Arcade
March 19th 2010 01:01
Here it is, the first Full Moon Entertainment film I saw when I was a kid and to say that I'm excited would be some what of an understatement. When I was just a young rapscallion, this movie totally blew my pre-pubescent mind. A B-movie with complete digital backdrops, made in 1993? Not that the whole movie is shot on a digital backlot, but entire sections of the film are done this way and in the early 90's was there a better way to draw in a crowd of unsuspecting teenagers?
A digital backlot is when portions, or the entire film, is shot in front of large blue screen and the blue screen replaced with the corresponding digital matte shot or effect shot, rather than building entire sets or going on location. Films like 300 and Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow are just two of the more popular films that have elected to use this method, and get master props for this but perhaps Arcade is the very first B-movie to employ this method, and in 1993. I would do the research into the subject but they don't exactly make Wikipedia articles on this kind of thing. If you can find an article or piece of evidence proving it one way or another, drop a comment.
The opening credits to the film reads like a who's who to Nerdom. First off, Megan Ward, who has appeared in such fine masterpieces as Encino Man and General Hospital. Peter Billingsley, who is billed second, you might recognize as the kid from... oh, what's that movie... The Hoboken Chicken Emergency... No, that's not it... A Christmas Story, that's the one. Then, there's John DeLancie who the Trekkies will recognize as the all powerful being -Q- and if you don't know what that is, you live a sad existence. Then, of course, Seth Green. No explanation necessary. Bryan Dattilo, who's a current cast member of Days of Our Lives and Don Stark, who was Bob in That 70's Show. My brain is just about to explode from an over-concentration of bizarre pop-culture awesome right now.
Wait, David S. Goyer wrote this film. BOOM. That was my head exploding in a smattering of blood, bone and epic magnitude. But I got over it. Don't know who David S. Goyer is? He wrote the three Blade films, the two most recent Batman films and is an overall nerd.
The film is also directed by Albert Pyun, but who really cares about that? He just directed the 1990 version of Captain America that most comic book fans just wish to forget. Fair enough.
Once the film gets rolling, it turns out to be an unabashed horror rip-off of Tron, if that film had been made on a really bad acid trip. There are colors existing in this movie that should never see the light of day. The eponymous Arcade of the title is a virtual-reality video game that thinks, reacts, and changes it's strategy all under it's own power. Oh yeah, it's also fucking evil.
As high schoolers begin to disappear, being abducted into the virtual world of Arcade, Alex (Ward) and Nick (Billingsley) take it upon themselves to journey into the heart of the game, defeat Arcade, and free their friends from the evil mastermind at the center of this madness.
There's also this whole portion of the plot about the mind of a brain-dead donor used to create Arcade, which is supposed to explain why Arcade is so evil, but the whole thing seems kind of forced and you can see the plot twist coming from a mile away, actually, scratch that, you can see it coming from the next county. In fact, the entire third act, when Nick and Alex go into the game, seems rushed and it should move at break-neck speed but it seems more like fragmented portions of longer sequences that could have raised the tension levels a little higher.
But the real question is whether or not the CGI effects are any good and... well... it was the early 90's. In fact, Charles Band, executive producer of the film and CEO of Full Moon, delayed the film for an entire year so the effects could be completely redone, which should give you a clue as to how that worked out. In a behind the scenes documentary short you get to see a little of the original effects, and some of them are impressive, but some of the parts were originally damn near unwatchable. In one portion, they originally added a digital blur and florescent purple hue to the scene that looks absolutely atrocious and almost impossible to watch. In the finished film there is a sequence involving a chase with what they call Skycycles, but in the original version they were called Lightcycles. How badly are they trying to copy Tron? They even looked like the Lightcycles from Tron. Most of the finished effects in the film are far better than the ones featured in the documentary, except for the original concept for the design for Arcade which is a lot creepier, and the film has the advantage of taking place in a virtual reality game. We don't really expect the effects to be too life-like, and as cartoony as they are they function well enough to not be entirely laughable. They aren't creepy or intimidating in anyway but they aren't so horrendous that you can't watch them; in fact, they function a lot better for their purpose then the virtual reality effects within Lawnmower Man. Not that you've seen that one, and I wouldn't recommend it.
