The Essential Change Chris Pine Wanted For His Dungeons & Dragons Character [Exclusive]
A lot of the appeal of "Dungeons & Dragons" rests upon having a dynamic cast of characters. If you are playing in a D&D campaign and all of your characters have the same personality or skill set, it's going to get boring really fast. It's also important to create characters that maybe don't reflect your personal attributes or desires. After all, it's a role-playing game. What fun is it to play someone just like you?
This same appeal is also at the center of "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," the roleplaying game's first big screen venture in over twenty years. In keeping with universal campaign tradition, it features a ragtag group of adventurers as they embark on a seemingly impossible mission. The head of this group is the thieving bard Edgin (Chris Pine), whose relentless optimism may or may not get him into trouble. /Film's Bill Bria recently got to speak with Pine about his character, where he revealed that he could've ended up very differently on screen.
"I think originally he may have skewed a bit more roguish," the actor said, "not in terms of the character, roguish in terms of kind of gruff and easily frustrated, let's say. I guess what I found in reading it was I found Edgin to be really bright and kind of buoyant."
Slaying expectations
What Chris Pine read in the "Honor Among Thieves" script wasn't snarky or meta — which, as you can imagine, proved different from the vision of co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Hey, sometimes that happens, and in the case of "Honor Among Thieves," it was for the best. Pine explained to them how he saw the character, which led to Edgin becoming less of a brooding criminal and more of an "aw, shucks" family man:
"He's the guy that always sees the silver lining. He's the guy where, no matter if there's a mudslide in the backyard of your party, it's like, 'Let's go swim in the mudslide.' There's always something positive to find in the thing. Once I found that entry point into the character, it really made a lot of sense to me. I don't think I'd seen a character like that in a while."
Even if you are among the many that have yet to see "Honor Among Thieves," you can likely tell how good of a decision this was. It's easy to categorize Pine as a no-nonsense and tough leader — after all, among his most famous roles is that of Captain Kirk in the "Star Trek" reboot trilogy. By having Edgin be a light-hearted and optimistic bard with thieving tendencies, the film exceeds expectations just like a good D&D campaign does. Let this be an important lesson for both players and non-players alike: don't be afraid to get different with your character, because you could have a lot more fun in the process.
"Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" arrives in theaters on March 31.