The multi-billion-dollar gaming industry has been a source of envy and frustration in Hollywood for decades.
These games look so much like movies already, with their fantasy titles, their heroes’ journeys, their sci-fi Star Wars settings.
And yet every time they try to covert a game into an actual film, it falls apart in their hands. Until now.
A TV series called The Last Of Us has just turned a PlayStation video game into a small screen sensation.
Photo: screenshot
And now the daddy of all role-playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, has overcome several false starts to become a hit movie.
So why did this one – subtitled Honour Among Thieves – succeed where all the others were hated by gamers and film-fans alike?
The answer seems to be for the same reason the very first Star Wars – you know, Chapter 4 – was the only one that was much fun. It’s got charm.
Honour Among Thieves opens, unsurprisingly, in a dungeon. There we meet two cellmates – played by Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez – who are going to have to escape soon, or there’s not much of a movie.
They do, but there’s an appealing switch. Rodriguez is the tough warrior. Pine is more the fast-talking planner type – Butch Cassidy to her Sundance Kid.
They briefly flash back to what got them in this predicament. Their original henchmen - including a slippery Hugh Grant - let them down.
And when our two heroes manage to escape, they discover dodgy Hugh has not only stolen their loot but has also kidnapped Chris’s daughter. There’s also magic malfeasance aplenty…
Now if you know anything about Dungeons and Dragons – and this next bit is just about all I know about Dungeons and Dragons – you’ll know they’ll have to form a new gang, all with different powers, then go from level to level until they achieve whatever it is they need to achieve.
I also know it takes hours and hours – sometimes all weekend. And I didn’t need the TV series Stranger Things to tell me how obsessive Dungeons fans can get. I used to live next door to one.
But before we can employ various sorcerers, druids and paladins, we need Grant to establish his villainy, and he grabs it with both hands.
After years of playing various silly asses in undemanding romcoms, Grant has discovered his true calling.
He's terrific in this. But the secret of the unexpected success of Dungeons and Dragons – and no-one was more surprised than me – is that everyone else is pretty good in it too.
Rodriguez is always reliable. She seems to have cornered the market in tough broads who never find love, and she’s the other best thing in Dungeons and Dragons.
But so is Pine, whose charm often eluded me until now. He’s great in a goofy, young Harrison Ford sort of way here.
It’s light, it’s got good enough characters, it’s mostly treated as comedy, but it’s got enough heart and soul to make it mean something.
It’s also – unusually for an effects-based film like this – noticeably well directed by co-writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.
It’s pretty obvious that everyone – with the possible exception of Grant – realised pretty early on that Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves was a cut above.
Not only was it getting quite a few things right, it was also not getting the usual things wrong.
So, the last ten minutes or so is spent clearing the decks for a profitable sequel.
In some ways this is a bit of a shame. Yes, the follow-ups will make money, but the usual law of sequels – not a patch on the original – is probably inevitable.
Still, if you’re in the right frame of mind, I suggest you enjoy the original and ignore all the rest. And you don’t even have to throw the oddly-shaped dice!
