It has been 17 years since Gerard Butler took on a role in a video game action movie, but the twist is that it wasn’t based on an actual video game at all. Over the past few decades, there have been more flops than successes when it comes to video game adaptations. There are outright failures, commercial disappointments that became cult favorites for hardcore gamers, and a few box office successes that are mostly known as guilty pleasures, at best. However, there are also some movies that are technically video game films that aren’t even based on a real game, and these are often better than the straight adaptations.
The best of these remains Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but Gerard Butler starred in one that not enough people talk about from 2009. On September 4, 2009, Gamer hit theaters, and it proved a video game movie could work as a high-intensity action thriller.
Gamer Is an Original Video Game Movie From Neveldine/Taylor
Released in 2009, Gamer is a sci-fi action movie from the directing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. This was their third movie following their breakout hit Crank, starring Jason Statham, and its sequel, Crank: High Voltage. While Crank was extremely popular thanks to its kinetic action sequences and high-octane, non-stop storyline, the sequel received less critical praise, and Gamer hit a low for the duo. By the time they directed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in 2012, their partnership had come to an end.
In Gamer, Michael C. Hall plays Ken Castle, a programmer who becomes the wealthiest man in the world when he creates the game Society, which allows gamers to manipulate live actors as their avatars in different situations. Castle then takes this to a horrific level when he creates a new game called Slayers, which features death row prisoners whom gamers can control in a first-person shooter game using nanites placed in the prisoners’ bodies, where the prisoners are using real weapons and killing each other in real life.
Gerard Butler stars as John “Kable” Tillman, a death row inmate who has survived a record 27 matches and who only needs three more wins to earn his freedom. Logan Lerman stars as Simon Silverton, a 17-year-old gamer. When Castle sends a psychotic inmate named Hackman (Terry Crews), a man not controlled by any gamer, into the game, his goal is to have Tillman killed to prevent his release.
In the end, this is a sci-fi movie that looks at the popular first-person shooters and asks what would happen if this were used to actually control and manipulate real people. Neveldine/Taylor use their hyperkinetic cuts and editing to create a video game-like experience on the big screen, but critics didn’t take to the story, action, or directing. With a 29% Rotten Tomatoes score, it ended up as a box office failure, bringing in only $42 million on a $50 million budget.
Gamer Is Better Than Its Critical Reception Indicates
Many critics compared Gamer to Crank and its sequel, and most found it lacking. However, when looked at as a video game movie with an exploitation filmmaking style, it is a very entertaining release. In fact, what most critics of the movie hated is what makes the movie so great, as this is an action movie that has a message but is more willing to deliver big action setpieces to keep the audience entertained rather than slam anyone over the head with it.
There are a lot of movies that play in this same area, such as Running Man, which is played more as a reality TV show, but it still forces a man into a violent world where he has to kill or be killed for entertainment purposes. What Gamer does is similar, but it puts it into the form of a video game in an era where VR was coming into its own in the real world. What Gamer did was more up to date with society, as it took the idea of multiplayer, open-world gaming and added in the element of reality television, taking the ideas from Running Man and updating them for a more gamer-centric world.
Video games remain a popular outlet for gamers of all ages, but they also desensitize them. When a person is in an open-world game like Grand Theft Auto, it is fun to attack people and do unspeakable things along the way. One game in this movie, Society, is all about that, but these are real individuals who are having to do these acts. The killing of a large number of people happens in many games, but it is shown in Slayers to be with real people as well. As mentioned, though, this is a critique of games, but with the entertainment and action put first, and in that manner, it is a fantastic video game movie.