s been divided up into, but I’m going to release them all at the same time next Tuesday, though what I might do… I think we’re going to get them all ready. I’m going to throw a bone to my subscribers, just off the top of my head. If you are a patron at trenthornpodcast.com, whatever level, I’m going to release the dialogue early. This is a big deal. I’m going to release it on Monday, but everyone else, it’ll come into your iTunes, Google Play feeds, whatever that might be, on Tuesday, three episodes, Is Homosexual Behavior Sinful?, a dialogue where we cover Scripture, what the Catholic Church teaches, what different Protestants believe about this.

You’re not going to want to miss that, and support the podcast at trenthornpodcast.com, so we can bring in other guests. I’ve got an atheist coming on talking about miracles. I’ve scheduled in October to have Timothy Gordon come on the podcast. Tim and I, we agree far more than we disagree. He’s a Catholic, just like I am, but there are specific views that I disagree with him on that he’s brought to light, especially in recent podcast appearances he’s been on.

So we’re going to have… Originally, people asked me, “Hey, why don’t you do a podcast responding to what Gordon said on The Matt Fradd Show or something like that?” I said, “Well, I could do that, but we’d be talking past each other. Why not just sit down face-to-face and have a conversation about these things? Wouldn’t that be great? We could just sit down face-to-face and have conversations that are not like on cable news shows where people are shouting back at each other and trying to drive the knife into each other. I hate that. I want to have real conversations that take a long time, but do lead us to the truth, where we’re not sitting around in a circle holding hands, singing Kumbaya. We talk about where we agree to have common ground, then move to the places where we disagree.

All right, so for the episode today, where I disagree. When I talked about Harry Potter in the last episode, I said, well, some Catholic schools, one in Tennessee just banned the book. I think the book could be taken too far. If you think your kid is getting too worked up in Harry Potter and he’s detached from reality, you should probably separate him from that material, but you could get obsessed with almost anything.

I think the same is true for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I knew people who learned Elvish, for example. I think a lot of people, actually, are apt to do that. I never ended up learning Elvish. I barely learned Spanish, but I’m willing to… Voy a la biblioteca. I go to the library to learn about these things. But you could take that too far. There’s spells, there’s magic in Lord of the Rings. People can take it too far. Yet people have tried to say, “Well, no, Harry Potter is different than Lord of the Rings, and it’s really dangerous for Catholics.” I haven’t seen, really, the evidence for this.

A lot of people, I’d say at least a dozen people, sent me a video featuring Father Chad Ripperger. Father Ripperger is a traditionalist priest. He belongs to the FSSP, the Fraternal Society of Saint Peter. He’s also an exorcist himself, and some people have written in comments saying, “You’ve done your research. You now what, I trust an exorcist on this matter. If he says Harry Potter is bad, then I trust him.”

Here’s the thing. I am willing to listen to people in their fields of expertise, but I also want to know the reasons that they rely on. Even if someone is an expert in a field, they could be mistaken or they could be relying on bad reasons. Appealing to experts alone is the weakest kind of argument. It’s called the argument from authority. Saint Thomas Aquinas put it this way. He said, “Arguments from authority are the weakest of arguments, so says Boethius.” Boethius was a philosopher who lived centuries before Aquinas, and you get the joke. He’s saying arguments from authority are bad, or the weakest of arguments, not necessarily bad, but they’re weak. Why? Because, well, Boethius says so.

I’m willing to listen like, “Hey, if there’s something here that makes me think, hey, Harry Potter is bad news for Catholics, I want to hear it,” but ultimately I listened to this answer, and it’s a talk that Father Ripperger… He was in a talk, and someone asked him about Harry Potter, and he gave this answer. I’ve been in talks where I give answers off the top of my head, and sometimes I might use approximations with what I’m talking about. I can’t be exactly specific. But even given the nature of the Q&A format, I found his answer to be extremely problematic. It was not persuasive to me to see that Harry Potter is such a bad thing.

Before I get to that, though, I want to play a clip from a film to help you see where I’m coming from, what I’m concerned about, because people will say, “Why do you care? Why do you care if certain Catholics are very critical of Harry Potter and you’re not?” Normally, I don’t. I don’t wade into the intra-Catholic disputes often because, you know what, we’re all brothers and sisters. We belong to the same church. We’re going to disagree about stuff. And that’s fine most of the time, but sometimes it bleeds beyond, and as I said, number one, makes people who are scrupulous extra worrisome when they don’t have to be, and that could be dangerous for them. Two, the outside world, we can seem silly to them.

I may do a podcast in the future on people at the Kolbe Center, who say that Catholics are obligated to believe in young earth creationism, which is not true. The Church does not oblige that. I would say the best evidence from science and the writings of the Church Fathers and what the Church teaches is that Catholics should not believe in young earth creationism and that the earth is 6,000 years old.

We should believe, as Pope Saint John Paul II said in his encyclical On Faith and Reason, that faith and reason are complementary. They don’t contradict each other. So if science tells us the universe is 13.7 billion years old, our faith does not contradict that scientific finding. We don’t have to entertain a conflict. Otherwise, if we do, Saint Augustine in his commentary on Genesis, he criticized Christians of his day who were arguing for a literal creation theory, saying that they become a mockery to non-Christians, claiming to be experts in astronomy and the sciences when they actually are not experts in these things.

To show you that, I want to play you a clip from a 2014 film called Dark Dungeons. Dark Dungeons is a film based on a Jack Chick tract dealing with Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons is a RPG, a role-playing game, where you have dice, you roll the dice, and you write down a story on pieces of paper. Guys, I never played Dungeons & Dragons in my parents’ basement. No, I’m just kidding. It’s something I could’ve gotten into, but I never did. Now, I knew some people growing up who were huge D&D fans, and I think that’s fine as long as you use the role-playing game in a moral way and you don’t indulge in immoralities while playing.

Dark Dungeons is based on Dungeons & Dragons, this role-playing game, and it’s based on a Jack Chick tract. I’ve talked about Jack Chick on the program before. He’s a late cartoonist, fundamentalist Baptist. He’s anti-everything, especially anti-Catholics. But he’s anti-everything. He thinks Harry Potter is evil. He thought Dungeons & Dragons were evil.

This movie is based on the Chick tract, and the movie is about Christians who get suckered into playing Dungeons & Dragons, and it becomes real. They risk their souls, and evil will take over the world. The lesson they’ve learned from playing this evil game is that they need Jesus.

What I can’t tell from the movie is if it’s a parody or not. There’s actually a law. It’s called Poe’s Law. Poe’s Law says this. Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.” That deals with creationism, but Poe’s Law has a wider view, that sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish between a parody and real fundamentalism.

That’s how I mean in Dark Dungeons, and so I play it… I’m not saying that Father Ripperger or others who are concerned about Harry Potter reach this level of inanity. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying it can appear to other people who are not Catholic that we’re just as out of touch as the people in this film when they rail against role-playing games. I just want to play a clip for you because, also, I think the movie is hilarious. I think the people making the movie got the rights from Chick to make the movie based on his tract as long as they weren’t making fun of the tract, so they were faithfully adapting it, and I think they realized just by faithfully adapting it, they were kind of making fun of it. Here, I just have to play it for you, and then I’ll segue into more about Harry Potter.

Hey, Debbie, what’s wrong? Can I help?

I thought I had all the answers, Mike, but now everything is falling apart. Evil without end is about to descend upon the works of man, and none of my RPG tomes have the answer how to stop it.

Debbie, I told you, Jesus is the only answer. I’ve been praying and fasting for you.

Why would you do that for me?

Because I know what you’re involved in. It’s a spiritual warfare that you can’t win without the Lord Jesus. Using RPGs to fight evil will never work because RPGs are evil, Debbie.

I have to jump in here. I think RPGs can stop evil when they’re Nazis or the Taliban. A rocket-propelled grenade, RPG, can stop evil in some circumstances. I’m going to keep going, but I’m sorry, I love movies with terrible acting. It is such guilty pleasure for me. Here, let’s get to the meat to show you what I mean.

What can I do?

Come with me to a meeting this afternoon. The speaker came out of witchcraft, and he knows what you’re up against.

You who are involved in the occult think you have achieved power, but you’ve been trapped in a dungeon, a bondage, and the limited power you have been given is only bait to lure you into destruction. But Jesus came that you might have life, and that more abundantly. Jesus sets us free from the bondage of witchcraft. Jesus gives us power over all of the enemy. Nothing shall by any means harm you.

Repent of the sins in your life, and turn to Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Gather up all of your occult paraphernalia, the rock music, occult books, including those by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, your charms and your RPG material, but don’t just throw them away. Burn them. We will-

This is the point that I wanted to make, that this is based on the Chick tract, and they’re saying the stuff that is going to condemn you to eternal hellfire is the rock music, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien. Many of you listening will say, “Oh, well, the fictional works of C.S. Lewis, the magic in The Chronicles of Narnia, or the magic in Tolkien, there’s nothing wrong with that,” but there are Christians who will tell you, “Oh, no, good, sir. Oh, no. If you read Lord of the Rings, with the spells in there, or Aslan the lion, an imposter for Jesus, and the spells that take place, and magic, in Chronicles of Narnia, you’re halfway to hell. You’re dealing with the occult.”

My point is to get in the shoes that… how you look at those who say that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are the works of the devil, and you would look at them and say, “I can’t really take you seriously. What are you talking about?” There are people who look at Catholics who say Harry Potter is the work of the devil, and they can’t take us seriously.

Now, here’s the thing. If it is the work of the devil, if it is demonic in nature, I will wholeheartedly oppose it, because here’s the thing. If something is demonic or it’s opposed to the faith, and the public at large accepts it, I don’t care. People love The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a horrible novel. It’s garbage. Father Ripperger says Harry Potter is garbage. I don’t know. I haven’t read the books. I know The Da Vinci Code is a poorly written novel. The movie did terrible because it’s… Everyone agrees it’s not a good story and terrible characters. But the American public, the worldwide public has a propensity for tasteless, bad things. I’ll say that it’s bad and The Da Vinci Code undermines people’s faith even if millions of people buy the books. What I need to hear is evidence, good reasons to show that something popular is antithetical towards our faith, is spiritually injurious or dangerous to people.

With that said, here is the clip with Father Ripperger, and I’m going to break down whether I think the reasons he gives are persuasive or compelling.

Father, I have a question. I talked to you earlier about the Harry Potter series, become-

Oh, that’s right.

… popular on all continents. Would you like to speak about it just for a bit?

Yeah, okay. Sometimes people actually will ask me about Harry Potter. Actually, every time I give a conference, they ask me about Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling went to witch school before she wrote the books. The spells in the book-

Okay, I’m going to have to stop a lot because in this four-minute clip, Father Ripperger puts out about 10 arguments or claims, and many of them are either misleading or they’re false. Once again, people say, “Why don’t you trust an exorcist when he’s talking about demons?” Well, my trust level, my confidence level becomes reduced the more and more a person utters things that are false or misleading. It makes me wonder why I should trust their testimony on this issue.

I think Father Ripperger is probably… He’s a good man, and other videos he puts out, things he speaks about, I think are really good. He’s upstanding. But that doesn’t mean someone’s an expert in everything. They could be wrong about this.

We’ll start here. He makes this claim which I would consider slanderous if it’s not true. He said J.K. Rowling went to witch school, as in she went to… What in the world is witch school? She practiced in a coven of witches to learn witchcraft? That is a serious claim. Where is the evidence for that?

I went online to Google, and I searched “J.K. Rowling went to witch school.” Then the Google autocorrect said, “Did you mean J.K. Rowling went to W-H-I-C-H school?” which is clearly Google is working with the witches to hide her witchcraft, because they’re using the autocorrect. No, no, I’m just making fun of conspiracy thinking here.

I looked this up, this claim. No one else has made this claim, actually, that J.K. Rowling went to a witch school, she practices Wicca, she’s part of a coven of witches. There’s no evidence for this. She went to the University of Exeter. According to this article, she recalls doing little work, preferring to read the works of Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien. In 1988, Rowling wrote a short essay about her time studying classics at Exeter called “What Was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled.” This shows that she studied classics, wasn’t that interested in it, but in her own writings, many of the names of places and people she used are drawn from classical mythology. She probably is drawing from her studying of classics at the university level.

Once again, if someone is going to say that, oh, she went to witch school, where’s your evidence for that? That’s a serious charge to make. It’d be like if someone said, “Trent Horn was educated by Freemasons and was sent to undermine the Catholic Church.” You would say, “Well, that’s not true. Trent Horn went to the Franciscan University of Steubenville. “Well, of course, he’s not going to publicly share that he was educated by Freemasons. You’re not going to find that information explicitly. It’s going to be covered up and hidden.”

Well, then that’s conspiratorial thinking, where you put forward a claim and then say that the absence of evidence for the claim is more evidence the claim is true. Right there I would say, “Well, where is your evidence to that?” To make such a charge without that evidence, and when I’ve gone searching for it, but unable to find it, I find very concerning.

The spells in the books are actual spells. How do we know that? Well, because witches tell us they’re real.

There’s a lot here to cover. Okay, so Father Ripperger says that the Harry Potter books contain actual spells because witches tell you that.

I went through in the previous episode, I listed some of the spells and read them to you. They’re just Latin words. They’re just Latin words or they’re broken Latin words, usually referring to the very thing that they’re talking about. If these Latin words are real spells, then someone like Father Ripperger, who says Latin all the time in performing the traditional Mass, is casting spells, I guess. They’re Latin. They’re not calling upon any divine powers, any energies. They’re not calling on occult forces. They’re on par with abracadabra or hocus pocus.

Now, he claims, “Well, witches tell us they’re real spells.” Once again, I don’t see any evidence for that at all. In fact, in a 2014 article in The Independent, Rowling said that the one religion that’s not contained in Harry Potter is Wicca. The article says, “Responding to questions as to why Wicca, a modern pagan religion that also uses the words witch and wizard to describe its members, was not represented at Hogwarts,” which is the school in Harry Potter, the school where you go to learn magic, “Rowling said of Wicca, ‘It’s a different concept of magic to the one laid out in the books, so I don’t really see how they can coexist.'”

I’ve also scoured the internet for any members of the Wicca community or modern witches who say the spells in Harry Potter are real spells that they use. The only one that I could find, and this may be where Father Ripperger, or the person he’s spoken with, gets that information from, is an anonymous article on the internet from someone claiming to be an ex-witch who practiced in the 1960s. This anonymous article, this alleged former witch says of the Harry Potter books, that they are orientational and instructional manuals of witchcraft woven into the format of entertainment. These four books by J.K. Rowling teach witchcraft.” I guess this was written midway through the series. “I know this because I was once very much part of that world.”

I seriously doubt this source that has been circulated around because this woman goes on to say… I think it’s a woman… goes on to say, “As a real witch, I learned about the two sides of the Force. When real witches have sabats and esbats and meet as a coven, they greet each other by saying ‘Blessed be,’ and when they part, they say ‘The Force be with you.’ Both sides of this Force are Satan.” This same witch who says Harry Potter is satanic also says Star Wars is satanic.

Then I went online to look at what members of the Wicca community say about Star Wars. I read a lot of them, and one woman says her ideal witch is Yoda from the Star Wars movies. She says, “The Force is a life force, energy. May the Force be with you? May we be with the Force? We should align with forces of peace, love, and harmony.”

Now, it’s funny. They were asking these women, “Hey, you practice witchcraft. Do you like Star Wars?” It’d be ideal here if they said, “Well, yeah. We say, ‘May the Force be with you.'” They could probably say Star Wars ripped that off from them, but they don’t. They just say, “Well, yeah, we believe in forces, but there’s no evidence that witches either say, from Star Wars, “May the Force be with you,” or that J.K. Rowling is involved in witchcraft.

I think JoAnna Wahlund has a blog, Catholic Working Mother, where she talks about how she knew a family that wanted Harry Potter removed from her school’s library because they were Wicca. They were a family that practiced witchcraft and said, “This is not how Wicca is performed. It’s not how we live our faith out, and we want this misrepresentation removed from the school library.”

Once again, I don’t see he’s… Father Ripperger makes this claim that witches say they’re real spells. When you look at them, they’re just Latin. They’re Latin text, and I have found no evidence online, except for an anonymous letter from an ex-witch who also thinks that Star Wars is witchcraft. To me, we still don’t have… The evidence bar has definitely not been met yet.

