D&D Movie/TV New Footage & Poster For D&D: Honor Among Thieves Movie

There's a brand new poster and new footage available for next year's Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves. The new footage is a featurette of various pieces, incuding new monsters, and a look at the animatronics and CGI. The film comes out on March 31st, 2023 and stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Rege-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant.

​

 

[GreyLord]

okay, unpopular opinion here.

That poster looks like junk. It looks horrible. Who approved this!?

If I were just going off that poster...I'd be saying this looks like a C-grade movie that somehow got grade A actors in it. It absolutely looks like it's going to be the sequel to the original D&D movie (and that's NOT a compliment).

That extra footage isn't exactly doing great favors either.

This is me gritting my teeth at what I just saw.



PS: For those who don't know what I am on about, just to give you a starter look (and you'll start to see other things after this), at first glance the Tiefling lady appears to be slitting her own throat...I know...she isn't...but....yeah...that's not the picture they should have head shotted her with...and that goes for most of the others...

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

But will there be multiple dungeons?

Yep. As shown in the trailer.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well they've proven that they have enough good material for multiple fun looking trailers, which bodes well.

Obviously trailers are going to put a best foot forward, but they are usually at least indicators of whether the movie has some positive qualities to feature at all. Compare and contrast the trailer for the 2000 movie, from which it is already apparent that the main characters are probably annoying, that Thora Birch is wooden and awkward in a fantasy role, that the movie is going to lean heavily on garbage grade CGI, and that (for better or worse) Jeremy Irons might just take a big bite out of the scenery:

 

[Dire Bare]

The Red Wizard antagonist looks good in the trailers, but on the poster she looks . . . not so good.

Cautiously optimistic for this one!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Red Wizard antagonist looks good in the trailers, but on the poster she looks . . . not so good.

Cautiously optimistic for this one!

It's a pretty mediocre poster.

 

[Von Ether]

okay, unpopular opinion here.

That poster looks like junk. It looks horrible. Who approved this!?

I don't think your opinion is closer the general consensus that you realize.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The Red Wizard antagonist looks good in the trailers, but on the poster she looks . . . not so good.

I will say that clicking on this thread to find myself zoomed in on the top section of this relatively low res version of the poster was not a good way to meet that poster. I'm sure it looks okay as a complete composition, staring up at it on a theater wall, but focusing in on the individual characters most of them have issues of odd expressions, inconsistent lighting, etc. I suspect the poster artist was working from movie stills rather than a promotional photo shoot (which were rarer for things shot during the pandemic), or something along those lines.

Given the nostalgia factor for D&D it would have been a prime opportunity for an illustrated movie poster, especially for a ensemble cast on varying scales composition like that, which to my mind at least really shines with a good illustrator. But they went a different way.

 

[Birmy]

okay, unpopular opinion here.

That poster looks like junk. It looks horrible. Who approved this!?

If I were just going off that poster...I'd be saying this looks like a C-grade movie that somehow got grade A actors in it. It absolutely looks like it's going to be the sequel to the original D&D movie (and that's NOT a compliment).

That extra footage isn't exactly doing great favors either.

Pretty much every official movie poster from the last fifteen years or so looks like ass. Bad compositing, smoothed faces and distorted bodies plunging directly into the Uncanny Valley, the same old compositions, etc. This poster isn't dissimilar from, say, Spider-Man: No Way Home's, and that was one of the biggest movies in years. At this point, I don't think a bad poster means much of anything as far as blockbuster potential goes; moviegoers are used to seeing just this thing.

Footage looks pretty good to me, barring some effects work that is likely still in progress anyway. Optimistic.

 

[Marandahir]

The correct answer is "Both". Because Kiseki no Umi is one of the greatest openings ever...

Don't get me wrong. Odessa e Fortuno was great. But Sea of Dreams? SO GOOD.

This is the correct answer.

The OVA has more beautiful music overall, and better base animation (it does overrely on stills, but it has that 80s anime aesthetic that the TV series abandons for an aesthetic that's a premonition of the fugly last gasps of handdrawn animation in the '00s.

But the series tells a much more nuanced story, by virtue of having time. It's also a better conclusion to the story than the CoHK manga is (which somehow kills off Ashram in a way that is incompatible with the middling, but canonical Legend of Crystania).

The best bit of Lodoss material, imho, is the Tale of Deedlit manga. This captures the best visual elements of the OVA anime while staying true to the story from the novels, replays, and Grey Witch manga.

I'd recommend to consume in order:

1. Lodoss OVA
2. 1995 Lodoss SNES title (no official translation, unfortunately, but this fills in the backstory a bit).
3. Grey Witch manga and/or novel.
4. Demon of Flame manga (no official translation, unfortunately).
5. Chronicles of Heroic Knights anime.
6. The Lady of Pharis manga (backstory to the entire series, it's hinted at over the course of everything that I've listed before).
7. Deedlit's Tale manga (it's told out of order so it's best read once you have a larger context of the story arcs).
8. Rune Soldier Louie manga and/or anime.
9. Legend of Crystania movie and OVA.
10. Play Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (takes place after the end of the entire series).

Also, if you want a very different D&D campaign setting from the same author, Record of Grancrest War is phenomenal, and has been described by some as Fire Emblem: The Anime. Interestingly, Fire Emblem has readily stolen from Lodoss - see the villain Ashnard, who is clearly a combination of Ashram and Wagnard, for example, but also just the art style and world concepts throughout - and Grancrest is very much reversing the homage by borrowing from Fire Emblem with its crest mechanics and Fire Emblem-esque story (something that Fire Emblem would then borrow back with Three Houses). But Grancrest War has a lot of non-FE tropes too that are very D&D - vampires, werewolves, other classic fantasy tropes that fit very easily with D&D but not so with FE. Grancrest has been translated in both an anime and manga form, though they tell very similar stories.

 

[OB1]

Pretty much every official movie poster from the last fifteen years or so looks like ass. Bad compositing, smoothed faces and distorted bodies plunging directly into the Uncanny Valley, the same old compositions, etc. This poster isn't dissimilar from, say, Spider-Man: No Way Home's, and that was one of the biggest movies in years. At this point, I don't think a bad poster means much of anything as far as blockbuster potential goes; moviegoers are used to seeing just this thing.

Footage looks pretty good to me, barring some effects work that is likely still in progress anyway. Optimistic.

Yeah, everything on a final poster for a film like this is controlled by actor agents now. It used to be that the size of the actors printed name on the poster was the limit of that, now it's the size of each actors image in relation to the rest that's negotiated, along with approval rights. Any time you get a decent sized ensemble, it can turn into a pretty messy composition.

The footage looks great, and I think Rege-Jean Page is absolutely stealing every moment he's in.