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Movie Review - Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
June 05, 2023
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I don’t get to the movies as much I once did. The summer of 2008 I was at the cinema every weekend and it was great. Sometimes I went twice. Last year I saw one movie. I miss it, but I am thankful that things come to streaming very quickly, and are often included on the services to which I already subscribe. It saves me a little precious money.

If I think to check.

I’d had it in mind to use a $6 coupon to rent Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but yesterday I checked and saw it’d already landed on one of my subscriptions. Score! Now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m glad I didn’t waste any money, or even a coupon, on it. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is fine for passible entertainment. But it’s only mildly good and miles from great.

It’s content.

You don’t need to have ever played the game to enjoy the movie (I haven’t, and I kinda did), as it’s still a fantasy adventure film. But it borrows from the mold of the MCU and subverts itself at every opportunity. “This is kinda silly, huh?” You can’t really have fun with something when you’re simultaneously being fed that you're too cool for it. Subversion, thy name is irony. Playing that sort of game is fun in small doses, but unfortunately it’s everywhere now.

The plot is as such:

Edgin (Chris Pine) was a thief trying to support his daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) after the death of his wife. Well, first he was a useless drunk until he met Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), who came alongside him as a sister. Together, they formed a merry band with Simon the terrible (ie: lousy) sorcerer and Forge (Hugh Grant) the conman. Unfortunately, a heist that would have gotten them the thingamabob that could resurrect Kira’s mom goes wrong. Edgin and Holga end up in prison for a couple years, and Forge adopts Kira.

When we meet them Egin is knitting and Holga is eating a potato.

And that tells you everything you need to know about the men in this movie. Egin knits, Simon has low self-esteem, Holga’s ex is a homemaker. There’s only one guy in the entire movie who isn’t an emasculated twit, Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), who's barely in the movie and his coolness is mocked.

The girl-power doesn’t get the same treatment.

Forge has convinced Kira that her father abandoned her for wealth, and she now prefers him to dear old dad. It kinda reminded me of The Mask of Zorro, and oh how I wished I was watching that instead. So now Egan and Holga have to find Simon, pick up a new team member (Sophia Lillis as Doric), and beat Forge at his own game. Unfortunately, while he’s also an idiot, he’s got a powerful sorceress, Sofina (Daisy Head) backing him. But if they can pull it off, Egin can reunite his family.

That’s laudable.

Egin’s goals aside, it’s hard to praise this movie for being anti-woke. He and his late wife were a TV commercial couple (if you know, you know), the men succeed in spite of themselves, while all the women are awesome. As Spencer Klavan said in a couple of tweets:

“The idea that conservatives would celebrate Dungeons and Dragons… as un- or even anti-woke is in fact a total victory for wokeness. It shows how thoroughly they’ve managed to set the terms of the debate.

 

I quite liked D&D but it features an axe-wielding girlboss who ground-pounds bruisers twice her size while hapless dweeb Chris Pine looks on in soyful appreciation. Mario re-writes the damsel in distress as a warrior princess at the helm of vast armies.

 

A real conservative movement in this realm, though, would mean demanding and creating stories in which damsels really are in distress, and men really are inspired to save them by performing feats of heroism. That should be *the baseline*.

 

Anything else is just temporary concession on the part of a movement that does not really intend to compromise or to grant us even small victories in anything but the shortest possible term, as long as it takes for us not to recognize while the rest of the territory is captured.

In other words, Hollywood tossed us a bone with very little meat on it.

Again, I found some mild entertainment in the midst of the nonsense. I wouldn’t walk out of the room if it was on. But neither would I seek it out to see again.

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Leo and Britt come face to face with a prehistoric god a new cult on Saturn. Can they save the children doomed to sacrifice and escape?

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Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

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Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

Instead of griping about what Disney has done, why don't you listen to my space adventure story? He Who Rides on the Clouds is supernatural noir that spans space and time. When children on Mars go missing, Alexis Leonard and his ex-wife Brittany go looking. Their search leads them to a pagan temple and an ancient religion.

If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

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Ironheart and Superman: A Failure to Launch

Yesterday two trailers were released for upcoming superhero projects. First, we had Marvel's Ironheart, which Disney has been sitting on for years at this point. Apparently it follows Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a young black woman at MIT who is (was?) intended to take over for Tony Stark as Ironwhathaveyou. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, take a look.

I stopped paying too much attention to the MCU a long time ago, but apparently Riri was introduced in Wakanda Forever, and her fans have been clamoring for a standalone show ever since (/sarcasm). Watching the trailer, I can't help but notice how many times we're told she's smart and capable. Any suggestion that she can't do something is shot down immediately. We're supposed to believe that The System is against is her because she's poor, I guess, and doesn't have Tony Stark's advantages.

Remember Tony Stark? Sure, he was rich. But he was also a self-absorbed man-child who found himself in a cave in Afghanistan who had to engineer his own escape with scrap parts. Tony Stark, who had to learn about self-sacrifice and the consequences of his actions. Robert Downey Jr. make us like the guy, with his easy charm, even though we wanted to see him grow up. There was room for a character arc. No offence to Dominique, but she doesn't have the charm, and her character clearly has nowhere to go.

A few hours later, Warner Bros./DC released the trailer for James Gunn's Superman, the latest reboot of the iconic superhero. We've been waiting for a good Superman for a long time. Something to reunite the fans, the casually interested, and possibly the entire country. And to be honest, I don't think this is gonna do it. Take a look.

