Gamer Turns Virtual Reality into Reality
Sci-fi Action Thriller Takes MMORPGs to Next Level
Oct 23, 2009
As an action flick, Gamer ticks all the right boxes: beefy hero in the form of Gerard Butler (300, RocknRolla); eye-candy love interest in the shape of Amber Valletta (er...); sinister villain courtesy of Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under, Dexter); and plenty of fast-paced action sequences.
Unfortunately, the film is let down by a number of factors, namely weak plot, very poor character development, and unsophisticated editing. The film jumps from action sequence to action sequence, with little slices of plot slotted in between, seemingly just to string them together. These failings are a shame, because the cinematography is actually quite good.
Players Control Real People in Slayers and Society Games
The close-up action shots of Slayers (shoot ‘em up game where players control live soldiers) do a good job of simulating the chaos of a multi-player in-game experience. In addition, the scenes involving Society (the role-playing game imitating online games like Second Life, but using real people instead of avatars) manage to capture the ridiculous mechanical actions and movements of simulated characters, whilst simultaneously portraying the awful reality of human beings effectively being used as slaves.
While the concept of Gamer seems farfetched and unrealistic, the fiction is not actually too far removed from the reality. As today’s games become more detailed and realistic, with blood hitting cameras and body parts flying around, is it too difficult to imagine that some of today’s de-sensitised gaming community wouldn’t consider replacing their game characters for real-live human beings? The relationship between in-game violence and real-life violence in today’s youth is already being documented.
It’s worthwhile to consider the film not as a plausible real-life scenario, but more as an unwitting commentary on the increasingly prevalent and realistic world of online role playing, even if it’s obvious that such intellectual aspirations were beyond the filmmakers’ intentions.
Comparisons to Real Online Role Playing Games
Look at online games like second life, where people can meet, have graphic virtual sex, and even get married (yes, people have been married on Second Life, not to mention World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, and others). Seriously, do your research, and you will find real marriages that have broken up because of one partner’s passionate love affair with an online avatar.
The film simply takes the seedy side of online role playing to the next level, where human beings escape from their sad existences and live vicariously and perversely through an online character, which in this case is a real human being.
While it fails to engage the viewer in any real way, if you’re simply up for 1½ hours of ultra-violence and some purely gratuitous breast and lesbian kissing shots, and your intellectual expectations aren’t too high, then Gamer is a good way to waste a couple of hours in the cinema. But, you probably won’t buy the DVD.
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