Thoughts on the D&D movie.
Aug. 28th, 2023 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixI had some thoughts on "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves".
Spoilers follow.
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(Content note: Murdered character.)
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Trope: "The woman in the refrigerator". A woman is murdered so that a male character can have motivation and a tragic backstory. It bothered me. Some friends point out that it is less problematic here, because there are developed female characters, because the motivation moves away from this in the end, and because the death is ultimately used to highlight the importance of the woman who had raised Kira over the woman who had birthed her.
I liked that Holga's fight choreography (and a bit of wire work making her opponents fly away) emphasized her skill and strength, but not finesse and training. I could tell instantly that she was a barbarian, before they ever mentioned "Elk tribe".
OMG, Xenk. The overpowered NPC / DM PC. I love it. When he first revealed that he doesn't grasp colloquialisms, I wondered if they were going to code him as Autistic, but no. I later laughed as I realized that these are 5th Edition characters, and his character sheet simply has a line that says, "Flaw: Doesn't understand idioms". It's a great, totally harmless and ineffective flaw to give the flawless character. I had the feeling that "too heavy on exposition" was not the character's flaw, but the DM's.
The ways in which magical effects were envisioned were often creative and delightful. The displacer beast's mirror image, for example.
Of course I immediately recognized the D&D cartoon characters.
Me to Zimarra: "Okay, having played Portal, that Hither-Thither staff is a complete game changer." Zimarra (who had already seen it) managed not to give away that it would be.
Me, afterward: "Yeah, that staff is the sort of thing the DM regrets having given the players, and has to figure out how to take away from them, because they keep bypassing everything."
I kinda want to watch the final move of Xenk's knife fight in slow motion, to see if that escape from the mutual grab is realistic and is something that I could teach myself.
Spoilers follow.
...
...
(Content note: Murdered character.)
...
...
Trope: "The woman in the refrigerator". A woman is murdered so that a male character can have motivation and a tragic backstory. It bothered me. Some friends point out that it is less problematic here, because there are developed female characters, because the motivation moves away from this in the end, and because the death is ultimately used to highlight the importance of the woman who had raised Kira over the woman who had birthed her.
I liked that Holga's fight choreography (and a bit of wire work making her opponents fly away) emphasized her skill and strength, but not finesse and training. I could tell instantly that she was a barbarian, before they ever mentioned "Elk tribe".
OMG, Xenk. The overpowered NPC / DM PC. I love it. When he first revealed that he doesn't grasp colloquialisms, I wondered if they were going to code him as Autistic, but no. I later laughed as I realized that these are 5th Edition characters, and his character sheet simply has a line that says, "Flaw: Doesn't understand idioms". It's a great, totally harmless and ineffective flaw to give the flawless character. I had the feeling that "too heavy on exposition" was not the character's flaw, but the DM's.
The ways in which magical effects were envisioned were often creative and delightful. The displacer beast's mirror image, for example.
Of course I immediately recognized the D&D cartoon characters.
Me to Zimarra: "Okay, having played Portal, that Hither-Thither staff is a complete game changer." Zimarra (who had already seen it) managed not to give away that it would be.
Me, afterward: "Yeah, that staff is the sort of thing the DM regrets having given the players, and has to figure out how to take away from them, because they keep bypassing everything."
I kinda want to watch the final move of Xenk's knife fight in slow motion, to see if that escape from the mutual grab is realistic and is something that I could teach myself.
