Video game movies, as a rule, are bad. Sure there are a few exceptions like “Mortal Kombat” and “Tomb Raider,” but for every Lara Croft movie, there are a dozen Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter movies that were so bad that they actually generated negative box office numbers when they debut. (Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration)
However, on the other side of the coin are movies about video games. Movies such as “Tron” and “War Games” are considered classics, at least among the geek crowd.
This fall, two new movies are taking a different spin on the video game sub-genre, and both look like they are going to be the bomb with audiences—that is one good flick that is going to be “the bomb” and one that is going to bomb.
GAMER
(Lionsgate, Rated R, coming Sept. 4) www.gamerthemovie.com
“Gamer” tries to be original by taking two classic sci-fi genres and twisting them together. They take the “future gladiators,” a.k.a. prisoners being used and abused for entertainment as seen in “Death Race,” “Running Man,” and a host of others, and rewrap it for the Xbox generation.
Kable (Gerard Butler) is a super soldier put on death row for the wrong reasons, and his only way out alive is to survive as a character on Slayers—a combat video game where players like Simon (Logan Lerman) have complete control over their living video game avatar. If Simon can win 30 games, Kable gets to go free.
While the premise pushes the boundaries of disbelief, the movie promises to be an action-packed shoot’em-up, directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the mad men behind the action overdoses known as “Crank” and “Crank: High Voltage.”
Avatar
(20th Century Fox, not yet rated), coming Dec. 18) www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/
Geeks love a good “VS.” argument. Star Trek VS. Star Wars, Batman VS. Iron Man, Smurfs VS. Snorks. It doesn’t matter what the subject is as long as there are reams of background material, quasi-science and misunderstood references used in a single episode of a show that came out 30 years ago, geeks will pick a side and fight it out till the end.
James Cameron’s “Avatar” feeds on this hunger for geek battle between video game worlds. Now, it doesn’t come out and say it, but from looking a the trailer, this CGI/Live action blend (like “Beowulf”) takes Halo and World of Warcraft and sets them against each other.
Jake (Sam Worthington) is a disabled vet that agrees to travel to another world for a special project that promises to free him from his wheelchair. Using a strange merger of cloning and “Gamer” technology, Jake is put into the body of a blue skin alien that looks a whole lot like a Night Elf from World of Warcraft. He is sent to infiltrate the local tribe, falls in love with a native girl and then must help them fight off the evil humans in very Halo-like gear using only the primitive bows and arrows and pet dinosaurs.
Avatar's Alien Elves
This maybe too wild to be a big hit, and a lot is depending on the quality of the CGI work. Personally, if there is a Night Elf wizard dropping fireballs on the Master Chief’s helmeted head (or close as Cameron can get without being sued), then there might be a chance for this movie to live up to the hype.
Christopher Huff is a self-confessed and unrepentant geek who as been living, writing and playing on the Grand Strand for several years. You can learn more about him and his writing at www.piratejournalism.com. Comments can be sent to chris@alternatives.sc.
