Movie review: The Gamechangers

In the early 2000s, Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series, had their biggest success ever with Vice City, but also their greatest controversy when attorney Jack Thompson filed a lawsuit against them, Take Two and Sony claiming they were in-part responsible for Alabama teen Devin Moore's fatal shooting of three police officers. It was possibly the darkest period in gaming's history and despite Jack Thompson proving to be his own worst enemy, the stigma of the tragedy has lingered around Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games ever since. Now, the BBC have made a 90 minute docu-drama about these events, along with the subsequent Hot Coffee controversy surrounding Vice City's sequel, San Andreas.

Clearly, this has nothing to do with arcade games, but I thought I should cover it anyway because I am in a unique position in that I am a gamer, who grew up with GTA, but not a fan. I played the first game a fair bit, because it was unlike anything else around at the time, but I only played a demo of the lackluster sequel and never played GTA III, San Andreas or GTA V. I have put a few hours into Vice City and GTA IV, but they never held my attention. You see, I don't like gangsters. I find no joy in tales of exploitation, violence, trafficking and corruption for personal gain — in fact I find it all abhorrent. As such, neither gangster games nor movies appeal to me. I'm also a father, who has a duty of care to make sure his children only play age-appropriate games; I would not let my kids near GTA or anything else with similar levels of violence. With that declaration out of the way, let's get on with the review.

The Gamechangers stars Daniel Radcliffe as Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser and Bill Paxton as Florida attorney Jack Thompson. The story starts with a completely unbelievable fake news story about the hotly anticipated Vice City and how "Sam Houser's Rockstar Games" have made two top selling games in one year. It also shows footage of Vice City, with lots of random violence and vehicular murder. I recognise that this opening provides the setup most viewers need, but it is ridiculous for several reasons. First, television news never talks that enthusiastically about a video game release and second, the GTA series had not made that much of an impact on mainstream media at the time of Vice City's release — all the attention came later.

The first 10 mins of The Gamechangers alternates between Radcliffe's Houser as he instructs his team about his vision for San Andreas, Paxton's Thompson as he potters around his Florida home, being all homely and Christian, and Devin Moore (played by Thabo Rametsi) as he plays Vice City for hours on end. This eventually leads to Moore's shooting spree in the police station, followed by his theft of a police car (which is shot to look like a driving scene in GTA). On reading in the news that Moore compared life to a video game, Thompson embarks on taking down the makers of "murder simulator" Grand Theft Auto.  It also looks at the controversy San Andreas caused when hackers found hidden pornographic animations on the game disc (dubbed Hot Coffee), which Thompson used to bolster his campaign before his own misconduct got him disbarred. Along the way we get lots of shallow insights into the game making process, including the long hours, dedication and aspiration required of the developers and artists.

The importance of the word dramatisation here cannot be understated, as this is a completely unauthorised script, written without any contribution from either Rockstar or Thompson. It is based entirely on newspaper stories, court documents and interviews with "many of those involved", whatever that means. You'd have thought the powers that be at BBC would have shied away from a script that was simultaneously so lacking in substance and so steeped in potential controversy, but no, they just ploughed on ahead anyway. The result is a film that feels skin-deep and I came away feeling no more enlightened about the situation than I was reading the articles Kotaku and Gamespot ran at the time.

The other big problem for me is writer James Woods's clear bias towards Rockstar Games. By the 7 min mark, the film establishes Houser as a visionary, leading the charge to make serious, forward thinking video games that go beyond anything a movie can do and frames Thompson as a self-aggrandising puritan trying to enforce his vision of what's acceptable on the American youth. The film maintains this bias throughout, so any chance of it being taken seriously as an argument against the notion of violent video games causing violent behaviour is lost. As someone who loves games, I personally found this very disappointing, because whatever my feelings are about GTA, I genuinely do not believe a video game alone can cause anyone, let alone a child, to commit multiple homicides. That is not to say kids should get free-reign to play what they like, because there is still the issue of what's age appropriate.

In terms of performances, Radcliffe is fine with what little character Woods gave him and while Paxton has more to work with, his performance is a little OTT. The rest of the characters are utterly forgettable and we never get a clear insight into anybody's motivations, least of all Devin Moore's (Rametsi has less than a few minutes of dialogue from beginning to end). And finally, while the film is clearly on the side of the game makers for most of its 90 minute running time, it does something at the end which flips that on its head in an utterly stupid and crass way.

