I want to start off by saying that whatever you might have heard about the movie Gamer, it was a good movie with great action and high caliber acting throughout. If you're able accept that the way things are set up in the movie actually work(I'll explain what these "things" are below) and follow the events within from there, the movie has the potential of a commentary on games and society by virtue of the gamer hero. Society has taken issue with video games and their influences on individuals and culture, positive and negative alike. However it is only recently that gamer culture and a mainstream interest in computer literacy has flowered. Changing times have given new life to the plausibility of a gamer hero to come along and actually make such a statement, especially in a movie as opposed to a novel. Especially considering the relatively limited time to develop both the plausibility of the emergence of gamer heroes with identities similar to Kable and a complex story line that can support commentaries.
Equally as important to the chronicling of the evolution of the gamer hero, insofar as establishing significance, is Grandma's Boy. This comedy is laden with drug references, ridiculous characters, and completely implausible situational funny akin to other spoofs like Austin Powers or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon(which is epic by the way). The simple fact that Grandma's Boy was even made suggests a strong degree of confirmation of the gamer hero's existence as a recognizable theatrical archetype. Spoofs are made with key archetypes in mind, exaggerating the qualities and quirks of said archetypes throughout the movie. Grandma's Boy exploits the stereotype that "gamers live in their parents' basement" throughout. By the conclusion of the movie Alex's grandma, who he lives with, proves that Alex did in fact create the game "Demonik"; which antagonist and overall uber nerd JP, aka Mr. Roboto, solicits as the new spawn of his genius in lieu of his failure to create a sequel to Eternal Death Slayer. The stereotype is further exaggerated in Alex's friend who calls his parents roommates, wears footie pajamas, and sleeps in a car-bed. Grandma's Boy also introduces a gamer hero that we haven't seen before on this blog, the game creator. However, this is largely overlooked and is mainly used as a premise for a final showdown between Alex the "cool" gamer and "JP" (in quotes because JP isn't really a person -- he's probably giddily giggle-snorting with pride at that statement -- he's the embodiment of every loserly and anti-social stereotype the director could cram into a black pleather trench coat -- initiate robotic ability: wall camouflage).
Before I get back to Gamer, I want to point out one thing: this is an analysis of how the gamer hero in Gamer played an critical role in the development of a possible social commentary based on the concepts of Gamer, not necessarily my opinion, but food for thought nonetheless. This movie is centered around one specific character as the gamer hero, known to the world as Kable(Gerard Butler) in the live action MMOFPS "Slayers". The game was created by the movie's villain as an alternative for death row inmates. If they survive enough rounds then they are granted their freedom, similar to the movie Running Man. Both Arnold's character in Running Man and Kable are wrongly convicted of murder. Coincidentally enough, both crimes were allegedly committed while each was serving in the armed forces, both convictions were part of military related cover ups, and although it is believed that both men are brutal murderers, they are for the most part cheered on by fans of the games they must win in order to expose the truth and live to tell about it. Not only that, but each of them are ultimately forced to break the (same, literally) rules of their respective games ftw and with at least one identical goal: to put an end to the games that made them a gamer hero in the first place. This irony is not lost at all on Gamer. The main difference between Running Man and Gamer is that the players of gamer are literally not in control of their own destinies. Inmates who volunteer for Slayers are controlled by actual gamers via something called a "Nanex", a nanotechnology that functions as cellular copy and paste/replace for the neurons in their brains. Each Nanex has it's own IP address with a metaphorical "read only" property, effectively making each convict a puppet controlled by a paying customer or subscriber for each scheduled conflict. To gauge what this might feel like, imagine having the most vivid dream about being inside your favorite FPS. Only before each match that lucid ability to control yourself in the dream world is handed over to someone you never meet and cannot communicate with, almost as if your subconscious took over forcing you to be a first person witness until you wake up. Oh, and the dream is actually a live fire exercise, your subconscious is some punk kid, and there's no respawning. Ever. Consider the metaphorical implications keeping in mind that what the Nanex does is allow someone else to "play you" via wireless internet connections. Kable doesn't simply zonk out when the game starts, he is completely aware of everything going on around him, maintains his senses, but must execute commands submitted by his player. In an eerie sense, it would follow logically that Kable, mentally speaking, becomes his own subconscious every time the game starts. As uncomfortable as this sensation must be, Kable, like every other playable convict, becomes a victim of ping. The same mechanism was initially utilized in the movie to create a live action social simulator like Second Life, aptly titled "Society", where people are payed to be the avatars of subscribers who have complete control over them, emotes and everything<
Although all of this may seem like a mere summary of the technological aspect of the movie, it serves as the premise on which a deep social commentary can be founded. Obviously this would never happen in real life regardless of technological capabilities, it is a metaphor for not only desensitization through gaming but the costs and consequences of gross sacrifices of basic human freedom. Can you even imagine the psychological destruction among the 'actors' of Society caused by griefers or people that treat the sim as something between LARPing and interactive porn? What about the convicts who are forced to watch others less than 30 feet away fall victim to the innumerable horrifying ways to be mutilated beyond recognition and then seeing the result of some irreverent asshole player using the crouch button to follow up his kill by making his convict teabag the fallen "enemy" (this actually takes place in the opening sequences of Gamer). Like I said before, this wouldn't happen in real life to begin with, however the movie exaggerates such things on a relatively consistent scale and makes you think about the nature of the things that we as a gaming society not only accept as executable actions in a game or sim, but in many cases have come to expect. For example, compare the assumed jump in the movie from virtual gaming to using people as avatars to our jump from representational depictions of sexually explicit and/or incredibly violent actions to the demand for photo-realistic depictions of these abilities (would you like some hot coffee with your chainsaw bayonet?). Since when did it become so lame to squish a Goomba dead with the full pasta enhanced body weight of a jovial Italian plumber that we needed to see the infrared spectrum of mist escaping from the exit wound of some Russian commi bastard's cranial soft spot preceded by audio feedback with the uncanny resemblance of splitting a melon with a hammer? (from killing in Mario to killing inSOCOM II)
The fact of the matter is that when you see these atrocities happen to real people, in spite of the knowledge that it's just special effects, you can't help but realize that there entire genres of games whose base mechanics are based around a plethora of ways to brutally make your enemies extinct. And yet, culturally, we sanction the escape into worlds where the unspeakable is possible, for a fee, at the same time that we pass laws that basically mean we prohibit young people from purchasing certain games because we don't think that they are ready to be exposed to the content inside. You might say we do the same with movies, however this is more akin to the sale of alcohol or tobacco due to the fact that games are interactive. The gamer hero's roles in Gamer are to portray the fullest extent to which a gaming avatar can ever evolve and provide a humanistic perspective from those front lines. Without Kable, the movie would have been a killing spree and hardly much more. In the end Kable is victorious and the Nanex network is taken offline similar to the "deletion" of the virtual world in the novel Epic by Conor Kostick, ensuring that this incredibly depraved behavior will not be repeated. It is through Kable's actions and the actions of those that aided him in his goals that the metaphor is preserved and a social commentary is able to take form.
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