Because witches tell us they’re real. And there was a woman in Spain who decided to try the spell for fire in one of the books, and it burned her house to the ground.

That is extremely misleading. I would say inaccurate. This is the article from July 11th, 2003. “A woman set her Madrid home on fire this week as she cooked up a potion in an attempt to imitate the fictional wizard Harry Potter, emergency services say. Firefighters rescued and treated the 21-year-old for minor injuries, but half her home was destroyed. The ambulance service said she told them she was trying to emulate the boy magician, hero of the books by J.K. Rowling that have been a sensation among adults and children alike. For want of more magical ingredients, the woman cooked up a potion of water, oil, alcohol and toothpaste, local media reported. It was unclear what spell she was trying to weave.”

Now, this is extremely misleading on Father Ripperger’s part. I’m not saying that he’s trying to misleading. He may have heard about this and misheard the story, but he’s trying to say, “Well, the spells in Harry Potter are real because one woman uttered one of the spells and set her house on fire.” No, she saw that “Oh, they make potions in this book. I’m going to make a potion in my pot and put stuff on my stove, including oil and alcohol, that can catch fire.” This is not a case of someone engaged in the diabolical and summoning demons to set their house on fire. It’s just a case of stupidity.

I’m going to talk about this at the end of the episode, but we should remember something called Hanlon’s Razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. We’ll go into that more.

Here, once again, to say their spells are real because someone used it to set their house on fire, that’s not true. I’m having a really hard time buying the evidence Father Ripperger is putting forward here.

Now, J.K. Rowling has denied she’s a witch. Okay. You walk like one, you quack like one, you write books like one, so okay.

What are you supposed to do if someone says, “You know what, if somebody was a witch, and you ask them if they were a witch, they would say no. That clearly means they’re a witch”? “Well, if Father Ripperger is not a Freemason, if he is a Freemason, he’s going to tell us that he’s definitely not a Freemason.” That is not good thinking here.

If you write a book, walk like a witch, talk like a witch, she has a book that has stories about people using magic, similar to J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. Now, Father Ripperger tries to make the distinction between Tolkien and J.K. Rowling, but like many of the people who try to make that distinction, it’s not a compelling one to me.

One exorcist told me he’s kind of done the footwork. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. He said 60% of the names in Harry Potter are actual names of demons that exorcists have booted out of people.

That is a strange way to introduce a piece of evidence. “I don’t know if this is true or not, but 60% of the names in the book are demons.” Why would you introduce that if you’re not sure if it’s true or not? You could say some people claim this maybe, but once again, go and look it up. Don’t just rely on hearsay from other people.

I went and I looked this up. I got a list of all the names of the Harry Potter characters, and then I got another list of all the names of demons from different kinds of mythologies, so from not just Christianity, but Judaism, Islam, and I did a cross reference. What I did is I went through… First, I went through the list, and most of these names are not demonic.

I’ll read them to you, the list of the names of people in Harry Potter. Hannah, Katie, Amelia, Susan, Terry, Frank, Reginald, Joe, Michael, Vincent, Colin, Dennis, Dirk, Bartemius, Bartemius, Roger, John, Amos, Antonin. I’m just getting to the Es here of the surnames. Marietta, Argus, Justin, Seamus, Filius, Florean. You go through, most of these are just normal names. Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan. Oh, yeah, the demon Lee Jordan is always out to get people. Igor, Victor, Silvanus. Silvanus is actually in the Bible, actually. Silvanus was one of Peter’s secretaries in Scripture. I think he was Peter’s secretary. He was one of the secretaries who wrote the New Testament Epistles.

Let’s see, we’ll go through it here a little bit more. Alistair, Garrick, Antioch, Ignotus, could be like Ignatius, Irma, Harry, James. Obviously, Harry Potter. I’m at the Ps now. Most of these names are just regular English names. To say that 60% of them are demons right there off the bat, you scroll through them, there is no evidence for that.

What about some of the more exotic names? Well, some of them come from, they’re just Greek mythology, which makes sense because Rowling studied classics. You have Alecto, Amycus, Daedalus, Morfin, which comes from Morpheus. They are Greek and Roman gods. You just try to pick these esoteric names. It doesn’t mean you’re trying to indoctrinate people to believe in ancient Greek or Roman deities, but you pick the name because it has an exotic feel to it. It’s not that it’s the name of a demon. I haven’t found any of these names on online lists of the names of demons.

Other names from the book, like Bellatrix or Rastaban, they’re stars. They’re the names of constellations. Other ones, it’s similar to what Charles Dickens would do. He would take names that apply to a person’s personality traits. There’s, I think, an unpleasant character named Mundungus. Mundungus is Spanish for an offensive, odorous kind of tobacco, so an offensive individual or pungent individual, Mundungus. But it’s not on the demon lists that I’ve been able to find.

I think this is really traced to that anonymous letter that I read to you earlier. There that former ex-witch, she says, “Harry learns a new vocabulary, including words such as Azkaban, Circe, Draco, Erised, Hermes, and Slytherin, all of which are names of real devils or demons.” Well, no.

Well, let me get to that, whether the names of devils or demons or not. The origin of these names, for decades, hundreds of years, or thousands of years, do not go back to demons. Azkaban is a portmanteau, a combination of Alcatraz… Azkaban is a prison in the Harry Potter series. It’s a combination of the words Alcatraz, a prison in San Francisco, and Abaddon, which is a Hebrew word for a place of destruction or doom. It’s a combination of Alcatraz and Abaddon, which I think is a clever combination of words to create a new word.

That’s similar to what Tolkien would do. When Tolkien would have a character like Celador, how do you come up with a guy, the evil Celador? He’s like, “Well, I would just look around in my house and say, ‘Hey, there’s a cellar door. Cellar door. That has a nice sounds good to it. Cellar door, cellar door, Celador.” Then you’re off to the races.

Circe is the Greek goddess of magic. Draco is a constellation. Hermes is the Roman god of trade. Slytherin is based on this… It’s a snaky adjective that is used. The first name, I think, is Salazar, and that is related to a Portuguese dictator, is what Rowling says.

Erised is my favorite, E-R-I-S-E-D. It’s the name of a demon. Well, no. In the Harry Potter books, there’s a mirror that shows our heart’s deepest desire. Desire. The name is E-R-I-S-E-D. That shows our desire. Is it a demon? No, Erised is just desire spelled backwards, which is kind of a lazy way to get an exotic name out, but it does the trick every now and then.

Once again, even Father Ripperger is not confident in this claim, but if you just did a small amount of research, you’d see once again there’s no evidence for this claim that 60% of the names belong or that they’re taken directly from demons of folklore, mythology, or theology, or anything like that. They come from either regular names you meet with people every day or mythology, astronomy, constellations, or backwards writing conventions.

There is an exorcist that I know who’s a friend of mine. He and I are always comparing notes on Judas because Judas is a hard guy to get out of people. He has had to exorcize three children just for reading the books.

Well, if you have millions of people who are reading a book like Harry Potter, I mean, if millions of people read something, it’s quite possible you could have a handful of people that take something too far and end up in the demonic.

I actually have a clip here from 1985 from 60 Minutes talking about Dungeons & Dragons, saying that, well, look, there’s people who have taken their own lives playing Dungeons & Dragons, so it’s a serious game. I’ll play a clip for you. It’s from 1985

Before you die-

There are those who are fearful that the game in the hands of vulnerable kids could do harm, and there is evidence that seems to support that view. Timothy Grice, 21, shotgun suicide. The detective report noted, “D&D became a reality.” Irving “Bink” Pulling, 16, an avid D&D player, a suicide.

It goes on and lists these, but all that proves is that out of, once again, millions of people who play a game, there are going to be some people who are mentally ill who may get too wrapped up in this and end up causing harm to themselves. Just as a few people who play Dungeons & Dragons resort to suicide, that could just show some people who are suicidal are apt to play this game. It doesn’t mean the game itself has an intrinsic property to do this.

Even if there’s a handful of people who are possessed by demons after reading Harry Potter, which I’m skeptical of that claim, even if that were the case, it wouldn’t prove the books as a whole are bad, because millions of people read them and nothing happens. There’s nothing intrinsic to them.

