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 Hoo-kay, where to start. If you're not familiar with James Rolfe's character, back in 2006, he first appeared online as "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" but later changed the name to avoid lawsuits and to have some freedom to talk about other games. His MO is pretty standard, talk about some of the shittiest games ever made (and a few I didn't think were that bad, but maybe I have low standards), while swearing uncontrollably. He's proven popular enough to have his own game made about him by Freakzone Games (14.99 on Steam), and has maintained a fairly strong online following over the past 8 years. So a couple years ago, he began teasing a movie. It was crowdfunded to the tune of around $325k, and finally saw limited theater release this year, with it now being available as a VOD, and a blu-ray coming by the end of the year. And it's not bad. At all. The film centers around the recently proven urban legend that unsold copies of E.T. The Extraterrestrial (called Eee Tee for copyright purposes in the movie, and slaps a big mustache on E.T. for the same purpose) for the Atari 2600 were buried in a landfill in New Mexico. A game company (Cockburn Entertainment) decides to capitalize on the popularity of what's long been considered the shittiest game of all time by releasing Eee Tee Two, a 3D remake that's been made lovely on purpose, so that the AVGN will review it and gamers will buy it just to see how loving terrible it really is. From there, it launches straight into conspiracy theory territory about the Roswell incident and Area 51. I'll try to avoid spoilers here because, really, there's some good gags set up along the way. A lot of internet celebrities pop up in minor cameo appearances such as Pat Contri, Doug Walker, the late Justin Carmichael, as well as Lloyd Kaufman of Troma and Whitney Moore of Birdemic fame. There's a few in-jokes here and there that you'd have to have watched the appropriate episode of the webseries for, but overall I'd say it holds up well for what it is. Music in the film is primarily composed by Bear McCreary (whose work you can hear on The Walking Dead, Battlestar Galactica, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and sticks to hard rock, some metal, and synth remixes of NES, Sega, and Atari games, and works pretty good. The soundtrack's on iTunes for about 12 bucks as I recall. Overall, I'd say it's worth picking up if you enjoy the webseries, or just if you remember the Video Game Crash of '83. Or if you like B movies, which this film definitely aspires towards thanks to its use of practical effects and miniatures. And the price is right at 10 bucks on Vimeo (4.99 for a rental). It's goofy, silly, fun, and well worth the watch.
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Sep 14, 2014 21:57
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Ensign_Ricky posted:And it's not bad. At all. No dude, I love James but it really is pretty bad. It's poorly shot (I'm not sure there's a single decent bit of composition throughout the entire running time of the picture) and even considering the B-movie thing the film is going for it's still pretty badly acted. Hell James himself might turn in the best performance. One idea I thought was kind on interesting in the film was how it questioned why exactly people go out of their way to play games they fully expect to be awful and terrible, but even that never really gets explored once the more adventurey elements start happening in the narrative, and then ultimately the question just gets handwaved away in the ending when the kid from The Bernie Mac Show says they don't need the AVGN to protect them from bad games because of reasons.
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Sep 14, 2014 22:19
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movie good
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Sep 14, 2014 22:28
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I didn't think it was "terrible", like I said in the AVGN thread it's no Samurai Cop and it's competently-made. But it's just not funny where it should be, the Kid Sidekick is annoying and unfunny, the "Gamer Girl" jokes are cringe-worthy and the first half of the film is overlong. If they had cut out the sidekick or replaced him with, say, Kyle Justin, and edited the first hour down to like a half-hour at most, then it probably could've been right decent. As it is, it's pretty bad. I paid to rent it, so I guess a little bit of that goes to James and that's good enough for me. I showed a modicum of support for all of the free entertainment James Rolfe has given us over the years. Maybe he'll learn from this experience and make something even better next time.
