On March 30, 2023, the fantasy spectacle “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” started in German cinemas. “LOL” star Rick Kavanian speaks five different characters in the blockbuster, who are supposed to help the hero group in their search for a magical artifact.
MOVIE STARTS editor Stefan Geisler was able to talk to the comic ace about the fascinating world of “D&D,” brains running, owl bears, and the dubbing challenge that such an unusual cast of characters brings.
Rick Kavanian: The special thing is that they are dead and then they have to be brought back to life very neatly with the right spell. Then – and this is very important and I also liked it: that they have to be put back clean so that they can rest in peace afterwards.
Rick Kavanian: I was shown the fragment in advance in a zoom meeting and was quite confident and thought: “Yes, of course. That’s how I do it!” But then I was standing in the dubbing studio and the first thing I realized was, “Oh, that won’t be so easy!” Luckily we had a really good dubbing director and with him I really got the voices worked out, which meant a lot of trying out. [imitiert eine Stimme]does this work [imitiert eine andere Stimme]? And then we put that on the picture and checked if it fit.
That was not easy, because these characters are in dialogue with each other in the flashbacks, so that you hear two people at the same time. Also, of course, I didn’t want Rick Kavanian to be heard directly, because we wanted to tell the characters, and these five also had to sound like five different characters. That was quite a challenge. We had to try it out
Rick Kavanian: No, I don’t know much about it, I’ve never played it, but that’s what I find so successful about the film. I thought beforehand that there might be one or two references that I don’t understand, but without being familiar with this world you can enjoy the film quite nicely.
It opens up a beautiful, lush, colorful world full of imaginative creatures. There are a lot of great scenes: in one the main characters push themselves against a wall in a mountain to avoid detection and then suddenly the brain rushes past them. I thought to myself, “How awesome is that?!”
This incredible fantasy got me excited – and then I heard that from some of the people who play it. In this world you can easily make things up. It’s great that there is a game where you can let your imagination run wild.
Rick Kavanian: That’s a good question that I can’t answer honestly. I don’t know why some genres suddenly cease to exist, but others are much more common. I didn’t miss this genre at all before, but now that it’s back, it’s great. It’s all so refreshingly different, I discovered things I didn’t know before. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a voice in the movie: but right after I saw it, I just thought, where is the second part now?
Rick Kavanian: I already mentioned the brain, but there are really a lot of them. I’m also a little jealous of such cool ideas. This owl bear transformation [Anm.: eine Figur, halb Bär und halb Eule] for example is so well done – it really makes my heart race. Or this evil wizard [Anm.: Sofina, gespielt von Daisy Head] with their smoking stories – you could say “Smoke is old fashioned” but smoke can also be bad and it looks damn good here.
Rick Kavanian: The fat dragon is amazing, he’s so funny…