When Paramount Pictures was released a short clip from an action scene late in the D&D movie Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thieves, a certain subsection of legacy RPG fans immediately jumped at one detail. As the film’s protagonists encounter a deadly gladiatorial arena built around a changing maze filled with monsters, Edgin the Bard (Chris Pine) notices yet another group of adventurers being dumped into the arena: the company of displaced children from the Saturday of 1983-1985. morning cartoon series Dungeons and Dragons.
It’s a joke to some older fans of the game. The cartoon is hard to find legally these days – it is not streamed and all previous DVD releases are out of print, although there are plenty of YouTube uploads. But a generation of fans remember the show so fondly that several rows of toys that is still being done celebrate the characters of the cartoon. More recently a virally popular Brazilian car advertisement brought the characters to life and finally brought them back home.
The appearance of the 80s characters in Honor among thieves isn’t just a one-time viewing prank either – they recur throughout the scene, and they don’t fare as well in the gladiator fights that follow. Polygon has spoken Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thieves directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein to find out what happens to those kids after their big screen cameo.
[Ed. note: Spoilers for some action in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves follow.]
In the gladiatorial arena sequence, Daley and Goldstein follow Edgin and company as they dodge a displacer beast, an impersonator, and various traps through an ever-changing maze full of traps and weapons. The 80s characters – Hank the Ranger, Sheila the Thief, Diana the Acrobat, Eric the Cavalier, Presto the Wizard and Bobby the Barbarian – also run through the maze, picking up weapons and dodging the dangers.
Daley and Goldstein say it was easy enough to get the rights to the characters’ likenesses since TSR owned them, and they would have been part of the property purchased by Wizards of the Coast. “The rights are sort of baked into the movie just because it’s D&D,” Daley tells Polygon.
The only real difficulty with the series was figuring out how to fit the cartoon characters into the aesthetic Honor among thievesworld, while still being recognizable.
“The biggest struggle was finding a way to portray them,” says Daley. “Something that didn’t look too absurdly cartoonish. Because they are based on this brightly colored cartoon. We didn’t want them sticking out like a sore thumb. So it was a real process.”
“We also had to find an adult to play Bobby the Barbarian,” says Goldstein. “Because working with a child limits your hours. So we found a very muscular, not very tall guy to play that part.”
Image: Paramount Pictures
There’s one element missing from the party: Bobby’s unicorn, Uni. There are obvious budgetary reasons for not designing a unique CG creature for such a brief cameo appearance. But considering how often the plots of the cartoon revolved around the fact that the party had to save him or go back for him, where is Uni in Honor among thieves?
“They took Uni away,” says Goldstein.
“You know, it’s funny — I think the conscious decision was the idea that you can’t have an animal in these games,” says Daley. “Unfortunately, Uni could not participate.”
But what happens to the 80s characters in Honor among thieves? Edgin’s party eventually finds them locked in a huge brass cage and tries to free them. (Or are you in? Looks like the kids are at least safe from marauding monsters in that cage.) But the protagonists change their mind and run off, leaving the 80s kids in the cage. Soon after, the villain Sofina (Daisy Head), one of the Red Wizards of Thaydrop a huge spell called Beckoning death in the arena to turn everyone present into undead monsters. Edgin and his team have escaped by then and the arena has emptied out, but aren’t the ’80s kids still trapped in that cage?
“We’re not killing them,” Goldstein says. “The last we see in the movie is them safe in the Cage of Sanctuary, having escaped the displacer beast. So let’s assume good things.”
Daley takes a harder approach: he thinks the Beckoning Dead spell may have gotten them after all. “We suggested that, but we would never say it openly. Because I don’t think we should,” he says. “It’s like the toll at the end of Start.”
Paramount, for its part, did not weigh in on an official answer to the question. But the studio has channeled the ’80s characters in its own way, releasing a short clip from the TV series with new audio, mocking the “rule lawyers” who complained about the violation of the Dungeons & Dragons law. rules of the 5th edition by the movie. We don’t know if these kids are still alive in the movie canon, or if they’ve become undead monsters – but we do know that five out of six approve of druid characters turning into owlbears.