The film also has something that most B-movies forget about. They're called close-ups. I don't know if you're familiar with them, most B-movie directors aren't. Getting close to characters and objects can give a real sense of emotion and tension but most B-movies don't have them. The film does and I was a little surprised to see them. Happy actually. Not that the tension is really high, but it is nice to change up the medium shots and two-shots with some real close-ups.
If you were expecting a long-winded and angry review like usual then you might be a little disappointed because this movie isn't really all that bad for B-movie. It puts the laughs in the right spots, it keeps itself short enough, and it includes the obligatory “the killer is back” kind of ending (although nobody dies, so he really can't be called a killer).
There are a couple of problems, like usual. Billingsley, for instance, is just really out of place and it's not even because he has acted in his fair share of famous movies so it seems weird for him to be in some B-movie. Instead, he looks like he has no idea what to be doing most of the time. The motivation behind most of his lines and his hand movements are just goofy. Who honestly tugs on their collar when they think they said something bad-ass? He didn't even say something that bad-ass to begin with. Maybe it's this goofiness that makes his character likable, but the girl doesn't even end up with him which is BULLSHIT by the way. Oh well, he went on to direct Couples Retreat... so, win for him... I guess.
A sub-plot concerning Alex's (Ward's) mother who committed suicide plays out in a really unsatisfactory way. Oh, sure, they bring it into the final act of the film to give A Nightmare On Elm Street kind feel but it doesn't pay off very well. Just a victim of the fragmented feeling of the final act. It could have been creepy and heartbreaking but it serves little purpose except to remind the audience that Alex's mother killed herself and she's really upset about it. I'm starting to think that large portions were cut out when it was decided to redo the effects and that is why it feels so broken.
Nor is Arcade filled with any sort of genuine scares and the best moments, atmosphere
wise, don't even take place inside of the virtual reality world. Balderdash I say. If you're going to create an entire world could you at least make it a little frightening or intimidating in anyway? Oh well. Kids might be scared by it, although I wasn't when I was a kid.
Like I said, I don't really have too much to complain about this film. As derivative and lame it is, it is still a fun watch for most people. My older brother actually still talks about this film occasionally, and I would get it for his birthday but he'd probably berate me with shameful remarks. I don't think he likes me much. So, if you have a Netflix, you can go ahead and add it but you have to watch it with a group of friends who can enjoy in the goof-ball nerdiness that is Arcade. And if you're friends don't like it, slap them across the face and tell them it's from me. I'll take all the blame for this one. But just this once.
A digital backlot is when portions, or the entire film, is shot in front of large blue screen and the blue screen replaced with the corresponding digital matte shot or effect shot, rather than building entire sets or going on location. Films like 300 and Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow are just two of the more popular films that have elected to use this method, and get master props for this but perhaps Arcade is the very first B-movie to employ this method, and in 1993. I would do the research into the subject but they don't exactly make Wikipedia articles on this kind of thing. If you can find an article or piece of evidence proving it one way or another, drop a comment.
The opening credits to the film reads like a who's who to Nerdom. First off, Megan Ward, who has appeared in such fine masterpieces as Encino Man and General Hospital. Peter Billingsley, who is billed second, you might recognize as the kid from... oh, what's that movie... The Hoboken Chicken Emergency... No, that's not it... A Christmas Story, that's the one. Then, there's John DeLancie who the Trekkies will recognize as the all powerful being -Q- and if you don't know what that is, you live a sad existence. Then, of course, Seth Green. No explanation necessary. Bryan Dattilo, who's a current cast member of Days of Our Lives and Don Stark, who was Bob in That 70's Show. My brain is just about to explode from an over-concentration of bizarre pop-culture awesome right now.
Wait, David S. Goyer wrote this film. BOOM. That was my head exploding in a smattering of blood, bone and epic magnitude. But I got over it. Don't know who David S. Goyer is? He wrote the three Blade films, the two most recent Batman films and is an overall nerd.
The film is also directed by Albert Pyun, but who really cares about that? He just directed the 1990 version of Captain America that most comic book fans just wish to forget. Fair enough.
Once the film gets rolling, it turns out to be an unabashed horror rip-off of Tron, if that film had been made on a really bad acid trip. There are colors existing in this movie that should never see the light of day. The eponymous Arcade of the title is a virtual-reality video game that thinks, reacts, and changes it's strategy all under it's own power. Oh yeah, it's also fucking evil.
