As I’ve said before, documentary filmmaking is an art of storytelling unto itself—and often one that takes its own special kind of talent to weave a gripping story from reality itself. There are some produced by the unscrupulous or tinfoil-obsessed tweakers that get around this by deciding that reality is whatever the hell their headline-chasing manias decide it is, and there are those genuinely talented that can take pretty much anything and make it a tale as epic as Gilgamesh. Director Seth Gordon here thankfully does the latter to give us a gripping struggle of good versus diabolical involving, what else, old-ass videogames.
In this day and age where obscene cash prizes are given out for Call of Duties or Fortnites or whatever sugar-chugging kids are into these days, perhaps that seems less surprising, but back in the 2000s, this sort of thing was still very much the domain of hardcore nerds. I’m talking nerds so nerdy that Sheldon Cooper would steal their lunch money, as they gush over their skills over decades-old arcade cabinets—but get to know anyone, they become a hero or villain in their story regardless.
Enter our hero—Steve Wiebe, teacher and father, so obsessed with getting the high score for Donkey Kong his own toddler kid pleads with him to stop playing so many damn videogames. He’s a genuinely nice and affable guy, who just so happens to be real into 1980s gaming. Enter our villain—Billy Mitchell, good-looking and seemingly amiable restaurant owner, but who happens to be just a little bit smug, someone who has perhaps too much of a cultish following—we’ll get to him later.
Caught between them is the Twin Galaxies organization, dedicated entirely to the recording of game high scores (hey, is it any less obsessive than jotting down sports statistics?) which here seems to be rather flexible with its own rules in Mitchell’s favor. Nevertheless, even if he’s gotta haul over to an arcade and getting moving joysticks before the eyes of dozens, Wiebe goes ahead and does it—and not even blinking under that kinda pressure takes respect no matter what you’re doing.
What makes it all work is the editing here—Gordon constantly keeps things flowing, making us all too engrossed with this tale of 30-40 something turbo geeks with lots of interesting cuts and excellent use of soundtrack from retro tunes up to Leonard Cohen. You’ve got our hero put on the ropes, yet rising up for one more round, like any good sports movie—and best of all, far as can be told, it all happened.
And what proves even more hilarious—spoilers for reality, I guess—was that Mitchell turned out to be just as nefarious as the film suggested, but even more so, effectively using home software to fake his scores, best as can be told. Since then, the story of the Donkey Kong high score continues to change as others threw in—and if you’re wondering why you should care, give this one a watch, and you’ll see just why.
Comments
Post a Comment