(Credit: Netflix)

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is the kind of raucous, high-energy adventure that effortlessly blends fantasy and fun, making it a must-watch for anyone craving escapism with heart and is now on Netflix. With Chris Pine’s roguish charm, Michelle Rodriguez’s muscle, and a whip-smart script that winks at the source material without alienating newcomers, it delivers both epic spectacle and genuine laughs.

As Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ soundtracks the fantasy chaos to the trailer for Dungeons & Dragons, minds of modern movie fans will inevitably go back to when Marvel also used a classic rock track, Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling’, to sell 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Whilst both movies may share a similarly rambunctious cast of misfit bandits, the comparisons to Marvel thankfully stop right here for the new fantasy flick, with Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves providing audiences with a refreshing originality that has been flagrantly omitted from contemporary blockbusters. 

Based on the tabletop role-playing game in which players take on the identity of a specific fantasy race, including Elf, Halfling and Gnome, and play out a complex story that lasts for multiple sessions, essentially Dungeons and Dragons is a sandbox fit with all the templates to tell an epic fantasy tale. Such makes it a wise property to be adapted, as essentially, screenwriters Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley and Michael Gilio were free to write absolutely anything they wanted.

The story they chose is one that is easily marketable, but also refreshingly innovative, penned with the same creativity as a John Carpenter cult classic from the 1980s and the camp fantasy joy of Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander. It all follows Chris Pine’s Edgin and Michelle Rodriguez’s Holga, a pair of misfit criminals who enlist the help of an unlikely team in order to retrieve a lost relic and resurrect a loved one who was slain by dark magic. 

Justice Smith’s Simon joins Pine and Rodriguez, a failed sorcerer and Sophia Lillis’ Doric, a tiefling druid who can shapeshift into any creature, with the foursome creating a team that easily rivals Marvel’s Guardians. Unlike the latter band of superheroes, who reek of teenage humour and a lack of emotional range, the fantasy group feels strangely more attuned to the maturity of contemporary audiences, reaching a wider number of people in the process.

Indeed, Dungeons and Dragons is far funnier than a film that appears to be a bog-standard fantasy flick has the right to be, a feat that is unsurprising when you realise that the script was penned by the same writers behind the underrated 2018 comedy Game Night. These aren’t scattered belly laughs either, the movie is lathered with moments of genuine hilarity that feel boundary-pushing in comparison to other modern blockbusters, tickling a funny bone that’s different from the usual eye-rolling Marvel gag.

Such is what sets Dungeons and Dragons so refreshingly apart from other contemporary blockbusters, with directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein instilling the film with a distinct identity, toying with comedy in a way that feels fun, fresh and innovative. Not only this, but the filmmakers divert from the ‘winning formula’ of Marvel, which countless other studios have copied, with action sequences that feel inventive and world-building that have shades of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth.

Whilst Dungeons and Dragons may not be Denis Villeneuve’s Dune or George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, it is a modern blockbuster that doesn’t succumb to the tedious storytelling of its contemporaries, delivering something sleek and distinctive that is entirely refreshing in an industry that seems to be on mind-numbing autopilot.