Verdict

The Gamechangers handles one of the few game development stories worth telling with too little depth, too much bias and too much fiction for the sake of drama to be enjoyable for gamers or taken seriously by anyone else. It seems the curse of adapting games into movies applies to documentaries as well as fantasies. 

If you haven't seen The Gamechangers and live in the UK, you can see it for yourself on iPlayer for the next few weeks. Here's the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06ccjn9/the-gamechangers

TV Review - Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist

What do video game movies and McDonald's breakfasts have in common? One you can only face when you're drunk and the other when you're hung over. I'll leave you to guess which one is which. Any Street Fighter fan who grew up in the 90s will remember the disastrous Jean Claude Van Damme movie. Superficially, it had lots of promise; it centred around Guile (played by JCVD) and his squadron of marines trying to take down Bison (played by the brilliant Raul Julia in his final role) and his Shadaloo organisation. Throw in Ming-Na as Chun Li (also on the hunt for Bison), Roshan Seth as Dhalsim, Wes Studi as Sagat and a young Kylie Minogue as Cammy and you'd be forgiven for thinking it had a solid mix of physical prowess and acting chops. However, much like the Super Mario Bros movie of the previous year, Street Fighter: The Movie was so poorly executed and deviated so far from the source material, that fans were bitterly disappointed. We had to wait decade and a half for the next live action SF movie, but sadly, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (starring Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li, Taboo off of the Black Eyed Peas as Vega and not much else) was even worse. That said, by its release in 2009, gamers were used to bad movie adaptations, not least because of a certain German director.

When Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill rank among the better movies based on video games, we gamers have had little reason be hopeful about any others. So I was pleasantly surprised by Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist, a budget web series, which made its way to Netflix earlier this spring. On seeing the mock posters for Assassin's Fist one thing immediately caught my attention: it showcased Ryu and Ken, who have been sorely under utilised in any previous live action translation. Before watching it I looked it up online and discovered it was made by the same team that produced the 3 minute short, Street Fighter: Legacy, about five years ago. I did watch the short when it first came out, but it subsequently escaped by memory. If you haven't already seen Legacy, you can check that out here. But while that short showed the team had some physical talent and decent special effects, it was by no means proof they could pull off an actual story. But by being careful and restrained, I think they have done the impossible: make an authentic Street Fighter series that isn't completely corny.

As stories go, Assassin's Fist is a stripped back, bare bones affair. I suspect this was done for reasons of budget, but necessity is the mother of invention, so the result is a focussed tale of Ryu, Ken, their master Gouken and his brother Gouki, who is seduced by the dark power of Satsui no Hadou and becomes the demon Akuma. Although there are a few other characters in the show — most notably the old master Goutetsu and his daughter, Sayaka — there are no other characters from the games. 

Gouken teaches the kids how it's done

The story begins in 1987, with Ryu (played by Mike Moh) and Ken (played by Christian Howard) learning the martial art Ansatsuken (Assassin's Fist) under the guidance of a middle-aged Gouken (played by Akira Koieyama) at a dojo in the remote Japanese countryside. The show spends a little time explaining how the two friends ended up at the dojo, under Gouken's care and training, before getting meaty with the plot. 

When Ken starts complaining about the lack of progress in their training, Gouken takes the young men to the dojo where he and his brother trained, under Goutetsu (Togo Igawa), decades earlier. Here Gouken begins to teach them how to produce a Hadou (those annoying fireballs cheap players lob at you constantly). Before long, Ryu's is outpacing Ken, much to the frustration of the American fighter. Then one day, in a boarded up room of this old dojo, Ken discovers a book that explains how to perform the Satsui no Hadou. Gouken is no fool and on seeing Ken's new technique, he realises the boy must have uncovered something that should have stay buried. 

Ooh-ohwa your fist is on fi-yer!

