The D&D movie’s smallest cameo raises a big question

Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thieves is packed with references aimed directly at the most dedicated D&D players. But at least it has one thing for all viewers to enjoy: an unexpected, completely absurd cameo from a well-known actor.

With all cameos, less is more. But in the rules of Dungeons & Dragons, where each person has a set of numerical stats related to things like how well they can flirt, even the briefest appearance can spark curiosity.

So let’s categorize Honor among thievesbig — well, okay, not a big, but really funny cameo.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.]

Honor among thieveslittle surprise is the sudden appearance of Bradley Cooper. He is an actor that he is known for playing another minor character, but this cameo is a smaller role by all accounts. When our gold-hearted adventurers pass by the old stomping grounds of Holga the Barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez), she visits the house she once shared with her ex-husband Marlamin in an attempt to revive what they once had.

Here, Honor among thieves reveals two things: First, Marlamin is played by Bradley Cooper. Second, Marlamin is only about 3 feet tall. The comedy of the scene lies in the way Cooper and Rodriguez scrupulously keep straight faces as they discuss the dissolution of their relationship, and the fact that Marlamin has moved on. These are, in fine romantic drama style, two people who sacrificed everything to be together, then realized they weren’t that compatible at all. It’s just that one of them is a barbarian wearing fur and leather, and the other a man whose little legs dangle dangling over the seat of his human-sized armchair.

Honor among thieves doesn’t hang out with Marlamin long enough to explicitly name his species as it does for half-elf Simon or tiefling Doric. What is this little guy supposed to be, within the Dungeons & Dragons canon? It’s up to us, the staff at Polygon, the nexus of gaming and entertainment, to make our own call – by taking the canonical descriptions from the Player’s Handbook by Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, the sourcebook of the world Honor among thieves is derived from.

Bradley Cooper’s D&D movie character is a halfling

Image: Wizards of the Coast

We are quite confident that the drivers of Honor among thieves – Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley – meant Marlamin to read like a halfling.

Here are some direct quotes from how 5th Edition D&D describes this species:

• Standing about 3 feet tall, [halflings] seem relatively harmless.
• They like to wear simple, comfortable and practical clothes and prefer bright colors.
• They cherish the bonds of family and friendship, as well as the comforts of home and hearth, and cherish few dreams of gold or glory.
• Many halflings live among other races, where the halflings’ hard work and loyal outlook provide them with bountiful rewards and comforts.

If we had to catch up Real specifically, we’d say Marlamin is a Naughty Halfling rather than a Lightfoot, as Lightfoot halflings are “more prone to wanderlust than other halflings”, and Marlamin is clearly a homebody who couldn’t reconcile with Holga’s traveling lifestyle. (Although Lightfoots also “often live next door to other breeds,” so it’s anyone’s guess.)

If he is a Naughty Halfling, he gains some resistance to poison and a slightly better constitution score; if he is a Lightfoot, he is better at sneaking and is slightly more charismatic. These are facts that we are sure have enhanced your viewing experience Honor among thieves.

But wait, he’s wearing shoes. I thought hobbits don’t wear shoes?

Image: New Line Cinema

Ah-ah-ah! There is a enormous difference between hobbits, created by JRR Tolkien, and the halflings that appear in Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing games and licensed media based on them.

You see, the Tolkien Estate owns the rights to hobbits, who have hairy feet and don’t wear shoes.

And Wizards of the Coast publishes material with halflingsWHO Doing wear shoes over their nondescript hairy feet.

If you want more clarification on this matter, ask a lawyer who works for Wizards of the Coast.

Oh come on – maybe Marlamin is a leprechaun?

You could certainly make that argument. D&D’s 5th edition describes gnomes as standing “just over 3 feet tall”, like Marlamin, and gnomes are more likely to have facial hair, like Marlamin, than the generally bare halflings.

But they are also described as sporting elaborately styled beards and speaking “as if they can’t get the thoughts out of their heads fast enough”. According to the Player’s Handbookunless a leprechaun is the adventurous kind, they are likely to live in a hidden, underground gnome community rather than find fellowship with other species.

Gnome-like traits just don’t fit with the gentle, patient, domestic traits we see in Marlamin, all of which made him such a poor match for Holga.

So he’s probably a halfling.

Wait a minute – isn’t this all reductive, bordering on racist?

Image: Prime Video

What, universally ascribing specific physical and psychological characteristics to all people of a certain origin? Unequivocally yes. It’s a fundamental crack in the fantasy genre, one that tabletop role-playing games have given a not-insignificant hand to perpetuate.

Thankfully, it’s something that Wizards of the Coast has been slowly addressing, both through retrofitting 5th Edition D&D with later updates and through the development of future rulesets for the game, which will reportedly emphasize that all species in Dungeons & Dragons the same wonderful variability as our real human species does.

However, from a story and film analysis point of view, we can guess which D&D family the creators are Dungeons & Dragons: honor among thieves Marlamin meant to read as. But if he was a real person, we’d certainly hope that no one would crouch down next to him and ask, “Okay, but where are you, you know, by?”