The devil can take anything and try to possess people. He can even take religion itself and make people overly pious and scrupulous, and then try to work on their inner feelings of despair to try to enter in that way. The devil is crafty. He can use almost anything to try to possess somebody. That doesn’t mean that because the devil can use something, that, therefore, that thing is completely off limits to us.

The question is, is the thing naturally ordered towards possession or the demonic? Things like Ouija board, whose purpose is to communicate with the dead, I would say that’s off limits, but Harry Potter is not like that. Its purpose is to share a fantasy story not unlike C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien.

I had a case of possession. I wasn’t the one to liberate them. I was just one of the… I started the case, but I had to pass it to someone else because I had to move to another location. Of a person who was possessed by five demons who claimed that they were the demons that inspired J.K. Rowling to write Harry Potter.

Well, can we trust the word of a demon? I don’t think so. I know people in deliverance ministries, by the way, who say they are not allowed to talk about what they hear or see in exorcisms. They’re not allowed to share it with anyone, because that’s what a demon wants. A demon wants attention.

One, I don’t know why Father Ripperger is sharing that. Two, why should I believe these demons at all? They are sent by the father of lies. Why believe anything they say?

So I tell people, avoid it. All exorcists that are worth their weight, there’s only one guy who says it’s okay, but there’s something wrong with that guy. All the other exorcists that I know that are experienced are very clear-

Well, that’s called the No True Scotsman fallacy. It goes like this. “No Scotsman hates haggis.” “Well, my Uncle Angus is a Scotsman, and he hates haggis. “Aye, but no true Scotsman hates haggis.”

Even here Father Ripperger admits that there is another exorcist who says, “Well, I don’t see a problem here.” Well, that guy, there’s something wrong with that guy. That’s just kind of an uncharitable way to put it towards him. Once again, given all of the other things that he has said, that saying all exorcists are opposed to this, I don’t see the evidence for that, because the other things that he’s… the sweeping claims that he’s made, I’ve already debunked them, so I have no reason to believe this particular sweeping claim.

Some people say, “Well, it’s not just Father Ripperger.” Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, says that Harry Potter is satanic. Well, Father Amorth, who passed away in 2016, is not the Vatican’s chief exorcist. He’s a priest in Rome, one of the priests in the Diocese of Rome, who had the authority to perform exorcisms.

But even he was prone to making sweeping claims whose validity I question. For example, he claimed that over a period of nine years, he performed 30,000 exorcisms. You would have to do eight or nine exorcisms a day every single day for nine years to reach that kind of a number. He’s also said things that like every single member of the Nazi party was possessed by demons. These are just wide claims, wide, sweeping claims without evidence, so it makes me skeptical of what he’s claiming about Harry Potter as well.

Stay away from it. Demons are always looking to get glory. What’s glory? Glory is a manifestation of excellence. That’s how Saint Thomas Aquinas defines it. It’s a manifestation of excellence. They get glory in this life by their name being pronounced and under certain circumstances. Obviously, when you’re talking about subjugating Satan, he’s not getting any glory out of it. But when their names are pronounced and said, they can stand to their buddies and say, “Hey, look, my name’s up there.”

Right. That would be a good argument against the Harry Potter books if they contained the names of actual demons. Once again, there’s no evidence for that claim.

That’s one of the reasons why every time you read those books or you pronounce those words without it being in the proper context, you’re actually giving glory to them. The other thing is, too, someone asked me to review the literature. I read the first book, and I’ll be quite frank with you. Again, I went through a great books program. I went through a program where you had to read a book a week per class, and I had five classes. I can tell you, that literature is total garbage. It’s not-

It’s garbage. That’s his opinion. That’s fine. If I read the books, I might have a low opinion of them as well. I don’t have time to read them. I’m not that interested. But that’s not a reason Catholics have to stay away from them. It’s just, hey, different strokes for different folks.

Not even worth reading on a literary level. That being said, I would just suggest you avoid it, because the fact is all this… The other thing is, too, is there’s a lot of glorification of certain disorders, very subtle, like it’s okay to lie. There are certain things. It’s okay to do evil things from time to time in order to get a good thing to come as a result of it, which is entirely the opposite… People say, “What about…”

Here, I don’t know about the books that much, what morality they instigate in people. I’m sure in a lot of fiction that’s not written by a Catholic who is very intent on their writing, you’re going to have protagonists doing questionable moral things. But I don’t know enough about the books. I don’t think that the books glorify lying as something like, “This is a great thing everybody should do.” I think you have characters… There’s one, Narcissa Malfoy lies to the evil Voldemort to save Harry’s life. Peter Kreeft says you can lie to Nazis to save Jews hiding in your basement.

It’s a bit open to discussion here, but just because the book has characters that are not completely morally upright in every sense doesn’t mean the book is impermissible for Catholics to read. It just means you got to use your good judgment when reading books that involve characters that have flaws because those characters are like regular human beings, who are flawed, who are a mixture of good and bad, and you have to take the good along with the bad and use your good judgment while reading it.

Tolkien had magic. Is it just because of magic? No, it’s not just because of the magic. It’s the whole thing. In Tolkien, the magic was a literary device. It wasn’t something in which the person, when he heard Gandalf saying the magic, “I want to be like Gandalf and do these magic things,” that’s not what you… You just didn’t have that.

It was just recognized that in this case a certain thing beyond the natural means was necessary in order to bring something about, whereas in the J.K. Rowling thing it’s so imbued and it makes it look so glorious and all those things, it’s fairly enticing. That’s another reason why I tell people, don’t let your kids read it.

Well, I disagree with that. When you look in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf casts spells, and I want to be like Gandalf. Gandalf is awesome. “You shall not pass.” He says to the demon Balrog… By the way, there’s demons in Lord of the Rings. He says to him… Well, I don’t know if he says this to him. He says a fire spell. I thought this was in the scene with the Balrog. He says, “Naur an edraith amen!,” which is “Fire, save us!” or something like that in Elvish or whatever language Tolkien came up with.

There are people who read Lord of the Rings who want to do LOTR LARPing, Lord of the Rings, LARP is live-action role-play. There’s people who super get into Tolkien and do live-action role-play and pretend to cast spells, just the same as people do with Harry Potter. Once again, it’s fantasy play with magic that is not invocational. It does not say I want this demon or this force to act on my behalf. It’s just incantations and fictional fantasy worlds where words have the power to manipulate reality in a certain way.

Still, once again, I don’t see the big difference between when spells are uttered by Gandalf, and Tolkien… In fact, in Tolkien, almost anybody can do magic, whereas in Harry Potter, only specific people are born with the ability to practice magic. Someone reading Harry Potter might think, “Well, I can’t really do magic. I was never born with that,” whereas in Tolkien, like, “Oh, if I just get the one ring to rule them all, I can have all this power.” I still don’t see the important difference here.

There is another reason, too, and this is more of a subjective kind of a reason. The fact of the matter is is that when you tell people you shouldn’t let your kids read that, the purely visceral response you get as a result of that tells me there’s something diabolic about the whole thing.

The other thing is, too, it’s a piece of junk literature. How that woman made over a billion dollars on that enterprise is beyond my comprehension, unless there’s somebody who rose the thing to that kind of a-

Okay, so the idea here is that… Two things. One, a visceral response means there’s something diabolical. No, it can just mean that people are defensive about things they really enjoy, especially heartfelt traditions. When people try to rip the rug out from under their feet, they can get defensive about it. I don’t think that’s evidence in and of itself of diabolical activity.

Number two, the idea here is that, well, this is literary garbage; how can it make a billion dollars? Maybe the demons have propped this up. So are you going to say that every stupid popular thing in the world is being inspired by demons? Once again, Hanlon’s Razor comes from Robert Heinlein’s novel Logic of Empire, published in 1941. The character Doc in it talks about the devil theory. In that book, he says, “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.” From that comes Hanlon’s Razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The reason some things are popular that are extremely low quality is just because as fallen human beings, we have base passions and things that we enjoy because our fallen nature. The things that are of low quality can be widely popular, and things that are of high quality may not appeal to people because they haven’t raised their spirits beyond the fallen savage level that they’ve gone to ever since the fall of man.