This then leads to a long sequence of flashbacks, where we learn how the young Gouken (played by Shogen Itokazu) and Gouki (Gaku Space) are taken in by Goutetsu, after their father is killed in battle. Like Ryu and Ken, Gouken and his younger brother are torn between their love for one another and their rivalry. This rivalry extends to also winning the affection of Goutestu's daughter, Sayaka (Hyunri Lee). When his older brother proves himself to be the better warrior and the more eligible bachelor, Gouki is lured towards the darkside of Ansatsuken and the poisonous effects of Satsui no Hadou. This story then takes up the bulk of the series, with us only occasionally checking in on the boys in the white and red jammies. Assassin's Fist was originally released online last May as a series of shorts, but for the Netflix version it has been turned into a 2½ hour movie. While I've not seen the serial, I suspect it probably works better in that format than as a movie. For example, we spend a long time in a cave in the woods, as Gouki slowly transforms into Akuma (played by Joey Ansah). This is an important part of the Street Fighter canon, but viewing these slower paced pieces of exposition as stand alone 20 minute episodes may be an easier way to digest them, rather than slowing down an entire movie with scenes where not much is said or done.

Akuma meditates in a cave for much of the film

Overall, the script and acting are fine; they are a step up from any original content cooked up by the SyFy channel and miles ahead of any Uwe Bollocks. Howard and Moh are not the best actors by any means, but the script (written by Howard and Ansah) does not demand too much of them. In many ways, the true stars of the show are Koieyama/Itokazu, Space and Igawa, who benefit from being allowed to act in Japanese. This mix of English and Japanese also lends authenticity to the series, which it might not otherwise have had. Most importantly for fans of the games, the combat is well choreographed, with many key moves well represented - even if the shoryuken looks a little silly. 

What about non-SF fans, will they enjoy it? Maybe my love for the source material is clouding my judgement, but I think they might. It compares well with many of the epic martial arts movies that emerged following Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's release in 2000. So if you enjoyed that or films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers then you may well enjoy this too. The reason I say this is simple: at the heart of it all is a classic tale of love, rivalry, corruption and betrayal, which is are the cornerstones of so many other classic stories.

Highs

• Tight, focussed story that does not stretch itself too far
• Mostly great casting. Christian Howard's Ken is as good as I think we'll ever get.
• Great choreography that does the game's action justice
• Better acting than you might expect from a low budget web series
• The most authentic Street Fighter story to date

Lows

• The Gouken/Gouki flashbacks are a little long and may lose any non-SF fans along the way
• Mix of languages may put off lazy viewers
• Ken's hair piece

Verdict

Proof stories from games can be translated to movies/TV series and an interesting look into the core backstory of Capcom's iconic series. The convincing combat, focussed script and competent acting mean that this really feels like Street Fighter. 

Anyone on Netflix can get to the series using this link: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/80016891

Movie Review: Wreck-It Ralph 2D

I've been talking about Disney's movie homage to the days of arcade gaming, Wreck-it Ralph, since last autumn, but thanks to the differences in international release schedules, it's only just opened here in the UK. Yesterday, the wife, kids and I decided to go and see it.

Wreck-It Ralph wears its main plot thread right on its sleeve. At Litwak's Arcade, a TobiKomi Fix-It Felix Jr cabinet has been entertaining young gamers for three decades. Every day kids put in their quarters, watch the movie's titular hero, Ralph, smash up the Nicelanders' building, then proceed take control of the game's titular hero, Felix, to repair all the damage. When you complete the level, the inhabitants of the Niceland building grab Ralph, hurl him off the top of the building and the whole thing starts again — just like every great arcade game from the late 70s and early 80s. But bad guy, Ralph, doesn't want to be the bad guy any more, a feeling that's only amplified by the game's 30th anniversary.

Who says it's lonely at the top?

You see, much like Disney's other big video game inspired movie franchise, Tron, the characters inside all of the arcade machines at Litwak's are alive and much like yet another Disney franchise, Toy Story, when there are no players around, the game characters get up and live out a secret, alternative life, free from the rules of their actual game. Furthermore, and for reasons best not explored too deeply, these data people are able to move between games, courtesy of a circuit breaker to which all of their cabinets' power cables are connected. It is by this conceit that older gamers will get their geek and nostalgia overload.

Game Central Station or a circuit breaker to you and me

Any self-respecting arcade throwback will delight in pointing out all of the real arcade machines and their characters, as they enter and exit the train station-like circuit breaker. Q*Bert, Pac-Man, Tapper, Street Fighter II, Mario and Sonic are just some of the classic games and characters you'll see in this film, but they are far from the only ones. In fact, with the exception of Fix-It Felix Jr, Sugar Rush, Hero's Duty and Turbo Time, all of the games referenced in this film are (or in most cases, were) real games. While these references are only skin deep, some of them are so obscure that only the geekiest and oldest gamers in the audience will get them all. Basically, people like me. There's obviously a real love for arcade games here, but they don't over egg it, so non-gamers and kids who think gaming started with the Nintendo DS should still enjoy it. Nonetheless, there are a few gags that will ping right off the heads of most people. I doubt most people will get why Mr Litwak wears a referee shirt in the arcade. Not that all of the cameos are from games. Look out for a famous dubstep star DJing at one point, much like Daft Punk did in Tron Legacy.

