I watched The Book of Henry at the weekend. You might've heard of it. Directed by Colin Trevorrow - whose Safety Not Guaranteed I really liked, and whose Jurassic World I liked a bit less - it was mauled by critics.
Coincidentally, or not, the release of the film - and its disastrous box-office haul - was shortly followed by the news that Trevorrow had been replaced as the director of Star Wars Episode 9.
It's a bizarre film. Any individual moment sort of worked, but taken as a whole it was all over the place, lurching from whimsy to darkness from one scene to the next. And with an extremely questionable moment where Sarah Silverman - her bosoms practically spilling out of her top - kisses a 12 year-old boy on the lips as he lays dying in a hospital.
Also all over the place - in a literal sense - was star Naomi Watts as she attempted to "act" playing a video game. You see, in a bid to explain why her character is later able to handle a high-powered sniper rifle (don't ask), she's shown as being hooked on Gears of War.
The way in which she plays Gears is to hold the controller at chest-height, while jabbing at the air with it, swaying from side-to-side as her face twitches with aggressive tics. The only person I've ever seen play a video game like that was my mother, circa 1982, when she attempted to get to grips with Space Invaders on our Atari 2600.
This wrong-headed depiction of video gamery irritated me more than any of the other billions of flaws the movie achieves. In fact, it made me ask this: why can't "other" media do gaming accurately?
Coincidentally, or not, the release of the film - and its disastrous box-office haul - was shortly followed by the news that Trevorrow had been replaced as the director of Star Wars Episode 9.
It's a bizarre film. Any individual moment sort of worked, but taken as a whole it was all over the place, lurching from whimsy to darkness from one scene to the next. And with an extremely questionable moment where Sarah Silverman - her bosoms practically spilling out of her top - kisses a 12 year-old boy on the lips as he lays dying in a hospital.
Also all over the place - in a literal sense - was star Naomi Watts as she attempted to "act" playing a video game. You see, in a bid to explain why her character is later able to handle a high-powered sniper rifle (don't ask), she's shown as being hooked on Gears of War.
The way in which she plays Gears is to hold the controller at chest-height, while jabbing at the air with it, swaying from side-to-side as her face twitches with aggressive tics. The only person I've ever seen play a video game like that was my mother, circa 1982, when she attempted to get to grips with Space Invaders on our Atari 2600.
This wrong-headed depiction of video gamery irritated me more than any of the other billions of flaws the movie achieves. In fact, it made me ask this: why can't "other" media do gaming accurately?
ALIENS
Waaaay back when I used to write for My Parents Are Aliens, I wrote an episode in which a character had to play a video game.
I thought I'd written a pretty believable scene, but when I saw the finished episode I was horrified that the character in question had been given an old-school, Amiga-style, joystick - of the sort which nobody uses anymore unless they're playing a flight simulator on the PC - rather than the joypad I'd specifically referred to in the script.
The next time I put video games in an episode of something I'd written, I made sure it was a dancing game which didn't require any controllers, and effectively wrote an essay in the stage directions explaining exactly what I wanted to see on screen.
My Parents Are Aliens was the first time I realised that TV and film people rarely get gaming right, or rarely, properly, understand gaming culture.
Shows like The Big Bang Theory might name-drop gaming things, but it still feels like its the butt of the jokes. Rick and Morty - though in the midst of a bit of a backlash due to dickishness of its fans - seems to get it right. The Simpsons have sort of managed it, on and off, over the years (though I always find it jarring when that show refers to anything post-2003).
Generally, though, gaming seems to occupy a strange place in on-screen fiction. It's used, more often than not, as a way to make something feel contemporary, but the way its portrayed is typically anything but. It's like if I tried to write something about, I dunno, angling without having ever gone fishing (which I never have done).
Waaaay back when I used to write for My Parents Are Aliens, I wrote an episode in which a character had to play a video game.