All right, two more things, and then I’m going to wrap up my response here. There’s one thing that Father Ripperger did not bring up that other people have brought up to me, when they say that Cardinal Ratzinger actually opposed Harry Potter. There is a good article by Dr. Jeffrey Mirus on catholicculture.org. I’ll link it in the Patreon page. He talks about what happened, that there was a claim that Cardinal Ratzinger opposed Harry Potter. You can read through the whole article. I’ll post it on the website.

The point was that in 2003, there was a conference on the New Age, and one of the presenters made an offhand comment saying that Pope John Paul II approved of Harry Potter books. Afterward, a German woman sent Cardinal Ratzinger her book, Harry Potter: Good or Evil? Later, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a reply to this woman and said, “It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.” Then he said, “I’ll send Mr. Fleedwood a copy of your book.” Then, later, Kuby, who was the author of this book, Harry Potter: Good or Evil?, asked Cardinal Ratzinger, “Can I make your letter public?” and he said, “Yeah, sure.”

Mirus, what he says is this, that Cardinal Ratzinger was probably in the habit of giving kindly replies to authors who sent him books. “He saw that Ms. Kuby had advanced a number of pious arguments about certain problems she claimed to find in the Potter books and, taking these at face value, he replied that her work was valuable in alerting the public to this sort of problem. At the same time, as this was very likely nothing more than a gracious reply, he avoided giving the least hint that he too had read the books and found them wanting, or that he agreed that the problems Ms. Kuby identified were actually characteristic of J.K. Rowling’s work. I suggest that any good and intelligent Church official, if he had not read the Potter books, would have responded in precisely this way.”

When people say, “Well, Cardinal Ratzinger was opposed to these books,” well, no, he just politely responded to an author who wrote a book saying Harry Potter is bad. Instead of investigating her case, he just said, “Thank you for the good work that you’re doing. Make sure to protect the young,” which is just a polite thing for a churchman to do who doesn’t have time to do a whole investigation of Harry Potter in this way.

I’ll link that to the article because that’s one thing, actually, Father Ripperger did not bring up that other people have brought up to me, saying that Pope Benedict… This was before he was Pope Benedict… opposed these books.

Finally, I just want to say I don’t want people to take from this that Trent Horn is against Father Ripperger, and he was disrespectful of Father Ripperger. No. I hold the man in high esteem. I think he’s out there exorcizing demons. He’s trying to teach people to be upright. I disagree with some of his theological positions that are not directly on Church teaching, but the application of Church teaching, because I think he also holds the view that it’s a mortal sin for mothers to work outside the home except in a very narrow range of cases. I would disagree with that. I’m going to talk with Tim Gordon about that more when he’s here on the podcast.

I don’t want people to take away from this that I was out to get Father Ripperger or something like that. I try very hard not to engage in friendly fire with other Catholics. I try to restrict that until it’s absolutely necessary. Here, a lot of people sent this to me, and the biggest concern I had… If he had just said, “Hey, Harry Potter is not a very good book, and some people can take it too far. That’s what I’m concerned about,” fine. That’s your opinion, and I think a lot of that is correct, actually. That’s fine.

But when you go and you make these claims that are misleading at best, or outright false at worst, then that’s hard for me because that can damage our credibility as Catholics who want to interact with the world and want to evangelize the world. Saint Paul said, “We are in the world, but not of the world,” so we’re going to know about things like Harry Potter and Dungeons & Dragons. We should be able to respond in moderation to say, “These pop culture things are definitely good. These pop culture things are definitely bad. Stay away from them. They’re pornography. They’re blasphemous. Stay away from them.”

Then there’s things in the middle that require prudence. Some people can watch R-rated movies, for example, with sex, drugs, and violence and swear words, and be fine. Other people cannot, so they have to avoid that. That’s fine. Each of us has to understand the limits we have in making a prudential judgment about what’s best for our souls. I’m not going to berate somebody who won’t watch an R-rated movie because I may be able to handle it and he can’t, and that’s fine.

Saint Paul told us not to be a stumbling block for one another. That’s why Saint Paul said, “I might be able to eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol, but I’m not going to eat meat in front of someone who is struggling with idol worship, because that could be a stumbling block for him.” It’s the same with Harry Potter. If I know a loved one who is struggling with this kind of stuff, I’m not going to bring up Harry Potter or magic if they’re struggling with temptations to do witchcraft. But if you can read it and you can cultivate it in a good way, and use it to teach valuable lessons about good and evil and about the wonders of imagination, then I think that’s fine.

I think I’m going to close the account here on Harry Potter. I’m happy to address some of the comments on the podcast later, as they will invariably come up. But I’m very clear. I tried to be very fair with what Father Ripperger said. I have a lot of respect for priests who are doing the good work of exorcism. But at the end of the day, if someone says something that is misleading, ambiguous, or false, and people believe that to detrimental ends, then I feel I have a duty in good conscience to say something.

I hope this was helpful for you. If you have questions or comments, send them to me at trenthornpodcast.com. Until then, check out next week. Next Tuesday, I’m going to debut my three-part episode with Brandan Robertson on Is Homosexual Behavior Sinful? You’re not going to want to miss that. Thank you all so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.

If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member-only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves review – riotously enjoyable fantasy adventure

More than just a reboot, this new chapter in the role-playing game franchise is a wonderful piece of world-building

W ell, this is refreshing. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is that vanishingly rare entity – a riotously entertaining family-friendly film that hasn’t been painfully squeezed out of a comic-book franchise like the last, forlorn dregs of toothpaste from a long-dead tube. Admittedly, this isn’t the first film to be based on the enduringly popular fantasy role-playing game – Jeremy Irons starred in a critically reviled version in 2000; a made-for-TV sequel and direct-to-DVD third instalment followed. But Honour Among Thieves is more than a reboot – it’s a fleshed-out, multidimensional piece of world-building, with immediately likable characters, plenty of face-crunching, axe-based fight choreography and a running joke about potatoes.

Kudos to John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, who co-wrote and co-directed the picture. As a creative partnership, they have experience in reboots – they co-wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming – and board games, having co-directed the comedy thriller Game Night . With this picture, they strike a satisfying balance between character and action, and ensure that the digital effects are in service of the story, rather than the other way around.

It also helps that the film is exceptionally well cast. Chris Pine’s charm has never been more slippery as incorrigible thief Edgin and Michelle Rodriguez brings formidable action chops to Edgin’s partner in crime Holga. Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page bags the best lines and much of the action as Xenk. And then there’s Hugh Grant, whose roguish conman Forge bears more than a passing resemblance to his Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2 . But when the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?

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‘Dungeons & Dragons’ movie scores, thanks to perfect tone, spot-on casting

Chris pine, michelle rodriguez have terrific buddy-movie chemistry in fantasy film that deftly balances high-stakes action, warm drama and clever comedy..

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A young wizard (Justice Smith, center) joins a band of rebels headed by Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) and Edgin (Chris Pine) in “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”

Paramount Pictures

Full disclosure, I was never a Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast back in the day, as my tabletop gaming pursuits were more along the lines of Sure Shot Hockey, Cadaco’s BAS-KET and Strat-O-Matic Baseball—but I know the basics of D&D, and I appreciate its enormous popularity, which has extended far beyond the gaming world.

Still, when you’re making an ambitious, large-budget adaptation, in order for it to succeed, you’ve got to reach millions who aren’t familiar with the source material, whether you’re interpreting a board game, a video game, a book or a popular song, and yes, they’ve made movies from pop songs, haven’t you ever seen “Take This Job and Shove It” or “Born in East L.A.?” Think of all the people who became addicted to “Game of Thrones” without reading a page of George R.R. Martin’s books, or who were enthralled by “The Last of Us” without ever playing the game.

Which brings us to the good news: Even if you’re never once rolled the dice in the role-playing game, there’s a solid chance you’ll enjoy the whiz-bang fantasy adventure that is “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.” Co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, working from a script they penned with Michael Gilio, have struck the right balance between high-stakes action, warm drama and clever comedy in a consistently engaging, mostly family-friendly romp that features some of the most spot-on casting of any film so far this year. From the moment each of the main characters steps into the story, we’re thinking: Yep, that’s the right actor for that role.