Why is Zangief a bad guy? Communism? Is that what you're saying, Disney?

After attending Bad-Anon, a weekly support group for all of the games' villains, Ralph heads home to find the rest of the characters in his game are celebrating their anniversary. So Ralph crashes the party, much to their chagrin. After embarrassing himself, Ralph decides to prove he can be a hero by entering the hot new first person rail shooter, Hero's Duty, and winning a medal for heroism. And, with the setup complete, the movie begins its roller coaster ride through Hero's Duty and ends up in the Mario Kart-style, sickly sweet racing game, Sugar Rush. It's somewhat ironic that the movie actually spends most of its time inside the Sugar Rush universe, as Ralph tries to help an exiled racer named Vanellope von Schweetz finally win her first race.

A mixed-up racing kart for a mixed up film

In terms or subplots and supporting character development, there's actually a lot going on here, most of which is rather shallow and fails to really explore any of the issues they raise. This is partly due to the fact that, like a typical arcade game, there's very little time for the audience to catch their breath, as they are whisked along from set piece to set piece. The one that does work quite well is Vanellope's glitch, which presents itself like a combination between a nervious tick and epilepsy. This cute little character (voiced by Sarah Silverman) is shunned by the other racers because of her affliction, only for it to work in her favour towards the end. As the parents of an autistic child, this resonated with the wife and I, who know first hand both the highs and lows of having such a disability.

Overall, there's none of the depth of your typical Pixar or Studio Ghibli film here, but despite all the gaming references and shoe-horned branding, Wreck-It Ralph does have a bigger heart than, say Shrek, Madagascar or Ice Age. And it's certainly a class above the vast majority of kids CG animated movies. If, like me, you're an ageing gamer with young kids, you and your kids are bound to enjoy it, but I fear some people will be put off by the one-two punch of frequent gaming references in the first act and the multitude of sub-plots competing for attention for the rest of the film.

Oh and one last thing, my son has told me I can no longer eat Clyde when I play Pac-Man. Thanks, Disney.

MTW

Wreck-it Ralph games come to life

When I originally saw the trailer for Disney's Wreck-it Ralph, I thought, "Oh wow, that's an old game to suddenly make into a film." Of course, it wasn't, because the Fix-it Felix Jr. game that features in the movie didn't exist before the movie. However, Disney went to extraordinary lengths to make it seem like a real old arcade machine, even going so far as to make a batch of arcade cabinets, complete with battered veneer. They even came up with a fake arcade manufacturer for it - TobiKomi.

Chances are you'll never see an actual Fix-it Felix cabinet, but thankfully you can play the game through your browser on Disney's website. It's a suitably simple, repetitive and addictive little game. Check out the link below:

http://www.disney.co.uk/disney-games/play/wreck-it-ralph

But that's not all, they also made commercials for all three of the fake arcade games that feature in the movie, so along with Felix-it Felix, there's Sugar Rush, a Mario Kart-style cute racing game, supposedly from 1997, and Hero's Duty, a light gun game from 2012 that seems to play like Time Crisis meets Starship Troopers. Check them all out below:

Gotta love the subtle references to inflation and the changing nature of arcades they've slipped into all three commercials.

Wreck-it Ralph is coming to UK cinemas on the 8th February.

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Sources:

• http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/06/disney-wreck-it-ralph-e3/
• http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/press_releases/archive/2012/10/19/wreck-it-ralph-litwak-s-arcade-commercials-fix-it-felix-jr-sugar-rush-and-hero-s-duty.aspx

Wreck-It Ralph

Disney's Wreck-It Ralph is an upcoming 3D animated movie about the baddie from a fictional arcade game called Fix-It Felix, who declares at his local Bad-Anon meeting that he does not want to be a bad guy any more — much to the chagrin of Clyde the orange ghost, Bowser, Dr Eggman, M. Bison and Zangief. Yes, you just read that list right and they are far from the only arcade and video game references in this trailer. In fact the references go so far back into the annals of gaming history, it makes me think this has been made by people with a genuine love for the medium. Dad's like me will certainly appreciate the fact they have kids young enough to justify going to see this when it comes out later this month.

