AVGN: The Movie
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 This movie leaves us with one question, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?
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Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie is a 2014 American science fiction adventure comedy independent film written and directed by James Rolfe and Kevin Finn. It is based on the web series of the same name, also created by Rolfe, with himself as the lead character.
The movie received a re-release in theaters along with The Game Chasers on April 2, 2022.
Plot
In 1983, 2 million copies of the "worst video game of all time", ET for the Atari 2600, are dumped into a landfill outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Nerd has become disheartened over the years, as his fans continue to buy and play the games he reviews and warns people to stay away from. After some personal thought, the Nerd decides to go to Alamogordo to debunk the conspiracy theory surrounding the buried cartridges, promising to review the game if the theory proves to be true. While filming their expedition, Cooper reveals that he believes in a super-being known as Death Mwauthzyx, who has the power to destroy all existence.
Sergeant McButter (Helena Barrett) and the legless General Dark Onward (Stephen Mendel), thinking the trio is looking for extraterrestrials, attempt to capture them. Dr. Zandor gave the code to Warshaw to help him meet the five-week deadline Atari set for ET's completion, and to exact revenge on the government for kidnapping and holding hostage an alien he was attempting to free. The government ordered the burial of the cartridges, while Zandor escaped with the metallic material Area 51 was researching at the time in an attempt to reassemble the alien's spaceship, replacing it with tin foil.
Going back to the Alamogordo site, the Nerd and Cooper discover a large crowd of fans and the head of Cockburn Industries promoting the release of ET 2 with the promise of digging out a copy of the original ET from the site. He is captured, and General Onward attempts to force him to play ET. Meanwhile, Mandi keeps McButter away from the Nerd and Cooper's location, eventually leading them to a confrontation on the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. The Nerd and alien escape in a fighter jet similar to one in the NES Top Gun video game, while the alien reveals Death Mwauthzyx can destroy all existence by turning the satellite dish on his head.
Cooper is captured by Death Mwauthzyx and brought to Las Vegas, where Mandi knocks McButter off the Eiffel Tower to her death. Mandi is also captured by Death Mwauthzyx. The Nerd and Alien crash-land at the Alamogordo site, where a captured Dr. Zandor shouts to them that he hid the alien's spaceship metal inside the millions of ET game cartridges.
The Nerd and Alien leave for Las Vegas to stop Death Mwauthzyx.
Why This Movie Is Intentionally "Bullshit"
NOTE: It could be possible that this movie was meant to be bad, since the main series is always funny.
- While the plot for the film is interesting at first, that being the game developers intentionally make their game bad on purpose just so the Nerd can review it, it is poorly executed.
- Poor acting, even from James Rolfe himself in a couple of scenes.
- Even James Rolfe himself had better acting in the web series he created.
- The poster design is all over the place, with a bunch of pictures being slapped all over, not to mention, it comes off as false advertising since The Nerd is shown to be oversized in the poster, when he is not that big in the movie.
- The main tagline of the movie says "Worst game. Greatest game story" which really comes off as biased since the movie in reality is not a great game story.
- Very mediocre editing, some of the scenes just start or cut off out of nowhere, and some of the green screen editing is cut off or terribly done. For example one of the scenes has one of the actor's hand cutoff due to the poor cropping of the green screen. And the quality of the green screen scenes is pretty bad, as it looks like it was done on a lower-quality camera rather than a professional one.
- The special effects, while okay, feel cheap, as expected from a low-budget film. Which many of them are just green screen effects that you can find on the internet.
- Some parts of the movie show real-life places, but they look like they were just taken from Google Images. And they used the green screen to put them there.
- The movie has a slow pace to it, as it feels like an Angry Video Game Nerd episode that got stretched into a feature film.
- In fact, the only time that AVGN reviewed the E.T. game is at the end of the film. Making most of the movie pointless.
- The movie isn't as funny as the series, as there are hardly any jokes that appear in the film, it also contains the exact same type of humor from Smosh: The Movie, which is another YouTube movie.
- The movie was in development hell for 8 years, starting development in 2006 after the web series got popular, with the script being finished in 2008, and filming started in 2012.
- The title makes no sense. It should have been called "The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie".
Positive (Pun-intended) Qualities
- For James Rolfe's first full-feature film, it is a good attempt.
- Great soundtrack composed by Bear McCreary, who did some of the soundtracks of the original web series.
- Like Uwe Boll’s POSTAL, it is somewhat tolerable and is the most faithful it can be to the series.
- Despite the lack of evidence, it's possible that this movie is supposed to be bad as a joke.
- There is a scene that has a cameo of Doug Walker from The Nostalgia Critic, which is pretty neat. Even Nostalgia Critic pointed his own cameo out during his review of the movie.
- There are a few funny moments here and there.
- Death Mwauthyx's design is cool.
Reception
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie received mixed reviews from critics. The Hollywood Reporter called it an "overly long and almost obsessively self-indulgent" and "aspiring cult film" with a production value that "hovers above home-video quality by a few admirable notches", noting that the "filmmakers manage to capably anchor these disparate storylines to their central plot concerning crusading gamers." Not much is known about its box office performance, but judging by that, it likely underperformed.
Trivia
- It was once stated that this movie could potentially get a sequel, but Rolfe declined to make a sequel, due to the fact that he didn't have time to make one, along with the box office failure of the first film. However, according to Rolfe himself, he shared some details about a potential sequel centering around missing prizes at an Atari Swordquest contest.
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