Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is embracing some of the game’s wildest monsters, which has the potential to be a great move for the movie. The first full trailer for Paramount’s live-action Dungeons & Dragons movie provided a taste of what to expect from the upcoming fantasy adventure. The mission undertaken by Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez’s characters will involve numerous concepts and creatures from the classic tabletop game.
After months of very little information about what the Dungeons & Dragons movie would entail, Honor Among Thieves finally has a trailer. What was shown in the footage sets up a live-action interpretation of a classic Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign. In true D&D fashion, a party of five adventurers will apparently steal a powerful relic and then be forced to vanquish the evil they’ve unwittingly unleashed. Along the way, they’ll cross paths with multiple Dungeons & Dragons monsters that will most likely serve as obstacles to their goals. The identities of some of these creatures were confirmed by the Honor Among Thieves trailer.
In addition to dragons, the trailer showed off its take on the owlbear, the mimic, and the displacer beast from the Dungeons & Dragons game. All three are lesser-known monsters that were far-from-obvious candidates for inclusion in the movie. A giant white bear with the face of an owl sounds like a rather ridiculous idea for a monster, yet it’s the one that Honor Among Thieves has picked for its druid hero’s animal transformation. Something similar could be said for the mimic, which is a predatory monster that takes the form of a treasure chest to surprise unsuspecting adventurers. And as a black panther with long tentacles on its body, the displacer beast stands out as another offbeat choice.
Dungeons & Dragons’ Ridiculous Monsters Can Make The Movie Better
Since there are literally hundreds of monsters that the Dungeons & Dragons movie could have used instead, it would have been so easy for Honor Among Thieves to avoid the owlbear and the mimic, especially since they’re both lesser-known monsters. However, the movie has elected to skip the standard fantasy fare in favor of diving deep into the craziest and silliest elements of the tabletop game. Not only does using these creatures support its comedic tone, but it serves as an excellent way of distinguishing Dungeons & Dragons as a world that’s completely unique to all other fantasy settings.
Like so many other sword & sorcery franchises, Dungeons & Dragons' world has goblins, orcs, zombies, and vampires that it could use to market its movie. But since so many other properties already have these monsters, it makes perfect sense for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves to prove to audiences that it can offer things that no other live-action fantasy film can. And through a giant, owl-faced bear and a treasure chest with teeth, Paramount's movie is promising to do just that.