Before I go any further, I want to spin my theory on the interview scene, which is a little different from what I'm hearing from most anyone else. Notice how David Corenswet pitches his voice really high when he says, "Sure!" At this point in the movie, I don't think Lois (Rachel Brasnahan) knows that Clark is Superman, and thinks he's just playacting. But when Clark drops his voice, he's showing his cards a little bit. Then, when he completely loses his cool, he's just acting how Lois thinks Superman would respond. In context (the scene is reportedly ten minutes long!), it might be interesting. Out of context, in a trailer, it's a stupid decision.

Throughout the entire trailer we see Superman smacked around, knocked out, screaming out in self-defense, and made fun of for having a dog. There are some super-heroics, to be sure, but they're mitigated by the overwhelming amount of thrashing he takes. Unlike Riri, I guess he's got some room for growth. But it doesn't inspire me to see the movie. Some are defending this approach, suggesting that someone with such a clear cut understanding of right and wrong would be frustrated and confused by our complex, political climate. And I agree. But his moral compass and grace towards an unfair world should have been set before leaving Smallville and going out into the world.

So on the one hand, we've got a flawless female character. And on the other, we've got an immature Superman. Neither character is attractive, warts and all. Neither character is relatable or inspiring in the ways the filmmakers intended, as presented. Maybe the show and movie will be good. But someone else will have to let me know. Because right now, I'm not inspired to see either one.

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What Do We Want? Familiar Originality! When Do We Want It? Now!

There is an ongoing debate over what movie audiences really want. On the one hand, there are those who bemoan the upcoming slate of films that are nothing but sequels and prequels. “People want original movies!” they say, and use the spectacular failure of recent comic book movies as proof. But when an original movie like the recent Black Bag doesn’t make a dent at the box office and is quietly shuffled onto streaming, the other side can say, “No they don’t.”

So which is it?

I say, both!

The average viewer likes familiarity. That’s why every night on TV millions of people watch the latest episode of their favorite procedural. Every episode is the same. Has been for years. Doesn’t matter if you’re watching Bones, House M.D., or NCIS, at the end of the day, the story beats are invariably the same. The characters fill the same archetypes. 

Even if you aren’t a student of scriptwriting, you know the flow.

Engaging with a story is sometimes like singing a song. Sometimes you want to sit back and listen to a master perform, but other times you want to join in. And if the tune is simple and familiar, you can learn new words that much more easily. If the melody is complex, with tempo and key changes, it demands attention. That’s when you just sit back and appreciate someone else’s artistry. 

More often than not, we’re drawn to the familiar. 

We go to the movies to be entertained more than we go to be challenged.

But Hollywood seems determined to challenge us. They challenge our ideas of who are familiar are. They challenge our core beliefs about right and wrong. When they do make something that isn’t from a well established intellectual property, they challenge us to accept an unfamiliar actor, who likely isn’t attractive or charming. Why should we want to get to know this person and the character he or she is playing?

We don’t. 

Mass appeal isn’t difficult. Our mainstream entertainment providers are making it difficult, probably in large part because they don’t know or understand what we want. And unless they do, people just like us will move to replace them. 

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Book Review - The Revenant and the Cult - Book Two: The Terror in the Wychwood

In the forward to The Revenant and the Cult - Book Two: The Terror in the Wychwood, author Herman P. Hunter mentions that his influences are J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, C.S. Lewis, and H.P. Lovecraft. While it may seem odd to intersperse deeply religious writers with those antagonistic to the idea of a benevolent God, from a writer’s perspective it makes sense.

For a fantasy writer, particularly one of faith, they are essential.

It’s also worth remembering that all four men were producing their greatest works around the same time on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Theirs was the golden age of worldbuilding, and it’s practically impossible for today’s writer of the fantastic not be influenced by their work, consciously or through osmosis. But to fully appreciate modern genre fiction, it’s to our advantage to drink deeply from their bibliographies.

Because genre fiction doesn’t always mean science fiction and fantasy.

As I noted in my review of The Revenant and the Cult - Book One: The Missing Spy, that story draws heavily from western tropes. Howard, always one to blaze his own trails, also dabbled in Lovecraft’s mythos, but before taking his own life seemed to be moving into writing cowboy stories. He was a Texan, after all. Unlike many authors, he was never satisfied staying in category for too long. 

With his series, Hunter is doing something similar, but different.

Tolkien’s work may be the pinnacle of fantasy writing and the standard to which all fantasy writers are held, as well as the guiding influence of Hunter’s work. But with The Terror in the Wychwood, he again draws heavily from his American brethren. In this story our main trio, Halsedric, Herodiani, and Roe must traverse through a swampy forrest of Lovecraftian horrors, fighting through hoards Frank Frazetta would have been happy to depict.

Two words: Moonlight Hunters.

But while Conan believed in Crom, an absent god who took little interest in the lives men, and Lovecraft only wrote of terrible Ancient Ones who would wipe out humanity like stepping on insignificant ants, Halsedric has a relationship with his Allfather. There is incredible evil in this world, but there is also an all-powerful good, and our hero is His representative. One need not believe in God to appreciate the story, as it’s never preachy, but it’s a fearless attempt to stand alongside all the works that inspired it.

Christian and otherwise, alike.

As the series has gone on, Hunter’s writing has only gotten richer. The books fly by and are pleasant reading, even with the elevated style of the classics. Anyone looking for the pulp violence of Howard, with the weird of Lovecraft, the tenderness of Lewis, and the worldview of Tolkien will feel right at home.

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