D&D: ‘Honor Among Thieves’ Features Dragons Actually From the Monster Manual

The more we see of Honor Among Thieves the more it looks like it’s actually set in D&D. Dragons straight out of the Monster Manual!

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves inherits a paradox from the previous D&D movies. If you’ve seen the cinematic disaster that was Dungeons & Dragons (2000) or any of the direct-to-video sequels, you know the deal. A trilogy of movies so bad they haunt the franchise to this day.

The movie that kicked it all did not manage to rise to the level of, well, I’d say Xena: Warrior Princess. Actually, that show was good, so let’s say Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. It didn’t help that the sequel looked like an FMV cutscene from a knockoff Westwood Studios battle.

So, you know, this whole situation from the Book of Vile Darkness.

D&D movies are so bad their reputation stains everything around them. Which is a double-edged sword. Because on the one hand, those movies are so bad that you might think it impossible to make a good D&D movie.

But on the other hand, the bar is so astoundingly low that you’d have to try real hard to trip over it.

Honor Among Thieves – Monster Manual on Screen

And so far, Honor Among Thieves seems to manage to take that step. They do it a couple of ways. For one, as we all saw in the trailer, the movie’s actually set in the Forgotten Realms. A bold step for a D&D movie. For years, the D&D movies were afraid to lean too heavily into the lore of D&D. Audiences couldn’t be expected to know what an Owlbear is.

Now it’s one of the highlights of the trailer. Sure, folks might be arguing about how a Druid isn’t technically able to wildshape into an Owlbear (according to the rules as written). But nobody wants to be friends with people mad at a movie over that.

The same goes for the displacer beast we saw or the gelatinous cube which will soon be everywhere.

But a moment captured by the official D&D Twitter account highlights another monster, accurately portrayed on screen for the first time in this movie.

Black dragons. This isn’t the first on-screen appearance of a black dragon, mind you. In 2005’s D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God we got a look at another dragon with those signature forward-swept horns.

Only this one spews flame. Everywhere. Honor Among Thieves instead features a black dragon with a flume of acid.

And little details like that go a long way toward showing the care and craft put into the film. This is good because the movie is still going to be a Dungeons & Dragons movie – if you know what I mean. And if you don’t, just look at this image of Rege-Jean Page’s Paladin launching the quillons and blade of his sword at some unseen enemy.

Yeah. 2023 is gonna be really interesting.

Maybe it’s the answer to the question: what if you made Xena today?

Author: J.R. Zambrano

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]