Chris Pine, who has the megawatt smile and the stubbornly perfect hair of a matinee idol from a bygone era, lends his self-deprecating presence to the role of one Edgin Darvis, a member of the Harpers, an organization of spies and thieves who have a kind of rebellious, Robin Hood group mentality. Edgin’s penchant for unnecessary risk-taking leads to an evil and powerful cabal known as the Red Wizards executing his wife, and eventually lands Edgin and his best friend, the fearless warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), in prison. (The cheeky overall tone of “Dungeons” is quickly established when Edgin and Holga execute a daring escape during a hearing before the prison board; they’re just out of earshot when a parole board member calls out that they’ve actually been approved for release.)

Off we go on our adventure in some sort of medieval-fantasy era, with the impressive sets and the inevitable CGI setting the tone. (There are a lot of weird creatures with jarring appearances roaming and flitting around.) Edgin and Holga learn their former ally, the duplicitous Forge Fitzwilliam (cue Hugh Grant to start hamming it up) has risen to power and has also become the de facto father to Edgin’s daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman). Why, that rat Forge Fitzwilliam! Now it’s time for Edgin to make a plan, because after all, Dungeons & Dragons is all about making plans to save the day, and adjusting those plans accordingly along the way, yes?

Edgin and Holga form a team that includes the gifted but insecure young wizard Simon (Justice Smith); the shapeshifting druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), who for the most part doesn’t trust humans, and the impossibly handsome, ridiculously heroic paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), who is almost too good to be true but has zero sense of humor, doesn’t understand irony and will bore you to tears with his grand proclamations about how one should live one’s life. They each have different goals, but the elaborate and sometimes dizzying plot boils down to this ragtag but determined band somehow defeating the nefarious Forge Fitzwilliam—and his infinitely more dangerous partner in death and destruction, the Red Wizard known as Sofina (Daisy Head), a pure psychopath with seemingly unlimited powers.

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Regé-Jean Page (right, with Jason Wong) plays a paladin with no sense of humor.

Many of the battle sequences in “Honor Among Thieves” are serviceable at best, but there’s usually a nifty twist, e.g., there’s a voracious dragon who is so oversized and heavy he could be on a show called “My 6,000-lb. Dragon Life.” The humor is also crackling good, as evidenced by a hilarious sequence set in a graveyard involving reanimated corpses that can answer exactly five questions before they’re dead again. It’s a scene worthy of a Monty Python movie, pulled off with great panache.

Still, the most valuable asset in this film is the cast. Pine and Rodriguez have terrific buddy-movie chemistry, while the young actors Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis are excellent in their respective roles and have their own vibe, including the possibility of romance between Simon and Doric. In a relatively limited role, Regé-Jean Page effortlessly steals every scene he’s in, while Daisy Head is legit terrifying as Sofina and Hugh Grant does his Hugh Grant thing as the ludicrous and terrible Forge Fitzwilliam. This isn’t the first time someone has attempted an adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s by far the best.

Review: ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ boasts charisma and dexterity but lacks true magic

A quartet of sorcerers, warriors, druids and adventurers ventures into a glowing cavern.

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For at least 20 years, it’s been obvious that the geeks shall inherit the earth, pop culturally speaking. Comic books have crawled out of the cons to dominate mainstream movie culture, “Star Wars” is ubiquitous and now “Dungeons & Dragons” has its moment in the sun. First published in 1974, the popular fantasy role-playing game has mostly been relegated to a punchline (or punching bag) in media (see: Patton Oswalt’s Dungeon Master character in comedy series “Reno 911!”).

But now the medieval-inspired game gets a splashy, big-budget blockbuster adaptation, replete with swaggering charm and sex appeal. In a perfectly full-circle media moment, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is co-directed and co-written by John Francis Daley, who played one of the primary geeks on Judd Apatow’s short-lived but much loved comedy series “Freaks and Geeks,” which had an episode dedicated to a D&D campaign (he knows his barbarians from his clerics).

Daley and co-director Jonathan Goldstein (they also directed the raunchy 2015 remake “Vacation” and the surprisingly fun action comedy “Game Night” ) co-wrote the script with Michael Gilio, and they take a genius approach to bringing D&D to the masses, smuggling the heavy-duty lore of the game into a garden-variety bank heist plot. It’s essentially “Ocean’s 11” in a fantasy setting, with massive movie stars riffing on their well-known personae offering a crucial assist.

Wearing vaguely medieval clothing, a man with graying temples sits in conversation with a girl.

Daley and Goldstein don’t ask their team of actors to stretch much beyond what we already know and love about them. Chris Pine is on the charm offensive, Michelle Rodriguez plays a tough warrior and Hugh Grant grins and fumbles and fops endearingly, as he has for decades. With this trio in place tackling a familiar plot, Daley and Goldstein thread D&D mythos throughout in a way that’s not too challenging for a newbie but will serve as a treat for the experienced player.

Aside from its clunky title, “Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” has a relaxed, loose energy that puts the viewer at ease, especially combined with the throwback appeal of a style that harks to ’80s fantasy classics like “Willow,” “Labyrinth” and “Legend.” Yet the tone is decidedly modern, thanks in large part to Pine’s laissez-faire, ironic energy as the lute-playing Edgin, the bard of this tale.

A woman with red hair dressed in green among mossy tree roots.

Edgin’s vibe, however, is a bit at odds with his goal of reuniting his family by bringing his wife back from the dead and reclaiming daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) from his former compatriot Forge (Grant). He intends to do this by stealing a reanimation tablet from a magically fortified vault with the team he assembles: his ride-or-die warrior Holga (Rodriguez), insecure sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) and disaffected druid Doric ( Sophia Lillis ). They receive help from stone-faced paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), whose straight-arrow nature bounces off Ed’s inability to take anything seriously. This odd couple is one of the most amusing interactions of the film, but it’s unfortunately brief.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” boasts some eye-popping set pieces, including Rodriguez’s fight scenes and a truly remarkable “one-shot” sequence that showcases Doric’s shape-shifting abilities. The film’s affable nature and the sheer charisma oozing off Pine and Grant is intoxicating, but overall, there’s a sense that it doesn’t quite gel, the engine revving but never hitting the speed of which it seems capable.

Daley and Goldstein make for fine dungeon masters; the film is an unapologetically big, fun, swashbuckling slice of hardcore fantasy and leans into that without any self-deprecation, which is the core lesson for our merry band of misfits. And yet there is some ineffable quality lacking — perhaps an emulsifying ingredient — that prevents all these elements (the stars, the lore, the creatures) from coming together into something truly magical. Maybe on the next roll of the 20-sided die.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’

Rated: PG-13, for fantasy action/violence and some language Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes Playing: Starts March 31 in general release

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Movie Review

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is great — you just have to roll with it

Engaging, comical, and unapologetically dorky, honor among thieves occasionally stumbles under its own ambition but ultimately proves that high fantasy doesn’t always have to be highbrow..

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

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The cast of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at night holding flaming torches.

Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves makes two things clear within its first five minutes: it understands its audience and D&D experience isn’t necessary. You’d be forgiven for assuming this was going to be another lore-bloated fantasy epic, something that either fails to appease fans of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game or leans too far into it and confuses the “normies” — or is just plain awful like previous cinematic attempts. But while it’s not perfect, directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have managed to serve up a balanced adaptation that’s both effortless to watch while remaining faithful to its grandiloquent source material.

Honor Among Thieves takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a diverse fantasy world that also serves as the campaign setting for official D&D modules — which means a lot of locations throughout the movie will be familiar to those who’ve played the game. In the cell of a frost-entombed prison, we’re introduced to the charming and overconfident bard, Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), and Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), a brutish yet motherly barbarian and Edgin’s best friend. The pair sets out to rescue Edgin’s daughter, Kira, from Forge Fitzwilliam, a former accomplice-turned-conman who has instilled himself as the villainous Lord of Neverwinter. Forge is played by Hugh Grant, who leans into his usual “bumbling Englishman” persona for the role, while Daisy Head provides some more serious villainy as the Red Wizard Sofina.

A screenshot taken from Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie depicting the cast in the ruins of Dolblunde.

Edgin and Holga are later joined by a timorous half-elf sorcerer played by Justice Smith, a seriously jaded tiefling druid played by Sophia Lillis, and Regé-Jean Page, who leans all the way into our Bridgerton -fueled expectations as a beautiful, swaggering paladin. But where his Bridgerton character epitomized every romantic leading man, this guy is a walking parody of every epic fantasy hero to have graced the genre. Honor Among Thieves makes it very clear that it isn’t trying to be some byzantine fantasy epic. Beneath the layers of its magical, medieval-inspired setting, it’s just a relatively straightforward heist movie — assemble a lovable group of skilled individuals, break into a few vaults, and defeat the bad guys.

