Dungeons & Dragons Movie Was Inspired By The Greatest Comedy Group Ever
The directors of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves claim that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a huge influence on writing and filming the upcoming fantasy epic.
There is a long history of comedy and fantasy merging. One of the great examples is the classic Monty Python & the Holy Grail, which saw the classic comedy troupe spoofing the Middle Ages and the story of King Arthur. According to a recent article from IGN, the directors of the upcoming fantasy adventure film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves took cues from Monty Python when approaching their own work.
In an interview with IGN, directors John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein related how they approached the genre for their upcoming film: “Our favorite thing is mashing up genres and doing it in a way where you can be scared one moment (and) laughing the next,” Goldstein says. “We never want to go too far where it becomes a spoof of fantasy films, but we also wanted to be able to pivot from something creepy and traditional fantasy to an absurd, almost Monty Python-type sequence.”
Daley also noted that the movie would be a “great opportunity to capture the spirit of playing a campaign without at all alienating people who are not privy to the game or the mechanics of the game.” Goldstein added: “People will be surprised by what the movie is…because people come to a film like this with expectations of what a fantasy adventure movie is. And some of that is here, but there’s also a lot that will surprise them.”
The directors were referring to one scene in particular, which involves Justice Smith’s character Simon the Sorcerer, reviving a dead man, who they can only ask 5 questions. Chris Pine’s Edgin the Bard and crew attempt to gather information from the skeleton but bungle the task entirely by inadvertently spending their 5 questions prematurely. The comedy of errors is very reminiscent of a film like Monty Python & the Holy Grail.
Monty Python was a British comedy group that came to prominence in 1969 and is known for their sketch comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus and subsequent movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life. Consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin Monty Python received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema at the 41st British Academy Film Awards in 1988.
In general, these comments from the directors bode well for fans of the table-top game, as the directors seem keen to avoid falling into tried-and-true tropes of the genre and instead are endeavoring to capture some of the magic that has made the game beloved by fans for decades.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is based on the fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published in 1974. It is often thought of as the first modern role-playing game, birthing the billion-dollar RPG game industry, especially the genre of fantasy RPG video games that would soon come.
The cast itself has several endearing actors such as Chris Pine as Edgin the Bard, Regé-Jean Page as Xenk the Paladin, Michelle Rodriguez as Holga the Barbarian, Justice Smith as Simon the Sorcerer, Hugh Grant asForge Fitzwilliam the Rogue, and Sophia Lillis as Doric. An adventure tale about a charming thief (Pine) who sets on an epic quest to retrieve a long-lost relic, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves debuts in theaters on March 31, 2023.