I thought I'd written a pretty believable scene, but when I saw the finished episode I was horrified that the character in question had been given an old-school, Amiga-style, joystick - of the sort which nobody uses anymore unless they're playing a flight simulator on the PC - rather than the joypad I'd specifically referred to in the script.
The next time I put video games in an episode of something I'd written, I made sure it was a dancing game which didn't require any controllers, and effectively wrote an essay in the stage directions explaining exactly what I wanted to see on screen.
My Parents Are Aliens was the first time I realised that TV and film people rarely get gaming right, or rarely, properly, understand gaming culture.
Shows like The Big Bang Theory might name-drop gaming things, but it still feels like its the butt of the jokes. Rick and Morty - though in the midst of a bit of a backlash due to dickishness of its fans - seems to get it right. The Simpsons have sort of managed it, on and off, over the years (though I always find it jarring when that show refers to anything post-2003).
Generally, though, gaming seems to occupy a strange place in on-screen fiction. It's used, more often than not, as a way to make something feel contemporary, but the way its portrayed is typically anything but. It's like if I tried to write something about, I dunno, angling without having ever gone fishing (which I never have done).
MISUNDERSTOOD
I guess it always surprises me when other media gets gaming so wrong. From where I'm sat, games seem like the mainstream now. They seem like something that everybody does - or at least has more than a passing knowledge of - so it really jars when I see something like that Book of Henry scene.
But what I suppose this reveals is that not everyone gets games yet, that there's a massive chunk of the populace - certainly more in creative industries than you'd expect - which has no real first-hand knowledge of what gaming really is.
In The Book of Henry Naomi Watts' character is shown as a gamer because she's meant to be a bit quirky (certainly, the way she plays games is "quirky"), rather than it feel like a natural part of her character. I mean, there are plenty of middle-aged women who play video games, but that isn't how they use it in the film.
In fact, it's rarely how it's used in film - and more often than not when I see a game shown in a movie or TV show it feels like it's someone's idea of how people play games, or it's a way to make the creators look as if they understand youth culture.
For every Scott Pilgrim we get a Kevin Spacey in House of Cards attempts to play Killzone 3 while clearly having never picked up a games controller in his life. For every Wreck-It Ralph there's a Seth Rogen - someone you'd expect to know how to play games - jabbing at his controller buttons in The 40 Year-Old Virgin like he's impatiently calling a lift.
It's just rubbish, but it's also indicative, to a degree, of how we - as gamers - still exist in a sort of bubble, where gaming is normal. Everyone on the outside still doesn't get it yet.
I guess it always surprises me when other media gets gaming so wrong. From where I'm sat, games seem like the mainstream now. They seem like something that everybody does - or at least has more than a passing knowledge of - so it really jars when I see something like that Book of Henry scene.
But what I suppose this reveals is that not everyone gets games yet, that there's a massive chunk of the populace - certainly more in creative industries than you'd expect - which has no real first-hand knowledge of what gaming really is.
In The Book of Henry Naomi Watts' character is shown as a gamer because she's meant to be a bit quirky (certainly, the way she plays games is "quirky"), rather than it feel like a natural part of her character. I mean, there are plenty of middle-aged women who play video games, but that isn't how they use it in the film.
In fact, it's rarely how it's used in film - and more often than not when I see a game shown in a movie or TV show it feels like it's someone's idea of how people play games, or it's a way to make the creators look as if they understand youth culture.
For every Scott Pilgrim we get a Kevin Spacey in House of Cards attempts to play Killzone 3 while clearly having never picked up a games controller in his life. For every Wreck-It Ralph there's a Seth Rogen - someone you'd expect to know how to play games - jabbing at his controller buttons in The 40 Year-Old Virgin like he's impatiently calling a lift.
It's just rubbish, but it's also indicative, to a degree, of how we - as gamers - still exist in a sort of bubble, where gaming is normal. Everyone on the outside still doesn't get it yet.
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