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Sep 14, 2014 22:43
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^^I'll grant that I didn't really understand why Kyle Justin or even Mike Matei weren't the sidekick character, and instead they had to introduce someone completely new.Raxivace posted:No dude, I love James but it really is pretty bad. It's poorly shot (I'm not sure there's a single decent bit of composition throughout the entire running time of the picture) and even considering the B-movie thing the film is going for it's still pretty badly acted. Hell James himself might turn in the best performance. From a film-making standpoint I can see that. But overall I enjoyed it, laughed more than a few times, and had a good time. Which is pretty much all I expected from the movie, so yeah. Ensign_Ricky fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Sep 14, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 22:44
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I love most of the stuff James has put out over the years, but man this movie was just bad. It was hard to sit through the whole thing. My complaints are pretty much the same as others above me. A lot of of it went on way too long, and the characters were really annoying and not funny at all. He really should have had Mike as the sidekick. Maybe my expectations going into it were just too high, because really I guess it is what I would expect from this sort of thing. But after seeing what Ashens did with Quest For The Gamechild and how great that was I just found this really boring and unfunny.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:36
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To be fair, do you really think Mike would have been a good enough actor for the role? I mean yeah Cooper is not exactly a meaty, difficult part, but it's Mike we're talking about here.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:42
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I think the nerd character is terrible and unfunny, but I love watching all the bits he does because it's obvious how much fun Rolfe is having getting to do practical effects from the old movies he loves. There's this infectious joy that seeps out of the long takes of him beating up an empty Spider-Man suit or doing a Raimi ram-o-cam that is such a pleasure to watch. I guess I like this movie because I'm glad to see a guy doing exactly what he loves. He grew up with Troma and now he's basically cribbing all their moves. It's sweet and happy and I applaud the guy. Anyone else who finds the nerd character obnoxious should check out the series of videos he's made about old monster movies. He's much better as himself.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:52
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I really just want James to make an actual full-length horror movie. I probably wouldn't even like it that much. I just want the guy to get to do the thing he clearly wants to do. As has been mentioned, James just has this infectious glee that makes his videos a joy to watch and the more eye rolling aspects of them easy to ignore. Apparently he's been dealing with some pretty rough stuff with his daughter. So, I think I'll just buy the movie to support him. Probably not going to watch it.
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Sep 15, 2014 02:12
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I used to love the nerd character, but it has kind of grown thin the past few years which is another reason why I might have hated this movie. I do think Mike would have made the movie a lot better, but I think he is much more entertaining to watch/listen to than James. I do agree his videos talking about old monster movies and such as amazing, and much better than any of the AVGN stuff.
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Sep 15, 2014 03:33
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Freeze_Dried_Chives posted:I do think Mike would have made the movie a lot better, but I think he is much more entertaining to watch/listen to than James.  I think you're the only person I've ever seen who has this opinion. I like Mike myself, but the typical response to him seems to be total revulsion. I still stand by Kyle Justin as the sidekick (and by "sidekick" I mean like as the traveling bard who doesn't really interact with the Nerd much, he just sings songs about the story constantly). I mean, in the "AVGN universe" Kyle lives under the Nerd's couch and I don't recall Mike ever even being in a Nerd video as himself.
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Sep 15, 2014 22:27
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Holy poo poo this actually happened? The nerd had a blurb on his website for yeeeeaaaars about doing a movie. Thought he'd do horror instead of ripping off Nostalgia Critic's annual website staff gargle-athon. I've waited for years so I'll watch the whole thing no matter how lovely it probably is.
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Sep 16, 2014 03:55
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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How does it compare to the Ashens quest for the Gamechild movie?
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Sep 16, 2014 23:34
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Raxivace posted:To be fair, do you really think Mike would have been a good enough actor for the role? Mike's solo videos are pretty hard to sit through (his voice does not work as narration due to his unusual cadence) but the James & Mike Monday videos actually bring out his strength which is interacting with Rolfe. The only problem I've ever seen when it was James & Mike was that Mike tends to really overact some characters like The Joker (who kept hooting like an autistic owl in the AVGN Batman episode). I'm going to end up checking this movie out this weekend because I've gotten some pretty good entertainment out of the AVGN episodes and like to give Rolfe a little money for that. I've bought the Cinemassacre app, the AVGN video game and even chipped in  for the film's crowdfunding so here's another donation.
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Sep 17, 2014 01:29
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ReV VAdAUL posted:How does it compare to the Ashens quest for the Gamechild movie? having never watched either, AQftGC wins on account of having more warwick davis
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Sep 17, 2014 02:46
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I never really enjoyed the AVGN character, I tried to watch a few of his reviews a few years ago but it wore thin very quickly with the physical poop jokes that were just unpleasant.
