Movies About Games

Kids these days play too many video games. I know I'm not the first person to say this nor do I have a well-organized argument to support such a statement. I don't say this out of jealousy from never having Atari, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, or Playstation when I was a kid. I say this merely because I don't see kids playing board games anymore. This being the week of Thanksgiving, families will be gathering together to gorge themselves on football, sleep, and of course, turkey. After polite conversation gets stale, they may even turn to board or card games to pass the time. At least let's hope so, because if not, that means parents are not only making kiddies sit at their own table for dinner, they're also banishing them from after-dinner conversation to the den, where they will probably play video games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about gaming. I'm dedicating my blog this week to games. This being Monday, I have a movie list all about games. I just read in the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly that "director Ridley Scott is banking on a big-screen adaptation of Monopoly - yep, the real estate board game." The magazine jokingly recommended "Richard Dreyfuss for the character of Mr. Monopoly, Rachel McAdams for the Scottie dog playing piece, Nick Cannon for the cannon, and Cloris Leachman for the wheelbarrow." This is all in an effort to get kids playing board games again, which in my book, is a good thing, no matter how the movie turns out. If done with a proper amount of humor, it could be the next Clue or Gotcha! (both released in 1985, the latter based on a video game, first by Atari, then later by Nintendo and requiring the zapper light gun).

There is a "list of films based on video games" with over 100 entries on Wikipedia, although it's missing the recent King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (a documentary about world record holders for the arcade version of Donkey Kong). It also skips Fred Savage in The Wizard (1989) and starts with Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper in Super Mario Bros. (1993), released the same year as the greatest of all movies about games, Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993). Chess is a game that's probably featured in thousands of movies from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter, but not like it is in Bobby Fischer. If you've never seen it then you know what to rent this Thanksgiving weekend. Another memorable chess scene I feel obligated to mention is the classic game against the grim reaper in Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), later parodied in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), but with different board games. This was a nice touch, as board games other than chess don't feature too much, and Clue has to share a small stage with the likes of Jumanji (1995) and Zathura (2005). Yuck.

Poker is a game, that like chess, probably appears in thousands of movies, but not as centrally as it does in The Sting (1973), Rounders (1998), and Casino Royale (2006). If there are just as many movies about other card games, I'm not aware. I'm still waiting for one about Bridge, Go Fish or SKIP-BO. Back to actual board games, I highly recommend a documentary about the 2002 National Scrabble Championship called Word Wars (2004). As for role-playing games, (which are sometimes played with miniature game pieces on a board or table), there are at least four different movies with the word "gamers" in the title, all released within four years (2002-2005). One's an actual documentary, two are comedies, and the other is a British drama, but all feature geeky guys playing a Dungeons and Dragons-style game. There are a couple, big-screen, authorized Dungeons and Dragons adaptations, but I'm only going to include The Scourge of Worlds (straight-to-DVD in 2003), which is a game-like interactive adventure in the same vein as Choose Your Own Adventure books.

There are at least a hundred more movies with the word "game" in the title, mostly involving con artists, mind games, and sports. There's one simply called The Game (1997), directed by David Fincher (Se7en and Fight Club), and I believe it's a very loose retelling of the book adaptation, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Lastly, I came across an upcoming summer release called Game (without the "the," 2009). It's "a near-future action/thriller starring Gerard Butler (Kable) as the champion of an on-line game called Slayers. Mind-control technology has taken society by storm and "Slayers" allows humans control other humans in mass-scale, multiplayer online game. With his every move tracked by millions, Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and launching an attack on the system that has imprisoned him" (from the IMDb synopsis).