Thankfully, Honor Among Thieves also manages to be specifically D&D -flavored without being too dorky or cringey. It exhibits incredible self-awareness, navigating through recognizable tropes from the titular tabletop roleplaying game without being obtusely meta about the whole thing. In a real game, players are at the mercy of their dice: randomized numbers dictate if your action succeeds (casting spells, flirting with guards, etc.) or fails (falling into traps, offending guards with your terrible flirting). The film alludes to this through manufactured spontaneity — almost every interaction feels ad-libbed, as though spoken off the cuff following a dice roll. The performances of Pine and Grant are especially notable for injecting quick-witted humor into otherwise stale tropes. It feels refreshingly subversive.

A screenshot taken from Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie depicting the main cast and a gelatinous cube.

Appeasing nerds shouldn’t be a box-ticking exercise, but Honor Among Thieves should at least be commended for the sheer number of D&D Easter eggs crammed into its 134-minute runtime. There are multiple dungeons, multiple dragons, multiple treasure hoards, and multiple buff women accompanied by a generous smattering of references to what feels like at least half of the game’s entire spell list and bestiary. Fans of the franchise won’t be left wanting, and most inclusions are incredibly faithful to the D&D sourcebooks (not counting the whole “druids can’t wild shape into an owlbear” debacle).

The CGI used to depict canonical D&D regions like Icewind Dale and the Underdark is decent enough, as is its application throughout the film’s various displays of magic and spellwork. But practical effects are where Honor Among Thieves will win over the really hardcore fantasy nerds. The more bestial races from the D&D universe are portrayed using actual monster suits or puppets, as if plucked right out of something like The Dark Crystal . It all feels like an homage to sword and sorcery movies of the 1980s, and you feel it in all the ornately detailed costumes, prosthetic makeup, and actual animatronics. And unlike too many Marvel films, it still feels grounded in reality, so the CGI enhances more than it detracts.

Chris Pine as Edgin Darvis and Regé-Jean Page as Xenk Yendar in Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Honor Among Thieves has to appeal to both audiences: those who are familiar with D&D and those who aren’t. It clearly excels in the former, but while it does ultimately achieve the latter, it doesn’t completely avoid the pitfalls experienced by similarly ambitious lore-heavy IPs that attempted to break into cinema. (I’m looking at you, Warcraft .)

Honor Among Thieves ’ storyline progresses at breakneck speed, refusing to waste precious minutes of pacing to provide background on the various locations, items, or characters in order to accommodate the endless deluge of D&D references. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy managed to patiently walk its viewers through J.R.R. Tolkien’s expansive lore — Honor Among Thieves offers no such courtesy. Stereotypically fantasy-sounding phrases like “Faerun,” “Gracklstugh,” and “Emerald Enclave” often whiff by during on-screen conversations, rarely repeated or providing insight into their significance.

You don’t actually need background on any of the references peppered throughout Honor Among Thieves to enjoy the movie. It’s still very clear what’s unfolding on-screen regardless of the jargon. But its dedication to appeasing the game’s nerdy fan base doesn’t excuse the other cinema sins that tarnish it. The storyline is incredibly predictable for a franchise that prides itself on creativity, and most of the characters feel underdeveloped because the film attempts to cover too much with the time it has.

Hugh Grant as Forge Fitzwilliam in Paramount’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

This is especially true concerning its villains. Grant’s portrayal of Forge as “lord bad guy” is a lot of fun, but there are a lot of other villains in this — to the point that his character sometimes gets lost as increasingly sinister characters keep popping up to take up the mantle of the “real” Big Bad. There are simply too many malevolent cooks tampering with this fantasy-flavored soup.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is certainly let down by the scale of its own ambition in places, but I still had fun — more fun than I’ve had watching a fantasy movie in years, actually. It’s incredibly funny and overdelivers on the necessary ingredients to appease anyone who’s ever rolled a 20-sided die. You can even forgive the slightly chaotic pacing for accurately capturing how it feels to play through a real D&D campaign.

For those who don’t partake in the game, Honor Among Thieves is still perfectly enjoyable because it doesn’t take itself seriously. Yes, it’s flippantly humorous and self-aware, but it isn’t pretentious about it. If anything, Honor Among Thieves is unashamedly camp, vibing closer to the likes of Shrek and The Princess Bride than your typically hardcore action-adventure movie. It’s a reminder that the fantasy genre is still allowed to be goofy. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying stoic highbrow fantasy, of course, but watching Daley and Goldstein’s “Bardians of the Galaxy” ensemble bumble around with well-mannered zombies and obscenely pudgy dragons is a breath of fresh air.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hits theaters on March 31st.

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Dungeons & Dragons: How To Create Tension And Stakes Without Death

All the best laid plans go awry but instead of ending the tale of your adventurers use these tips to keep the action going!

Quick Links

How to set up a limited-death campaign, things to remember while playing, what to do when someone reaches zero hp.

You are getting set up for an amazing and dramatic campaign of Dungeons & Dragons with all kinds of ideas boggling around your mind. Only to have session zero and find out your epic murder hobo power fantasy ideas might not land well with a group that has a sensitivity to death.

Dungeons & Dragons: How To Run Chase Scenes As A DM

That, or maybe your high-level party has had their umpteenth traumatic breakdown and could use a break that's a little bit more intense than shopping. No matter what the reasons, here are some tips and tricks on how to raise the stakes in your next game without relying on death.

Before you start your next limited death campaign, you should already create a handful of explanations for why death is not a prevalent consequence. Doing so before your campaign begins will allow you to get into the mindset of consequences that aren't death.

Talk to your players about their character's hopes and fears before your next campaign. When you know these hopes and fears, you can set up appropriate consequences in ways that have more impact.

For example, a character with an estranged relationship with their noble family might not die when they fail a major objective in the quest... but they might be disowned for the shame they bring to their name.

Competition

One way to create tension with your players without the risk of death is to have your players engage in a competition. Whether it's a friendly competition at an annual festival or an impromptu challenge from drunken bar patrons, you can create an opportunity for your players to shine.

Consider what the members of your party are good at and provide opportunities for your players to show off their skills in a competition. Some players might not be immediately intrigued by a competition, but if you offer a sufficient prize for winning , you can pique their interest.

You might also consider upping the ante by literally upping the ante and offering chances for your players to not just compete but gamble. Let them put their loot or coin on the wire, letting your players literally invest in the results of the competition.

Start to encourage your players to get invested in a narrative sense by portraying other characters who are cheating in the competition. Let your party decide if they want to call out and have the cheaters disqualified... or get just as gnarly.

Collateral Damage

People don't just care about dying; they care about a lot of other things, like the people around us. While it may be easy to set up a situation where a beloved NPC dies, it can be equally compelling to force beloved NPCs to face long-term consequences. You can even render the NPC as effectively dead to the party by removing them from play.

Step one for this to have any impact is to have an NPC the party is regularly in contact with and has some degree of attachment to. Be creative with the punishments inflicted on the people around your party and think outside the box about "fates worse than death."

A beloved and kindly merchant NPC who has helped your party out despite their low level could be forced out of business and can no longer provide discounts. The party is now forced to spend more of their gold on basic supplies, and their favorite NPC has now become a random encounter rather than the stable point of reference they once had.

Collateral damage doesn't need to be limited to individuals . A failure on your player's end might result in a beloved family home burning to the ground. Or, in more extreme situations, there may be a risk of an entire town becoming uninhabitable.

A crucial thing to make sure of is that your players are aware of these stakes going into the situation. Whether explicitly or through implications and skill checks, make sure your party knows that there is a chance these events could have consequences.

Tension relies on knowing that these consequences will happen if the party is to fail. You do not need to reveal your entire hand of the extent of those consequences, but it should be clear that the consequences will be severe.

Dungeons & Dragons: How To Ask A Player To Leave Your Campaign

Now that your game has been going on for a while, your players and their characters should likely have acquired some status and loot. Ideally, your players have faced difficulty earning these titles and trinkets, and those difficulties can make it devastating for them to lose .

