Be forewarned. There are some spoilers ahead. So if you still plan on seeing the flick and want to be “surprised”, I’d wager you’d want to stop reading right about now.
Still with me? Alright, let’s get started.
In a future that is not too far off from our present, there is a gaming craze that sweeps the world ‘Society’. Imagine a Sims that is made up of real people controlled by other real people. Think about the first time you played The Sims and made a room with no doors, or started a fire with no way to extinguish it, or made them run around when they had to use the bathroom until they made an embarrasing Sim-mess on the floor – yeah, ‘Society’ is a world, constructed by twisted creator Ken Castle, that functions on the premise of, “you can get paid to be controlled, or pay to control someone else.” This is a Second Life that is drenched in decadent inhibitions, a Sims expansion in the San Pornando Valley, what Sony’s Home would be if re-imagined by Hustler magazine. Now I can already see some of you with raised eyebrows, curious and interested, and before you allow your imagination to run wild the movie presents itself with who sits behind two of these avatars. Without getting too detailed.. Do you remember the advesary that the kids on South Park fought in the World of Warcraft episode? No? Do you remember the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons? No? Then imagine every stereotype of the 600 pound guy living at home controlling the hot women avatar… Imagine him with no shirt. Imagine him saturated with sweat, while double dipping waffle sandwiches (with waffle centers) in some sort of syrup and muck confection. Got the image yet?
No? Then go see the movie. It waits for you. It’s breathing heavily. Right now. For you.
Anywho – Castle, having become a triple googlionaire almost overnight, has crafted a new game – ‘Slayer’ and this takes the foundation of ‘Society’ and adds what can only be described as the most visceral game of Counter-Strike/Call of Duty every conieved. So visceral that it somehow wanders into parody – this interactove experience has it all for the modern gamer. Full and complete HUD with everything from combo counters to the usual ammo and kill count areas. What this game has that your prestige edition of Modern Warfare 2 will not have is live human players. That’s right, as the trailers and movie posters imply, the gamer is controlling a death row inmate given the chance for freedom dubbed, and I swear to you this is the truth, an "i-Con." I will allow you several moments to take that in. Mmm. Yes.
Our hero, so to speak, Kable, played by Gerard Butler (who is “kicking more butt than he did 300 hundred years ago” says the trailer) is controlled by Simon, a trust fund enabled 17 year old self-described BAMF, and together they romp through the levels populated by NPCs (who are played by other inmates and instead of having to win thirty games to freedom only need to survive one) and other nastiness. I would dare say they have pioneered the 2nd Person Shooter somehow through all of this. In any case, they begin to unwravel a darker and more sinister scenario at work with the help of the resistance group ‘Humanz’ led by Ludacris. And part of the final battle culminates in a musical number led by the sinister Castle while he uses his jazz hands to evil effect. Yes. There is a musical number and he dispatches his West Side Stor minions while singing Sinatra and he has jazz hands. You should probably see the movie on the merits of the jazz hands alone.
Did 300 have jazz hands?
While I won’t give any more of the initial plot away except to say that Butler is trying to get his wife and daughter back (as per the hero’s quest in these types of situations) and he slaughters many to get to that point. And here’s where the meat of this review is revealed. There’s no doubt that there are plenty of people who are going to be entertained by this movie. It’s an entertaining movie for the most part – whether it is entertaining for the right reasons is debatable. I enjoyed the fact that it sought to raise some questions concerning the state of gaming and the potential trends of the future. However, the movie was not equipped – due to run time and presentation among other things – to really answer any of those questions effectively, or even to care about answering them at all.
What if we were in a position to be more invested in the characters we played as in the games we played? What if that $60 dollar purchase ended after the protagonist was killed? And you only have one life and when that ended the game just ceased to work and you had to buy another disk altogether to play again? What if the future of gaming is so heavily invested in our participation – so much so that the reality of the games was our reality – that we had to immerse ourselves that we felt every injury… Would the game still be appealing? Are we so detached from these violent experiences that no one would care if a game like this was constructed? Why am I still sitting here watching this movie?
Hey – if you want action, it’s here. You want explosions – they’ve got you. You want one-liners caked with gaming lingo? Wanna hear about how the magic ‘ping’ and affects the connection between gamer and slayer i-Con? It’s all here for you. And you just may dig it. What’s really funny is that the writers and directors made a game about control and it doesn’t feel like they had any over the development of the characters or make the movie what it really could have been – a solid and entertaining, albeit violent, commentary on what the future of video gaming could very well be.
