Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is now out in cinemas, and to mark the occasion, the Inside Total Film podcast sat down with directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. The duo went deep on how they created the film, the inspirations behind it, as well as opening up about that major Hollywood cameo. Although, don't worry, we won't spoil anything here if you're still waiting to watch it.
Here's a snippet of our conversation with Goldstein and Daley, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full chat on the Inside Total Film podcast right now.
Total Film: When you first began work on Dungeons & Dragons, what did you feel were the essential elements to make it a Dungeons & Dragons movie, as opposed to just being another fantasy movie?
Jonathan Goldstein: The biggest element for us was that it captured the spirit of the game, which is all about spontaneity, unpredictability, solving problems on the fly, and the fun of it, frankly, because we’ve seen any number of shows and movies in the fantasy realm that have been deadly serious, and we felt there was an unrepresented corner of the genre.
John Francis Daley: Which is so, you know, baked into the DNA of D&D. I don’t think they were taking it entirely seriously when they created a gelatinous cube.
How did you maintain that tone throughout? Like you say, it is very funny, but it’s not sort of snarky, and not taking the mickey out of itself. What was your North Star when it came to the tone?
John Francis Daley: Well, we have a deep reverence and respect for the game, and I think that helps to keep us from being cynical about it. I think often the big mistake that people make when they want to approach something comedically is to really take the piss out of it, and not take it as seriously as it should be taken.
I think you can take source material seriously, and also find a lot of humor in it. So it’s finding that balance where our characters are always justified. They’re never breaking the fourth wall of what their characters would say or do. But they also can have a sense of humor about things, and they can encounter humorous situations without it feeling like we’re betraying the source material.
Jonathan Goldstein: They can have an awareness of some of the more absurd aspects of the world they’re in, just as the viewer does watching it today. So we didn’t feel like they have to just accept everything at face value. They can question it, and say, "Why are there five questions?" It’s arbitrary.
When it comes to the characters, you mentioned to another one of our writers a while back that it’s unusual to have the bard as the lead character. Could you kind of unpack that a bit more, and then explain why you went down that path?
John Francis Daley: Yeah. I mean, I think we liked the idea of exploring a less traditional idea of what a hero is in one of these films. And bards are kind of silly [laughs]. They’re storyteller—
Jonathan Goldstein: Entertainers.
John Francis Daley: They’re entertainers. They probably have a bit of an ego. And in the case of Chris Pine’s character, he has this relentless optimism that is so winning when you’re watching the movie, because they face a lot of roadblocks. They fail almost nonstop. But it’s all in how you approach those moments of failure that it’ll either be sad or motivating.
Jonathan Goldstein: It also gave us an opportunity to have sort of a co-lead with the bard in the form of Holga the Barbarian, Michelle Rodriguez’s character, who is, you know, very tough physically, and completely in a platonic partnership with Chris’s character, which we hadn’t seen very much.
That’s another thing that’s interesting about this line-up of characters in the film, none of them are quite what you expect: Michelle Rodriguez is a Barbarian, but she’s nursing a broken heart, and has this really caring instinct, and then Justice Smith is a sorcerer but he’s not the most skilled. Was that kind of key to cracking the film?
Jonathan Goldstein: Yeah, for sure. We wanted to make sure that the characters we’re following are relatable. Even though they’re in this very foreign world, they have to be people you might know: someone who has flaws, who lacks confidence, who has a broken relationship that burns them.
John Francis Daley: Yeah. I mean, I think my favorite movies and television are ones with characters that are deeply flawed, at least at the beginning of the story. I mean, the British Office is a perfect example of a lot of people that are, you know, considered somewhat losers. But you see a little bit of them in yourself, and it makes you feel a little bit better for not being a perfect person. And that, I think, is just more real.
Jonathan Goldstein: And for not working in Slough [laughs].
Without going into spoilers, there’s a cameo in this film. How did that come about? Was that an existing relationship you had with this person, or were they a fan of the game?
John Francis Daley: Yeah. I did have an existing relationship with him. We worked on a show together when I was 19 or 20, and had kept in touch. And then when we made the film, we thought, "Oh, wouldn’t it be great if he played this character?" So we sent him the unfinished work-in-progress of our movie. He saw it, and I think he immediately saw the appeal of the movie, and how it was kind of different – and so jumped at the opportunity. And we were so lucky to have him, because he’s clearly an incredibly skilled actor.
It’s one of those things where it’s kind of funny at first, the sort of surprise of it, but then it’s actually played quite straight, isn’t it? Was that kind of part of the fun of it for you?
Jonathan Goldstein: That was always the intention. We wanted a sort of very recognizable face in that role, so when the door opens, it’s a shock. But then the scene itself is not meant to play comedic. People are laughing, which is fine, but it’s really just played for a straight, emotional beat in the movie.
John Francis Daley: Yeah. It was never intended to be purely a gimmick.
What’s the trick for this kind of film for making the world feel so big? In all the best fantasy or sci-fi films, thinking back to things like the original Star Wars even, you just get this feeling that it’s a much bigger world than what you see in that one film.
John Francis Daley: I can draw a sort of peculiar parallel to the show The Wire, which immerses you immediately into this world of crime in Baltimore without spelling everything out for you. So in the first few episodes, even the way the characters are speaking is almost impossible to understand. But you have a certain sense of what’s going on. Without patronizing or indoctrinating the audience, you’re kind of plunging them into this world, knowing that eventually they’re going to kind of get their bearings and understand it almost on a subconscious level.
Jonathan Goldstein: The Star Wars comparison is very apt because that is how we approached it. We wanted you to feel like there is this much larger world around you that you’re not going to see in this movie, that you’ll get little inklings of. But it’s really about our characters moving through their own journey. And that was our hope, that that would be the feeling you’d have.
You can listen to the full interview on the latest episode of the podcast, which features some big names. Aside from the D&D directors, we also spoke to Anya Taylor-Joy all about her role in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the upcoming Furiosa. Then none other than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck stopped by to speak about Air. The Inside Total Film podcast is available on:
