Chris Pine, Regé-Jean Page, Michelle Rodriguez & More | 'Dungeons & Dragons' Interviews
The cast and filmmakers behind the “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” movie, including Chris Pine (Edgin), Regé-Jean Page (Xenk), Michelle Rodriguez (Holga), Justice Smith (Simon), Sophia Lillis (Doric), John Francis Daley (Writer/Director/Executive Producer), and Jonathan Goldstein (Writer/Director/Executive Producer) join CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell to nerd out about the fantasy adventure. Watch as they discuss, delivering a DnD movie fans can be proud of, learning all of the game’s jargon, and… a “Fast and Furious” crossover?!
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 - Hello boys, how are you?
00:00 - Hey Sean. - Hey Sean.
00:02 - Good to see you.
00:02 - It's going pretty good, Sean, how are you?
00:05 - Really good now that I have this croissant.
00:07 - Yeah. - Wonderful.
00:08 (upbeat music)
00:11 - So I saw Tom Morello's name in the credits,
00:18 and I'm a huge "Rage Against the Machine" fan.
00:21 I know he's a huge player, but I didn't see him.
00:24 - You didn't see him. - Is he in there?
00:24 - You didn't see him. - Is he on your sink?
00:25 What happened? - It's a bit of a blink
00:26 and you miss it. - You blinked.
00:28 - Yeah, that was something that came together
00:30 through our amazing producer, Jeremy Latcham,
00:33 who worked with him on "Iron Man" back in the day.
00:36 We knew that Tom was a huge fan of D&D,
00:38 and we thought it'd be fun to put him in the movie.
00:40 - He's in the stands, and there's a single of him
00:43 at one point. - Is it really?
00:44 - The boy from "Belfast" is in the stands as well,
00:46 but you could just hit the spot.
00:47 - Well, that's what I was gonna ask.
00:49 Did you get approached by a bunch of celebrities
00:51 who loved playing, that just wanted a part?
00:53 - Not so much, because I don't think they knew yet
00:55 what it was gonna be, and they're so worried
00:59 about somebody doing the wrong version
01:01 of their beloved game. - Defiling what they have.
01:04 And it is a fair concern, I think,
01:09 among the D&D community.
01:11 It's such a beloved franchise, such a beloved world,
01:14 and we knew that we had to take it seriously,
01:17 and it was our responsibility to do its service.
01:20 - I will not be complicit in the omniscient use
01:22 of ill-gotten booty.
01:23 Your character has what I can only describe as jargon,
01:27 like so much technical jargon.
01:29 (laughing)
01:30 Was it harder to learn than just normal dialogue?
01:32 - Ridiculously hard to learn.
01:34 This was Jonathan absolutely sending me--
01:34 - Have you retained any of it?
01:35 Have you retained any of it?
01:37 - No, it went straight in one ear and out the other.
01:39 There's no way I'm holding onto that in my soul.
01:41 They can't burden me with those pages and pages
01:44 of jargon text.
01:46 Follow me to the orifice.
01:47 ♪ Back to school again ♪
01:49 - The orifice?
01:50 - They hit me, I remember that bridge scene
01:53 that we've put out where I'm just kinda hitting jargon
01:55 for like a minute, and I remember sweating through that
01:58 'cause they made me do it in a one-er.
01:59 - The bridge is protected by an ancient trap.
02:02 We must not trigger the mechanism.
02:04 - And I remember paying it straight back,
02:05 'cause I remember Justice was really enjoying
02:07 watching me sweat, and so there's a death stare
02:09 that I give him right at the end when he sets this trap off.
02:13 - I may have triggered the mechanism.
02:16 - And that was just kind of--
02:17 (laughing)
02:18 That was me enjoying myself as payback for all the jargon.
02:21 It's just like, well, I gave you the answers
02:23 and you didn't listen, so now let's see
02:25 if you can get through this take without laughing
02:26 while I'm right here, a meter away.
02:29 - I had to do it in an accent, which was crazy.
02:32 It was actually, it was actually fine.
02:37 It wasn't that hard.
02:39 My jargon specifically was on my spellcasting,
02:43 and the beauty about the spellcasting
02:46 was that the words actually had
02:50 a grammatical structure to them.
02:52 Our dialect coach, Brandon Gunn,
02:56 he invented this language and it had consistency throughout,
03:00 as well as the Thayan language that Safina uses.
03:03 Like, places and names of people, and yes,
03:07 that was quite difficult to do.
03:11 Specifically, hither thither staff--
03:13 - Hither thither.
03:14 - Is a tongue twister.
03:15 - Hither thither.
03:16 I didn't have to say it much, so I was off the hook.
03:18 - Hither thither staff.
03:19 - Hither thither.
03:20 - Staff.
03:21 - Hither thither.
03:22 - There you go.
03:22 - Hither thither.
03:23 - Hither thither.
03:24 - Hither thither staff.
03:25 - Hither thither.
03:26 - Hither thither.
03:27 - Hither thither.
03:27 - What is that again?
03:29 - This movie is full of movie moments,
03:31 which I love, where you're reading it
03:32 and you know exactly, you've seen it a bunch of times,
03:36 or you know what the camera's gonna do,
03:38 and some actors chafe at that.
03:40 I happen to really love it,
03:42 'cause it's a meta moment when I'm an actor doing it,
03:47 reminding myself of all the actors I remember watching
03:50 growing up doing the same moment,
03:52 and much is due to my fascination and supplication
03:57 before the man that is Harrison Ford.
04:00 So I own a tribute.
04:03 You know, Edgen is very much of an archetypal type of hero.
04:08 He's Mr. Positive most of the time,
04:11 and I always come back to the moment
04:13 of where Harrison is faced with a guy
04:16 that's doing all sorts of fancy knife work,
04:18 and then he shoots him.
04:20 It's akin to that, you know?
04:23 - Yeah, absolutely.
04:23 - Oh dude, I totally see the Indiana now.
04:26 Oh, I'm not gonna get that out of my head, that's awesome.
04:29 - That's what I've been saying!
04:31 - It helps when it's Chris Pine doing it.
04:33 - Or Jesse Plemont.
04:34 - The guy is a master, and we would not have had the film
04:37 that we are so proud of if Chris Pine weren't at the helm.
04:41 Not at the helm, but he was at the forefront.
04:44 - He also plays the lute.
04:45 - Not relevant.
04:46 - Michelle, you can only greenlight one of these pitches.
04:50 Do you write Letty into the next D&D movie,
04:53 or do you drop Holga into the next Fast and Furious?
04:56 - I'd say drop Holga into the next Fast and Furious.
05:00 It's a lot more interesting.
05:01 (laughing)
05:03 - Oh my God.
05:04 - Oh, we got him now!
05:06 - I think she would be lost without her crew, man.
05:09 Like, I think we'd need to open a portal
05:13 from the Dungeons of world into one of these franchises.
05:18 I think there's nowhere to go once you reach the top
05:21 in these ten poles, then to merge.
05:23 - Yeah, exactly.
05:24 - You know, it's just like.
05:26 - Well, how do we pull that off?
05:28 - Figure it out over a drink?
05:30 - Probably best.
05:31 - I was really impressed with the visual effects.
05:32 I can't believe how good that they look.
05:33 I didn't expect to going into this somewhat comedy
05:36 to be as impressed as I was by the different set pieces.
05:39 I want to know which one you spent the most time on
05:42 in the editing room.
05:43 Which one do you think you just toiled over
05:45 to make sure that it looked as good as it possibly could?
05:47 - I think that would be the Doric one-er
05:49 where she's changing into different animals
05:51 and being chased out of the castle.
05:53 - Yeah, it was similar to the one-er that we had
05:56 in Game Night where they're chasing the Fabergé egg.
05:59 We knew we wanted this like fully immersive moment
06:02 in the film and nothing better than through the sort
06:05 of perspective of this character that can turn
06:08 into different animals depending
06:10 on what environment they're facing.
06:12 - And is it one of those situations
06:13 where the visual effects really weren't coming together
06:15 until the very, very end on this picture?
06:17 - In some ways.
06:18 I mean, some of them were good early on.
06:19 Some of them, it took right up even past the point
06:23 where we were supposed to be done and we were like,
06:24 give us another week.
06:25 And, you know, we're real sticklers for that stuff.
06:29 And so we would always want even more time,
06:32 but ultimately we came together.
06:34 It was, you know, visual effects community
06:37 is such a hardworking group of people
06:39 that are underappreciated.
06:40 So we just have to tip our hats to the hundreds of people
06:45 that spent hundreds of hours bringing this thing to life
06:48 and making it, you know, the epic that it is.
06:51 - This is unlike anything we've ever seen.
06:53 - So I was watching a lot of interviews
06:55 that you guys have been doing in the run-up
06:56 to the release of this movie.
06:57 And you said something about the game where you said,
06:59 you're not doing it right unless you get it wrong,
07:01 which I thought was really interesting.
07:02 Cause I'm wondering if that applies to acting as well too.
07:05 - 100%, 100% you're not doing it right
07:08 unless you get it wrong.
07:09 I remember my professors when I was training
07:11 used to tell me off for this.
07:12 They'd be like, your first instincts are strong,
07:15 but you're never going to get to the magic stuff
07:17 unless you break from that and play around
07:19 in the risky things where things can go really wrong.
07:22 So that's one of the strongest lessons I ever learned
07:23 as an actor, because if you hang on too tight
07:26 to just what's correct, you miss out on all the really fun,
07:31 magic, unexpected stuff.
07:32 That's very much, I think, half the joke with Zank,
07:35 half the joke of playing the shiny armored,
07:38 perfect knight in this movie.
07:40 Is that he holds on for dear life to just what is right,
07:43 what is in a straight line towards righteousness.
07:46 And he misses out on all the glorious chaos and pathos
07:49 and heart that's happening around him.
07:52 And I think that's part of the lesson.
07:53 It's about the fact that plan A is never the whole world.
07:58 You gotta go through plan A, B, C, and D
08:00 to discover who you are and who your friends are
08:02 and how to really be a hero, you know?
08:04 - Sounds lovely.
08:06 - Quite the opposite.
08:07 - I know I was being ironic.
08:09 - I find irony is a blade that cuts
08:10 he who wields it most especially.
08:12 - You're not a lot of fun, are you?
08:14 (dramatic music)
08:17 (dramatic music)
08:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]