With the grand opening of the new Gaming Center on campus this semester, your friends at AMP thought it’d be impertinent not to throw a bone to all the gamers in our readership. To all of you with debilitating Fortnite addictions, we see and hear you. Gamers ARE an oppressed class as far as we’re concerned, which is why we wanted to illuminate the plight of the modern gamer by watching and reviewing two of the most unwatchable, overstimulating circle jerks in cinematic history. Join us as we slog through waves of pop culture references on our quest to discover what being a gamer is truly all about — being hostile towards any and all minority groups.
Ready Player One (2018)
“Ready Player One” is probably a movie. Like, for sure it might be a movie. There are characters, there are action sequences, there are sloppy makeoutz. It even looks like a movie — it was directed by Steven Spielberg, a guy who notably Makes Movies. Unfortunately, “Ready Player One” is less of a movie and more of a freshly resurrected corpse shambling around in skin that hangs a little too loose to look natural. Its dialogue feels less like conversation and more like NPCs triggering each other’s dialogue — there is nobody actually talking to each other, just input and output. The characters are archetype-defining in a bad way; their appearances, motivations, and actions are shorthanded by the tropes they fulfill rather than being actual attempts at characters. We know our main character is a nerdy everyman because he wears crooked glasses and spouts 80s media references. We know our bad guy is bad because he’s a suit spewing buzzwords about stocks and shareholders. “Ready Player One” dances a well-known routine, but it doesn’t add anything new. If anything, it’s almost offensively rote.
This movie thinks you are stupid. The dialogue is repetitive and carries the subtlety of a hammer paired with the inanity of a high schooler’s stand-up comedy routine. Hits include: “A fanboy knows a hater”, “Reality is the only thing that’s real,” and my favorite, “What is this challenge, some sort of video game thing?” Riveting. It throws references at you with a sort of desperation, like it thinks the only reason you’re watching is to catch glimpses of other, better media. Is the plot strong? No, but look! Godzilla is fighting the Iron Giant and a Gundam! Watching this movie, you can envision perfectly the copyright symbols littering the script. It doesn’t even have the decency to treat itself as a shock-and-awe slugfest. This movie wants so badly to be a coming-of-age movie, to tug at your heartstrings as you watch our main character go from zero to hero through the power of dorkism, but it fumbles at every possible step.
The broad strokes of the movie are thus: in a dystopian world, broke little dweeb Wade (Tye Sheridan) must defeat an Evil Corporation in the race to solve the puzzle left behind by the creator of the OASIS, the virtual reality game/software where most of the joy left in humanity takes place. The stakes are ownership of the OASIS, and with the help of his friends and spunky love interest Artemis (Olivia Cooke), he must defeat hordes of experts on dorkdom and their army of indentured servants with his own connection to the creator and his creation. Artemis is what I refer to as a Wyldstyle: a skilled (but not more skilled than the main character) rebel who exists to introduce our hero to The Fight, both hot enough to give him an initial reason to join the cause and insecure enough to undergo token character development through our hero’s love. She is, in every way, better than him, but insists frequently that only Wade can ultimately defeat the Big Bads and save the day.
The creators of this movie should feel ashamed of themselves. In every aspect, this movie takes the least interesting approach. The CGI is impressive! The cinematography does nothing to aid its spectacle, draining the life out of what should be a visual masterpiece. There could be interesting themes here about legacy, and who gets to decide what happens to the greats after they pass! But rather than doing anything interesting or subversive, the movie plucks power out of the hands of one slightly autistic white guy and places it in the hands of a different slightly autistic white guy, albeit one who “won’t make the same mistakes.” Said mistake? Not kissing a girl. This is what the movie has to say about what we leave behind: it should be taken up only by those most similar to us, by those who would continue our legacies without adding anything substantial. To this movie, legacy is a monument set in stone, not a living thing to be taken and adapted by those it inspired. It folds well with this movie’s idolization of the 80s. The soundtrack is full of 80s classics of various quality, including an eye-rolling third act needle drop of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” which meshes astoundingly poorly with the action on-screen. The core conceit of the OASIS’ puzzle is the creator’s favorite 80s franchises. It’s a dick-suck of the decade, but unlike the trend of the 80s, the bush is shaved. That’s exactly the issue here — in trying to replicate the nostalgia of the 80s, it homogenizes it into a ready-to-serve package for ‘born in the wrong decade’ douchebags who don’t actually want the past, just a watered down version of it with all the fun bits removed and only the name brand recognition remaining.