As high schoolers begin to disappear, being abducted into the virtual world of Arcade, Alex (Ward) and Nick (Billingsley) take it upon themselves to journey into the heart of the game, defeat Arcade, and free their friends from the evil mastermind at the center of this madness.
There's also this whole portion of the plot about the mind of a brain-dead donor used to create Arcade, which is supposed to explain why Arcade is so evil, but the whole thing seems kind of forced and you can see the plot twist coming from a mile away, actually, scratch that, you can see it coming from the next county. In fact, the entire third act, when Nick and Alex go into the game, seems rushed and it should move at break-neck speed but it seems more like fragmented portions of longer sequences that could have raised the tension levels a little higher.
But the real question is whether or not the CGI effects are any good and... well... it was the early 90's. In fact, Charles Band, executive producer of the film and CEO of Full Moon, delayed the film for an entire year so the effects could be completely redone, which should give you a clue as to how that worked out. In a behind the scenes documentary short you get to see a little of the original effects, and some of them are impressive, but some of the parts were originally damn near unwatchable. In one portion, they originally added a digital blur and florescent purple hue to the scene that looks absolutely atrocious and almost impossible to watch. In the finished film there is a sequence involving a chase with what they call Skycycles, but in the original version they were called Lightcycles. How badly are they trying to copy Tron? They even looked like the Lightcycles from Tron. Most of the finished effects in the film are far better than the ones featured in the documentary, except for the original concept for the design for Arcade which is a lot creepier, and the film has the advantage of taking place in a virtual reality game. We don't really expect the effects to be too life-like, and as cartoony as they are they function well enough to not be entirely laughable. They aren't creepy or intimidating in anyway but they aren't so horrendous that you can't watch them; in fact, they function a lot better for their purpose then the virtual reality effects within Lawnmower Man. Not that you've seen that one, and I wouldn't recommend it.
The film also has something that most B-movies forget about. They're called close-ups. I don't know if you're familiar with them, most B-movie directors aren't. Getting close to characters and objects can give a real sense of emotion and tension but most B-movies don't have them. The film does and I was a little surprised to see them. Happy actually. Not that the tension is really high, but it is nice to change up the medium shots and two-shots with some real close-ups.
If you were expecting a long-winded and angry review like usual then you might be a little disappointed because this movie isn't really all that bad for B-movie. It puts the laughs in the right spots, it keeps itself short enough, and it includes the obligatory “the killer is back” kind of ending (although nobody dies, so he really can't be called a killer).
There are a couple of problems, like usual. Billingsley, for instance, is just really out of place and it's not even because he has acted in his fair share of famous movies so it seems weird for him to be in some B-movie. Instead, he looks like he has no idea what to be doing most of the time. The motivation behind most of his lines and his hand movements are just goofy. Who honestly tugs on their collar when they think they said something bad-ass? He didn't even say something that bad-ass to begin with. Maybe it's this goofiness that makes his character likable, but the girl doesn't even end up with him which is BULLSHIT by the way. Oh well, he went on to direct Couples Retreat... so, win for him... I guess.
A sub-plot concerning Alex's (Ward's) mother who committed suicide plays out in a really unsatisfactory way. Oh, sure, they bring it into the final act of the film to give A Nightmare On Elm Street kind feel but it doesn't pay off very well. Just a victim of the fragmented feeling of the final act. It could have been creepy and heartbreaking but it serves little purpose except to remind the audience that Alex's mother killed herself and she's really upset about it. I'm starting to think that large portions were cut out when it was decided to redo the effects and that is why it feels so broken.
Nor is Arcade filled with any sort of genuine scares and the best moments, atmosphere
wise, don't even take place inside of the virtual reality world. Balderdash I say. If you're going to create an entire world could you at least make it a little frightening or intimidating in anyway? Oh well. Kids might be scared by it, although I wasn't when I was a kid.
Like I said, I don't really have too much to complain about this film. As derivative and lame it is, it is still a fun watch for most people. My older brother actually still talks about this film occasionally, and I would get it for his birthday but he'd probably berate me with shameful remarks. I don't think he likes me much. So, if you have a Netflix, you can go ahead and add it but you have to watch it with a group of friends who can enjoy in the goof-ball nerdiness that is Arcade. And if you're friends don't like it, slap them across the face and tell them it's from me. I'll take all the blame for this one. But just this once.
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