MTW

Movie review: Tron Legacy

The Tron arcade game was one of my formative arcade experiences. I first played it in a neon-lit arcade on a caravan site by the sea when I was 9 years-old. All the other games in the arcade were great, from Centipede to Pac-Man to Time Pilot, but Tron looked like something straight out of my sci-fi fantasies. It was a perfect storm of age, imagination, atmosphere and location. Despite seeing the trailers, I didn't see the film until a few years later. It didn't disappointment and much like Last Star Fighter it felt like a glimpse into the future of gaming. Now, almost 30 years later, Disney have released the long-awaited sequel, but in a world where high definition gaming and 3D movies are common place, has Tron lost its edge? Given I don't normally have an excuse to review movies, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Bruce Boxleitner, still a
handsome SoB

The plot to the original movie film was little more than window dressing and the same can be said for the sequel. Following the events of the first film, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) takes over ENCOM International and makes it the most successful software company in the world, partly due to his games, including one based on the heroic Tron program, who helped him escape the binary clutches of the errant Master Control Program. Despite his success, he continues to visit the computer world within the company's mainframes. With help from Tron and also his own CLU program, Flynn builds a grand new world inside the mainframe. Then then one day in 1989, he mysteriously disappears, leaving his friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and his young son, Sam (Owen Best/Garrett Hedlund) behind. As the decades roll by, Alan and Sam take a back seat in the running of the company, but it's clear neither of them have forgotten about Flynn Senior. So when Alan gets a message from Flynn that apparently came from his old office at the (now abandoned) arcade, he sends Sam to investigate. Sure enough, the arcade is empty, but when he goes to play a Tron machine, Sam discovers his dad's old tales of the world of Tron were real.

Flynn's Arcade, mothballed like most arcades these days

And so, as you might expect and have probably worked out from the trailers, Sam ends up in that same world, which is now under the control of Kevin Flynn's doppelganger, the program known as CLU. This is a bigger, brasher adventure in the world of Tron, starting with a gladiatorial battle which makes the games in the original seem... well, like Gun Smoke compared to Call of Duty. Sam is not alone in this world and soon meets a program called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who is your typical free-spirited femme fatale — and rather pleasant to look at in her tight, black plastic leggings. Ahem. Together they battle CLU's drones and uncover the plot that lead Sam into this world and the mystery behind Kevin Flynn's disappearance.

Sam and Quorra go for a drive in one of Legacy's many new vehicles

The first thing to be said about this film is that it looks gorgeous — even when Quorra's not in shot. There are no Star Wars prequel-like redesigns, that effectively ret con the whole aesthetic of the original. Instead, it looks precisely like a HD version of the original, with the changes to things like the light cycles being respectful towards their ancestry. What is disappointing is the 3D. In a world of such stark contrasts, it seems the 3D technology fails to provide much depth perception. Basically, there's no enough detail to actually give the scenery and characters much visual depth, unlike Avatar, which is a rich, colourful and densely populated world. What's even better than the visuals is the music, provided by French house masters, Daft Punk. They even make a cameo, in what for me is the best scene in the film.

When Flynn makes an opportune appearance in that same digital night club, just as Sam and Quorra about about to get their hides tanned, I genuinely had a little bit of a nerdgasm. Overall, the acting is a little flat; Hedlund is your typical pretty-but-bland Hollywood actor, who is outshone by every other actor in the film, including Wilde. The best performance is probably given by Micheal Sheen, who plays club owner Castor, but then Sheen is one of those actors who always delivers the goods.

If you're going into this with a love of the original, but at the same time accept that it was a rough diamond, I reckon you'll enjoy this follow up. It's far from perfect and could actually be accused of being a little unambitious, but it isn't the sort of train wreck we've seen in recent years when people have tried to cash in on classic films (Lucas, Wachowski brothers, I'm looking at you!). For everyone else, it's one of those films where the trailer tells you everything you'd need to know, both about the world of Tron and whether or not it's for you.

And because the soundtrack is so brilliant, here's Daft Punk's single from the OST, "Derezzed".

MTW