Do not watch “Ready Player One” — alone, that is. There is only one way to enjoy this movie, and that is screaming loudly at it with friends at every poor decision, every strange worldbuilding choice, every piece of stunted dialogue. AMP usually isn’t supposed to encourage substance abuse, but for this I gotta recommend a drinking game. Take a sip at every reference and a shot at every corny line of dialogue — just don’t send us your hospital bills.
Gamer (2009)
I’m extremely sorry to report that “Gamer” is the first AMP Watches film that I almost had to stop watching for fear of inducing an epileptic seizure, and I’m speaking as someone without epilepsy. This terribly edited affront to god is a lovechild of the screenwriting duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who wrote and directed other film franchises like “Crank” and “Ghost Rider.” If I had to sum up this film in a single word, it would be agony.
Not many films have tempted me to end it all, but this was certainly one of them. There were countless moments throughout my viewing experience where I flirted with the idea of self-immolating in my bedroom. Unsurprisingly, strobe lights pulsing directly into my retinas for an hour and a half didn’t feel very good! Between that, the gratuitous explosions going off every five seconds, and the abundance of poorly written dialogue, “Gamer” was a nearly unwatchable experience. I’ll try to piece together what I can from the fragmented plot, but be warned: this film is truly a shitshow for the ages.
Our story follows a man called Kable, (Gerard Butler) — although Gerard plays Kable the same way you’d play a tree in an elementary school performance — that’s not acting, that’s standing. You could replace Gerard with a 2×4 plank of wood from Home Depot and nothing would change, he’d just look a little scrawnier. Anyway, the story takes place sometime in the indeterminate future in what’s presumably the United States, which has devolved into a lawless and cretinous land.
Just like Lois Griffin warned us, society is filled with violence in movies and sex on TV. Humanity is ruled by entertainment and everyone’s just looking to get their next fix. Global audiences are tuned in to a game called Slayers, which allows people to control death row inmates using nanomachines. People pay to control these inmates in large-scale deathmatches, where they face off against each other in teams. Slayers functions similarly to first-person shooters like “Call of Duty” or “Counter-Strike,” except all the player characters are living people that are legitimately killed in combat. If they survive 30 matches, they’ll be rewarded with their freedom.
As you can imagine, this is pretty fucked up — almost like we’re living in a society or something. At least, we’re living in this film’s idea of society. The writers/directors were probably attempting to do social commentary about consumerism and the technocrat class, but it falls flat when it’s edited like the world’s longest Xbox commercial.
Enter our secondary protagonist, a 17-year-old boy named Simon (Logan Lerman) who’s been controlling Kable during these deathmatches. He’s won 27 of the necessary 30 rounds to grant Kable his freedom. Of course, a story like this isn’t complete without a villainous billionaire bad guy running things behind the scenes. Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) is what you’d expect out of an evil game developer: eccentric, rude, amoral, and altogether way too comfortable making sexual comments about women. He’s attracted the attention of a rebel hacker group called Humanz, led by Ludacris, whose character has no name so I’m choosing to believe that he’s actually just a parallel version of Ludacris.
This is where the details start to get muddy — I legitimately don’t know how to summarize what happens because I have no idea how this film arrives at its conclusion.
Anytime we aren’t being introduced to new characters, we’re either watching people kill each other or watching them have cybersex. We eventually meet Kable’s wife, Angie (Amber Valetta), who’s waiting for him to win his freedom so they can regain custody of their daughter, who’s being fostered by Ken Castle. Why does this weird Zuckerberg-type fella have custody of some random couple’s child? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Nothing in this film matters. Terry Crews shows up at several points to try and murder Kable for no reason, and it also doesn’t matter.
Kable is eventually able to escape the final round of Slayers with help from Simon. He finds his wife, who’s working as a prostitute in a life simulator game called Society — yes, it’s actually called that. Imagine “The Sims,” except everyone’s wearing wigs and rawdogging each other. Actually… that isn’t all that different from “The Sims,” so nevermind. Kable rescues her with the assistance of his new hacker buddies. Who are they? It doesn’t matter, they all die right before the final fight scene with Castle.
Kable and Castle’s fated tussle ends with an extremely anticlimactic stabbing, and then Kable’s family hug it out next to Castle’s dead body as he soaks in a pool of his own blood. Also, the entire climax happens on a basketball court. Why? Say it with me now, it doesn’t matter! The moral of this story is nothing matters and we all die, so go do sex and murder! Or maybe it’s about family. There’s probably a lesson somewhere in there. My personal takeaway is that you should never feel unqualified as an artist because the worst piece of art already exists in this film, so it’s all upwards from here.
