John Wick 4 versus Dungeons & Dragons. Let battle commence...
My birthday. A last-minute trip to the cinema. Son moaning that John Wick 4 is also on, “Why do we have to go and see something so sad?”
Off the back of lots of forum banter, especially post-WotC OGL 1.blah, “I want it to fail!”, I had little to no expectations, but a round of Wicksian violence on a happy day meant D&D won out.
But would John Wick have a final say in all of this?!
I mean my birthday is 31st March, so I owe it to the producers of this to give it a go. Firstly, we sit through some interminable trailers, mainly for remakes, video game franchises or sequels, it’s depressing.
The movie starts, and the cinema is unexpectedly hushed, mainly full of school kids, I reckon in the young teenage group, who seem pretty excited. Then there are a few grey-haired, middle-aged, bespectacled men and one 19-year-old, who is scowling, slumped low in his seat and dextrously typing a message with his thumb.
We open with a prisoner (Orc or Ogre?) being delivered to a towering, remote prison. Switch to the Ogre-Orc entering the cell of the “heroes”, a bard and a barbarian. This neatly sets the dynamic between the two and throws in a few laughs. Okay, I’m not hating this. Then the two are up before the parole board and this allows the backstories to play out, some nice special effects kick in with the time freeze spell and then we’re back in the room and a daring escape from the prison, “Johnathan!”. As opening scenes go, it is clever, funny, dramatic, sad and above all entertaining.
I won’t do a scene-by-scene review, but it follows a familiar path, revenge against the friend that betrayed them, an errant father winning back a daughter a bunch of misfits coming together as a team … hold on, hold on this doesn’t feel like a D&D movie, where are all the monsters, spells, traps and ridiculously unpronounceable names, like Xzartlic of Mryn’enicjaly? Okay, they are there too, but they don’t dominate proceedings, there IS a story here even if it is quite simple and there are also plenty of likeable characters, if not overly complex; a widowed Bard with a ready quip, a lovelorn Barbarian with a potato fetish and a halfling ex, a Sorcerer with low self-esteem and overbearing ancestors, a humourless but heroic Paladin and an outcast Druid Tiefling who apparently breaks all the 5e rules on shape-changing. So. What.
Villains are well portrayed too, Hugh Grant oozes charisma, it’s hard to hate him, even if he is utterly selfish because he performs each dastardly deed with grace and charm. Then there is Sofina the Red Wizard of Thay the straight woman to Hugh Grant’s comedian, they neatly counterbalance each other, it’s clear Sofina hates him with a mighty passion but also needs him, she barely gets out a hiss to answer any of his questions. Also good to see Szass Tam. but mainly in the background, they don’t go kicking his arse all over the Forgotten Realms, he’s only ever in the backstory or glimpsed in the half-shadows.
So plenty of interesting characters to spin around the simple plot and some very cool devices, especially the portal wand, and a smattering of D&D monsters; Owlbear, Displacer Beasts, Gelatinous Cubes, Mimics, and mini Rust Beasts. It feels like this was thought out and developed on many levels and on the whole it works. I am not a D&D5e player, I played a lot as a kid, but quickly moved on to Call of Cthulhu and nowadays it’s mainly Investigative RPGs like Gumshoe. So I don’t really get any angst about the film not following the rules, that’s because it’s a movie and not a game and some of the stuff in the rules is dull and won’t appeal to people who don’t play D&D. Let‘s be honest WotC need this movie to appeal to people who don’t play D&D, that’s kind of the whole point of it.
Now, as we get to the final judgement, is John Wick 4 facing a losing battle, or will teen son proclaim him the winner…
So, as the credits roll, yes we did stick around to see fellow Grognard, Kinnygraham’s credits, “Crowd Third Assistant Director”, it was a very enjoyable and entertaining 2h14m with even a lump in the throat moment at the end and a fairly wide grin on the 19-year-old’s face next to me, “That was so much better than I thought it was going to be, it just looked like it was going to be a cheese-fest.” For me then, a solid 3.5 (possibly 4) out of 5. Later on that night, my son goes with friends to see the John Wick 4 movie…
The judgement; Dungeons &Dragons: Honour Among Thieves 1 John Wick 0.
Revenge of the Nerds!