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Sep 18, 2014 06:29
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I've enjoyed a lot of the AVGN episodes from a nostalgia perspective and some of them are mildly funny. The cinemassacre retrospective videos on horror movies and science fiction films are awesome though. All the stuff they put out reminds me of hanging out with my friends as a kid and playing games and watching all those old movies. I just watched the AVGN movie this week and it just wasn't as funny as it could have been. Not that I was expecting a lot from it. It's cool that they pulled it off with so little money. I also agree the sidekick was annoying and the movie would have been better without him. The nerd attempting to interface with the modern world without that go between would have been more interesting. The godzilla game review comes to mind where he suddenly plays modern systems and his mind is blown.
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Sep 18, 2014 07:32
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Weelllppp that was disappointing. The first 20 minutes were promising. Loved his horror as everyone took his condemnations of games as endorsements. Then they went to the desert. Hope he does a horror movie next (if he ever does another one).
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Sep 22, 2014 00:20
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DeusExMachinima posted:Weelllppp that was disappointing. The first 20 minutes were promising. Loved his horror as everyone took his condemnations of games as endorsements. Then they went to the desert. Hope he does a horror movie next (if he ever does another one). The first 20 minutes, which included a 5 minute montage of "Nerd" fans talking about how much they loved him, and how much he meant to them? The movie was garbage from frame 1.
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Sep 22, 2014 17:56
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The movie was "ok", it had some points. Apparently ET for Atari wasn't that bad of a game.
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Sep 22, 2014 18:17
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I'm just happy he got it done because James is a cool dude and its kind of a shame that he's kind of forced to do the AVGN character all the time which I grew out of a few years ago, but anything non-AVGN is great; I can't wait to see what he does for Monster Madness because I always learn something new from those videos. Last year was pretty great because he did a whole commentary of Night of the Living Dead.
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Sep 22, 2014 18:50
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Tenzarin posted:The movie was "ok", it had some points. Apparently ET for Atari wasn't that bad of a game. There are 2600 games that are a lot worse (Chase the Chuckwagon is generally seen as the worst) and it's really ET's notorious development and the hilarious overspending/marketing of the game symptomatic of the early 80s game industry (it was a spec bubble through and through) that gave it extra attention. It's a common misbelief that ET single-handedly killed the then-games industry when in reality its failure was a result of an industry that was doomed to fail.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:35
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Justin Godscock posted:There are 2600 games that are a lot worse Really, that many? 
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Sep 23, 2014 01:13
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Justin Godscock posted:There are 2600 games that are a lot worse (Chase the Chuckwagon is generally seen as the worst) and it's really ET's notorious development and the hilarious overspending/marketing of the game symptomatic of the early 80s game industry (it was a spec bubble through and through) that gave it extra attention. It's a common misbelief that ET single-handedly killed the then-games industry when in reality its failure was a result of an industry that was doomed to fail. Yeah, I'd say that Custer's Revenge is worse for far many more reasons than ET was. *shudder*
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Sep 23, 2014 07:36
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It should have been about searching for the missing prizes talked about in his swordquest episode. That was actually a pretty legit episode and I wish he'd do more stuff like that instead of his usual crap.
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Sep 23, 2014 08:11
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zandert33 posted:The first 20 minutes, which included a 5 minute montage of "Nerd" fans talking about how much they loved him, and how much he meant to them? Your mileage may vary, felt like it was a self-roast setting up the fictional (?) fanboy hell the Nerd is stuck in. But you know whose cameo would've really made this movie better? Doug Walker a.k.a. Nostalgia Critic  Hey, maybe they did put him in. I didn't finish the movie.
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Sep 23, 2014 08:23
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So when are we getting the Maddox movie
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Sep 23, 2014 09:32
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:So when are we getting the Maddox movie Personally I'm waiting for "IrateGamer" to make a movie too since he's cribbed his entire career already from AVGN.
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Sep 23, 2014 14:40
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DeusExMachinima posted:Your mileage may vary, felt like it was a self-roast setting up the fictional (?) fanboy hell the Nerd is stuck in. But you know whose cameo would've really made this movie better? Doug Walker a.k.a. Nostalgia Critic He was, his cameo lasted about as long as Lloyd Kaufmann's.
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Sep 23, 2014 17:39
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DeusExMachinima posted:Weelllppp that was disappointing. The first 20 minutes were promising. Loved his horror as everyone took his condemnations of games as endorsements. Then they went to the desert. Hope he does a horror movie next (if he ever does another one). I had the total opposite response. I thought the last 20 minutes were the only good part. Or the last... however many minutes it was starting from the cameo-fest in the desert.
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Sep 23, 2014 23:05
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