I love movies. I love video games. I’ve found the instances where those two passions intersect are not often compelling to me, but I recognize that I’m in the minority there. My dilemma is that it’s my subjective experience that I want reflected back to me, and that’s just not how most people experience games.
I mean at the time when I embarked on this project, there were plenty of movies that featured video game themes and narratives. The issue of successfully adapting video game narratives to the screen has finally been successfully tackled - twice now (arguably) by LAST OF US on HBO and FALLOUT on Amazon. I think a lot of that EVER being an issue was a general lack of respect in the wider culture for the video game medium. Comic books suffered from the same adaptation crisis until Chris Nolan made THE DARK KNIGHT and blew the doors off the comic book adaptation market, Marvel moving deftly into that space and cleaning up shortly thereafter.
But I don’t have a relationship with narrative gaming, or at least didn’t until VERY recently. I love arcade-style gaming, which is an antique game mode that isn’t particularly popular right now, and even if it was it doesn’t really translate well as a movie. There were some bold attempts back in the day - TRON leaps to mind, and while I know more than a few people who love THE LAST STAR FIGHTER, it leaves me a bit cold.
My biggest complaint about READY PLAYER ONE was how it painted over the arcade gaming tropes of the source novel which was specifically basted with 1980s popular culture. All that is gone from the movie. It creates its own set of tropes to appeal to a market that has no memory of the past popular culture and attempts to substitute more contemporary gaming experiences. Sure, fair enough, that makes financial sense, but then again none of that is what I loved about the book. It was all massively disrespectful, though I’m sure Ernest Cline sobbed all the way to the bank.
(There’s a key scene in the book that involves Atari’s TEMPEST arcade game. It was a big bummer to me that wasn’t included in the movie, but it was pretty obvious after the first scene of the movie that fidelity to the novel wasn’t what this film was about).
Anyway, in the newsletter I wrote back in 2020 I was wrestling with this movie/video game dilemma. I was becoming aware I still had some due diligence to do with respect to video game movies, and so I came up with this:
October 4, 2020
I wanted to get back into talking on Twitter about video games as they relate to movies. I’m a filmmaker, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at my Twitter feed most of the time. So to promote the idea of video game/feature film harmony I’m pairing movies for a documentary/narrative feature double bill every weekend for the next month or so, and writing little mini-reviews/reactions in these newsletters. And I’m NOT talking about movies based on video game narratives - no DOOM or RESIDENT EVIL here. Lots of people talk about that, you don’t need me telling you how awful they are. This will be strictly movies about gaming, or featuring gaming and gaming technology prominently.
It was quite an adventure, and while the list of films I screened was far from exhaustive, it was certainly eclectic and full of surprises. I don’t have the time or inclination to share all the reviews I wrote here, but I encourage the curious to subscribe to the HEART OF NEON newsletter where all the reviews are available in the newsletter archive:
(each double bill is listed as narrative feature film / feature documentary)
newsletter #54 : THE WIZARD / THE POWER OF GLOVE
newsletter #55 : NOOBZ / ALL WORK ALL PLAY
newsletter #56 : JOYSTICKS / THE KING OF KONG
newsletter #57 : WARGAMES / GET LAMP
newsletter #58 : ANGRY VIDEO GAME NERD: THE MOVIE / ATARI: GAME OVER
newsletter #59 : ARCADE / THE LOST ARCADE
newsletter #60 : HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER / THE NAME OF THE GAME
newsletter #61 : GAMER / FIRST PERSON SHOOTER
newsletter #62 : BEN X / INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE
newsletter #63 : BEST PLAYER / THANK YOU FOR PLAYING
newsletter #65 : WRECK IT RALPH / VIDEO GAMES: THE MOVIE
newsletter #66 : TRON / THE LIVING ROOM WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: HARDCORE HISTORY OF ONLINE GAMING
newsletter #69 : PIXELS / FROM BEDROOMS TO BILLIONS
There’s a lot to enjoy in this list. You should find out for yourself : )