Tournaments or tavern bets where players are forced to place an incredibly valuable magical item that was difficult for them to get can rapidly up the emotional stakes your players have in their success. Nobody wants to lose prizes that they feel like they've already won!

A player failing a dexterity check to avoid falling down a cliff might result in an important piece of equipment the party relied upon being lost somewhere inaccessible or dashed entirely upon the rocks below.

Dungeons & Dragons: How To Use Siege Weapons

All the best-laid plans go awry, and no matter how hard you try to keep your players alive, there is always the chance they might do something uniquely creative that doesn't go as planned.

Before you grab the paper shredder and destroy your player's evening, consider some alternatives to death when they miss that final death-saving throw. A failed death-saving throw might not result in death, but it must result in some form of consequence.

A lack of consequences in these scenarios can take away from the tension you want to establish in other scenes.

Imprisonment

Once your players are already face down in the dirt, maybe even a few dead, you can still recover the campaign without calling it an end with a TPK. Consider who your players are facing and if they might have some reason to keep the characters alive.

Minions of an evil overlord decide they'd rather present the player's character to their lord rather than simply kill them. Wild animals are suddenly chased off by the guard of a local town that seeks the party. Bandits think they might benefit from some indentured servants.

One thing to consider, especially if any player characters die, is how the party is healed. Dungeons and Dragons has many practitioners of healing magic, but it can add additional narrative intrigue to explain how the group that imprisoned the party did so and why.

Faustian Bargain

Perhaps it makes no sense for the enemy your party is facing to imprison them. In that case, you might instead offer your players the opportunity to make a deal with an entity more devious than any devil, the dungeon master!

Take the time to talk with your players about what their characters are willing to sacrifice in exchange for another chance at life. Perhaps your players might be willing to sacrifice a few levels or a skill proficiency instead.

You can leave the player's decision during the interim between sessions. Not only does this provide an exciting "to be continued..." scene to hype your players for the next session, but it also gives you and the players a chance to privately discuss the bargain before your next session.

Dungeons & Dragons: How To Roleplay Your Warlock's Patron

Screen Rant

I know what d&d needs to do with drizzt after the franchise's $208m movie bomb cut him.

After being cut from the Dungeons & Dragons franchise's most recent movie, Drizzt Do'Urden is in a prime spot to get his long-overdue solo project.

Drizzt Do'Urden's complex character and rich backstory make him an iconic figure in the D&D universe deserving of his own adaptation.
A TV series would be the perfect platform for Drizzt's exploration, allowing for deeper character development and story arcs.
The resurgence of interest in D&D adaptations, as seen with successful projects like The Legend of Vox Machina, sets the stage for a potential hit with Drizzt's story.

With him in an early draft of a recent Dungeons & Dragons project before being cut, the franchise has the perfect chance to utilize Drizzt Do'Urdern in a whole new way. First created as a supporting character in Icewind Dale Trilogy by author R.A. Salvatore , Drizzt has since become popular in his own right, heading his own long-running series of books. Salvatore has described Dungeons & Dragons' Drizzt Do'Urden as " the classic romantic hero—misunderstood, holding to a code of ideals even when the going gets tough, and getting no appreciation for it most of the time ." (via Dragon magazine, #252)

Drizzt is a drow, one of the dark elves , born in the corrupt Underdark city of Menzoberranzan. However, as an atypical drow, Drizzt shunned the evil and malicious ways of his kind, choosing instead to live on the surface as a noble and heroic ranger. His choice puts a symbolic target on his back, both from drow society and from his family members of House Do'Urden – even when it's revealed that his father, Zaknafein, had secretly been teaching Drizzt to uphold a moral code the entire time . Drizzt is a complex and fascinating character who has earned his rightful place as one of the most beloved and iconic characters in the D&D pantheon. Unfortunately, he hasn't yet gotten his on-screen due. It's long past time to change that.

A TV Show Would Make Up For Drizzt Being Cut From Honor Among Thieves

The legendary forgotten realms character needs his own adaptation.

Producer Jeremy Latcham revealed last year that Drizzt was originally to be in Honor Among Thieves . His role would have been a significant one, too. Drizzt was originally the character meant to lead the party through the Underdark , which makes sense considering Drizzt's backstory. However, as the script evolved, the producers couldn't acquire his character rights so Drizzt was written out and his character was eventually replaced by Regé-Jean Page's original character of Xenk the paladin.

While it would have been incredibly cool to see the legendary drow ranger come to life on the big screen, it would have had serious implications for the future of the franchise. Drizzt is too well-known and too well-loved by the Dungeons & Dragons faithful to merely show up as a side character. A character of his magnitude deserves his own standalone project , and giving him his own TV series would make up for his being axed from Honor Among Thieves .

Drizzt is too well-known and too well-loved by the Dungeons & Dragons faithful to merely show up as a side character.

10 Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Who Could Lead Paramount's New D&D TV Show

A tv series is the safest bet for dungeons & dragons, dungeons & dragons works best in tv format.

It would be tempting to give Drizzt Do'Urden another crack at a movie considering his first live-action appearance was supposed to be a feature film. Recent D&D history has shown, however, that Drizzt's best bet for success might be on the small screen . While Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was well-received by those who saw it and performed better after it hit steaming, its budget was simply too big to justify a sequel, unless the sequel significantly cut down the budget. A TV series could do D&D for a smaller budget, especially if it's a limited series or animated.

Beyond just the budget, Dungeons & Dragons is best suited to an episodic format that better matches what a real TTRPG format is like. Honor Among Thieves was an exceptionally fun romp with exceptionally fun characters, but the limited run time of the movie stunted character development . A Dungeons & Dragons TV show naturally grants far more time spent with characters, allowing their character arcs and relationships to develop in a way movies don't. Xenk's character was incredibly interesting, for example, but with a sequel now seeming unlikely, audiences will never learn more about him or what happened to him after the movie.

The Legend Of Drizzt Is Tailor-Made For A Great D&D TV Show

Drizzt do'urden would be a fascinating tv character.

Drizzt's adventures on the surface could be perfectly adapted to an action-fantasy TV show, whether live-action or animated–though it's worth noting that rumors of a live-action Drizzt TV show have been floated around for years. Putting Drizzt on TV would be the closest audiences have gotten to seeing Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn on screen in 20 years. Their characters are very similar noble lone hero types, and with them both being rangers, it's hard not to draw favorable comparisons between the two.

Putting Drizzt on TV would be the closest audiences have gotten to seeing Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn on screen in 20 years.

Going back to the aforementioned budget issues, as well, while Dungeons & Dragons usually requires a heavy lift concerning VFX wizardry for its magic, Drizzt himself wouldn't . As a ranger, Drizzt relies on a pair of dual scimitars rather than magical spells to fight. Granted, one aspect of Drizzt's story would be expensive to adapt: Guenhwyvar, Drizzt's magical panther, whom he can summon from the Astral Plane to fight alongside him. Still, considering the VFX ask for most fantasy stories, Drizzt's is comparatively thin, with most of the more fantastic D&D elements being ones that could be achieved through practical effects.

Dungeons & Dragons Is Having Itself A Moment

The right d&d story could have a lot to say.

Dungeons & Dragons adaptations were hit or miss for many years – mostly miss. In recent years, however, with the growth of D&D and tabletop games, there's been renewed interest in quality adaptations. This has been proven by the cult hit Critical Role , its animated adaptation The Legend of Vox Machina , and Paramount+ greenlighting a new live-action D&D show. Vox Machina currently sits at an impressive 100% critics score and 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and has been so successful it's been greenlit for a third season. Despite its box office troubles, Honor Among Thieves also has a great Rotten Tomatoes score of 91% among critics and 93% for audiences. Clearly, the appetite for well-made D&D projects is there.

The modern era is also ripe for D&D movies and TV shows with something to say. While most Dungeons & Dragons adaptations so far have been fun romps, each story has the potential for layers. The Legend of Drizzt books often explore themes of racial discrimination and identity , with Drizzt often being the subject of suspicion and prejudice thanks to his drow race; he also has fears that any future child he might have with his human lover, Cattie-Brie, would face discrimination for being mixed race. If handled correctly, a Legend of Drizzt TV show could be the thing to elevate Dungeons & Dragons to a new level of on-screen storytelling.

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April 6, 2024 (United Kingdom)
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Runtime 51 minutes