Pixels

So this week I finally got around to watching the movie Pixels, and I say it goes right up there with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Wreck-It Ralph for video game nerd ultimate trilogy. Pixels is the ultimate gamer fantasy, video games attack the earth and gamers are the only ones who can save the world.

The movie starts in 1982 when video games first became awesome. At the world video game championship four boys meet who will share an amazing destiny, Eddie "Fireblaster" Plant is the champion, Ludlow "Wonderkid" Lamonsoff is a nerd obsessed with Lady Lisa(the only fictional video game character in the movie that isn't actually a game in the real world), Sam Brenner is the kid who loses to Fireblaster despite having an amazing talent to recognize patterns and is the greatest gamer of the 80's, and Will Cooper is Sam's best friend who's only game in the arcade is the crane. The championship is recorded and sent into space with iconic television footage to attempt to contact intelligent life somehere in the universe. Sam takes his loss hard and never really recovers, meanwhile Will Cooper, played by Kevin James, grows up to be president, which comes off as the most unlikely part of the whole movie. Anyway, a military base in Guam gets attacked and President Cooper has to handle the situation, and calls in Sam to review some footage to see that the attacker appears to be Galaga. Awkwardly, Sam's last customer as an electronics installer, Violet, turns out to be from DARPA and a key adviser on the same situation. On his way home, Sam is reunited with Ludlow, a conspiracy theorist who believes that aliens are using the video game championship transmission from when they were kids to organize an attack on Earth. It seems ridiculous, but the theory is confirmed with a television transmission from the aliens using 80's TV footage edited to say that they have taken the transmission as a declaration of war and following the rules will proceed to best three out of five, first to lose three lives loses their planet. Nobody else takes this seriously until Arkanoid takes out the Taj Mahal. Now they get serious and prepare for a fight in London, which turns out to be Centipede. Despite their best efforts to prepare the military, Sam and Ludlow are the only ones who are familiar with the way the game works and must save everyone themselves. Now that they have earned everyone's trust, they become the champions to fight in the next round, and Violet takes Sam more seriously with a budding romance. They then admit they will need the best of the best, the actual champion Fireblaster who is currently serving time for cyber crimes. He negotiates for early release in exchange for helping to fight the aliens and joins the team in New York City. The next attack is Pac Man and the team fight back with Mini-Coopers acting as ghosts. They do win, getting Q-Bert as a trophy, but as they celebrate their victory, the aliens call them out for cheating, it is revealed that Fireblaster is a cheater and for his affront to the aliens, they're going to release everything on the Earth and just destroy us all, but first they take Violet's son. Sam leads the team for one last confrontation, leaving Ludlow behind to protect civilians and he finally meets Lady Lisa, though the long awaited meeting doesn't quite go as planned. Meanwhile, Sam has to face down Donkey Kong as the final challenge, the very same game he lost in the championship back in '82.

For the most part this movie is what every gamer wishes would happen, for our finely honed but completely useless skill set to become critical and for us to become actual heroes. Just the fact that this fantasy plays out is totally worth watching for but the romantic subplots are poorly played and seem less realistic than the alien invasion. The best part arguably is Peter Dinklage as Fireblaster who shows his range as the opposite of Tyrion Lannister in every way, he's just the goofiest character but you never stop laughing at his performance. I do recommend this movie to gamers, but you might want to turn off your brain and just enjoy the nostalgia.