"I wish we could all be more honest with ourselves and be braver"
—— "Midsummer Future" "Out of Control Player"
Looking for one last relaxation before school starts?
After a week of work, do you want to comfort yourself?
Tired of playing games or wanting to smash your phone with your pig teammates?
Or simply want to watch a popcorn flick with handsome guys and beauties?
Well, Out of Control Players can definitely meet all your requirements. Not to mention, the main character is still a cute little pervert.
If "Ready Player One" is Spielberg's tribute to the collective memory of a generation, then this "Out of Control Player" is a love letter to the game. You may not necessarily have played GTA, Fortnite, chicken or something, but many of the memes in it can still make you smile. It seems that I have followed a blogger on youtube who often shoots videos and complains about some routines in games or anime, such as "me talking to NPC", "me when visiting the skin store" and so on. Especially the Dude who was inarticulate and shouted "catchphrase", it was so real and so immersive.
Of course, you can also see the shadow of many other movies in "Out of Control". At the beginning, there is also the sea, which is very "Truman's World". Guy wakes up every day, in order to see the heroine doing good things everywhere, does it feel like "Groundhog Day"? Of course, it's normal to think of "Westworld", "Machina" and the like.
Not to mention Charlie Tatum's cameo, and the last guy's "big moves", coupled with the BGM, I could clearly hear the audience at the cinema shouting "fuck". All I can say is that the director really understands what everyone wants to see, and the copyright is really capricious.
However, compared to artificial intelligence, AI awakening, or various stalks, what I want to say is that this movie really speaks the voice of the majority of social animals!
Take the names of the characters in the movie, guy, buddy, dude, are they like the people around you?
Like us, they live in a world full of pressure every day (of course, for them, this pressure may be able to survive~), living a given life, repeating the same work, and wanting to resist , longing for true love, but dare not act, powerless. So, we naturally put ourselves into the movies and let them do things for us that we wanted to do but couldn't. Isn't this actually one of the meanings of the existence of games and movies?
Going deeper, in fact, "Out of Control Player" can also bring some philosophical thinking to some extent. It tells the story of a "person" in search of his "true self".
Kierkegaard believes that people experience three kinds of despair when they pursue their true existence.
The first is "not knowing there is a self". You wear the same clothes and drink the same cup of coffee every day. You are insensitive to the hail of bullets around you. Facing the robbers who come every day, you can skillfully remove the gun bag, and then lie on the ground and chat and laugh with your colleagues. Have you ever thought, is this the life you want?
The second is "unwillingness to have a self". Maybe one day you will suddenly realize, no, this is not the life you want to live. You suddenly just want a "cappuccino". But seeing the puzzled and frightened eyes of your friends around you, you finally ordered a cup of coffee that you used to drink every day, and then left angrily in the satisfied eyes of others.
The third kind of despair is "not being able to have oneself". Finally, you mustered up the courage to put on sunglasses and tried to fight monsters and upgrade, but after all, you found that you still can't escape the control of others. "Liberty City" is your eternal shackle.
But is this the end?
of course not.
Kierkegaard also said that in order to free yourself from the pain of despair and find your own existence, you need to take a leap of faith. So, like Truman, you finally jumped out of the border of the sea, crossed the bridge, and reached the other side of "heaven".
Ahem, in fact, I only have a little understanding of existential philosophy. I try to talk about my personal views in a popular way, and I hope that there will be a great god to discuss it!
Of course, "Runaway Player" is not a perfect movie, no, it should be said that there are quite a few shortcomings. Yes, it's full of clichés from start to finish, and you can pretty much guess how the story is going. The emotional progress of the characters is abrupt, and there are many bugs... These are indisputable facts. But the tight rhythm and smooth plot, as well as the real sense of substitution, allow you to ignore these shortcomings. After all, who wants to pay so much attention to a movie that makes you feel good after watching it if you don't deliberately find fault?
There is one more thing to think about. What the movie wants to say is actually very simple, be honest with yourself and take that step bravely. This is similar to the so-called "theme" of "Midsummer Future" released some time ago. However, compared to the story focusing on high school seniors, why does this movie based on the game appear more real? I thought of what buddy said in the movie, "What if we were fake? The emotion in this moment is real, what could be more real?"
Yes, as long as the emotions are sincere and the motives of the characters are real and logical, even the old-fashioned routine of "love saves the world" can still make a good movie? Some domestic films, I don't know when I will understand this truth...
In the end, I sincerely hope that I can see the linkage with "Ready Player One" in my lifetime, even if it is a short film!
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