Clash of the Industries Part I: Games in Movies
before the modern video game movie, there were movies that revolved around video games. they were partly a ploy to generate juvenile interest in a crappy movie, simulate popular culture, or create buzz, but sometimes they were simply elaborate advertising campaigns for computers and video game consoles. remember wanting the synthesizer and computer ferris bueller used to ditch school? how about the newton john connor used to hack a security keypad in terminator 2? i'll cite a few of the most notoriously shameful examples...
matthew broderick is a bored teenager who hacks norad in his spare time. he meets falkin, a computerized relic of his programmer. broderick decides to play a game with falkin, the only problem is: the missiles are real. this may have been more of a statement against reagan's star wars defense plan than a marketing campaign for a computer most people haven't heard of; but after wargames, who doesn't want to play global thermonuclear war on their imsai 8080?
dabney coleman must have been on contract for atleast 2 shitty techno thrillers that year, as he takes second billing on this and wargames. the star is a still adorable henry thomas. if his name doesn't ring a bell, it's probably because the last time you saw him in a movie, he was pedalling a bicycle in front of the moon with et in the basket. the "bad guys" hide a micro chip inside an atari cartridge that grants access to top secret military plans for an "invisible bomber plane". of all the stinkers they released in the eightees, this one reeks. the dialogue and story sound as if a drugged up, 6 year old drew barrymore wrote it, and decided her movie-brother should star. she had a sweet little lisp, and talking out the side of her mouth was cute back then. i bet she had pull in hollywood. ...anyway, this movie had atari branding everywhere, from the 5200 they used to the posters on the walls. it even had a tie in video game, originally under development by the name of agent x. try and watch this all the way through. just try.
the wonder years' fred savage stars as the older brother of a nintendo savante. deaf to the world around him, jimmy is unusually good at nes. due to his anti-social behavior, his parents want to send him to an institution, but older brother fred won't have it. they flee to california. as soon as they get off the bus, they figure out it takes money to... um, live... so while fred goes out to find money, jimmy racks up 50,000 points in double dragon (for some reason even the arcade cabinets have nes' in them), attracting the attention of another runaway, haley. she clues them in on the 50,000 dollar purse in a fictional nes tourney. before they get to california, haley decides they need to stop by her home in reno. while bumming aroung the local arcade, jimmy beats an nes salesman and attracts the attention of a kid who points them to the baddest of badasses, lucas. their meeting in this classic scene sets the tone for the rest of the movie. they are no longer a rag-tag trio of runaway children, they are warrior gamers. together they must face lucas, with his... powerglove. basically, this is an hour and a half long infomercial for a worthless nintendo accessory. the only way this could have been worse: lucas is really rob the robot in disguise.
what do rob shneider, leslie nielsen, kelly hu, the kid who played keno in tmnt II: secret of the ooze, and his father, the guy who played akuma in the street fighter movie have in common? yes, they all fueled the fire that slowly killed the film industry, but their biggest cooperative achievement was a movie that combined ninjustsu with surfing. this, however, was just a fray in a string of ninja-sploitation films in the late eighties/early nineties that included american ninja 2: the confrontation and three ninjas: high noon at mega mountain. they're what i like to call "pizza hut movies," as there was usually some kind of tie-in deal with the greasy franchise. it turns out keno and his little brother are actually ninja royalty, who were smuggled off the island they kindly ruled over when leslie nielsen (aka colonel chi) killed their father and seized power. a ninja who once served their father comes to rescue them when chi decides to kill them off. needless to say, there's lots of surfing, and lots of ninjas. the more groan-worthy event in the movie is the power keno's younger brother recieves: he can see the future through his sega game gear. no shit. of course, he sees it all in wonderful 8 bit clarity, 8 seconds before it happens, so really, the best he can manage is a "watch out behind you!" throughout the entire movie. it must have gone over quite well in asia, as they have superior cover art.
coming soon: "clash of the industries part II: 2d fighter adaptations"
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 07, 2006 at 12:21 AM.
