Giant Bomb Presents: Alex and Austin Talk About Pixels

Yeah, I love instrumental jazz-hop.

"Filed Under: Adam Sandler"

Holy shit, Adam Sandler has a page on the wiki?

wait i thought that was the real pac man guy

I'm excited for more BEast content!

Fun listen now I probably won't even pirate it.

Huh. Never heard the "dunking" used like that before. It'll no doubt work it's way into my vocabulary now. Thanks Austin!

Oh, and that movie sound soooooo baaaaaad.

But he criticized the shit out of it? He barely said any nice things about it.

@tanookisuit: Same issue here

Sounds like some Samurai Champloo business.

@unsolvedparadox: I asked Rorie on the tweeter, he said he planned on doing more when Alex was in the office for E3. But that never happened.

It isn't. It's used during the final battle.

Wreck-it Ralph does it super well. It's used to great effect in characterization and world building in that film. My favorite little instance of it is that in "Hero's Duty," the sci-fi shooter that is the newest cabinet in the arcade, there aren't any in-world "actors" playing the bad guys when the player steps up to the machine (the way that Ralph becomes the villain in his home cabinet during game time). In "Hero's Duty," the player shoots hordes of alien bugs, but it's revealed that these are effectively automata, without any personalities or individualization. On one hand, you can read this switch from the previous games as "fixing" the problem of bad guys feeling left out, exploited, and rebellious--if the bad guys are just robots, then no need to make em feel like people. On the other, that opens up questions of workplace automation.

All that from just "Huh, let's differentiate this new game in an interesting way from the rest of the machines in the arcade." That's what I mean when I say that Pixar's Wreck-It Ralph is "dense" with meaning. Because the creators spent so much effort filling the world with clear, cohesive ideas, you can bring those ideas together in interesting ways even without the director or writer doing so explicitly. Not all great films do this with plot and world, some do it with framing or light or color or the nuance of acting, or the use of sound. But most great films strive to do it somehow.

Just a quick correction Austin, Disney Animation made Wreck-It Ralph, not Pixar. But yeah, Pixels definitely seems like the anti-thesis of Wreck-It Ralph with Pixels having little to no meaning to the story and characters while Wreck-It Ralph fleshes the story and characters out way more.

Why is it pointless? Games are an interesting topic (since that is the reason we are all here) and have evolved so much in their short time being around. If you look at the themes that the toy story movies explored, like the old toy vs new toy with fancy features, collector mentality, aging out of interests, etc I think a lot of parallels could be drawn. I think Austin did a great job of touching on some of that in regards to wreck it ralph.

Is this the start of a podcast where you guys watch pixels every week for a year and podcasts about it?

A variety of technical and scheduling problems have made it difficult. I'm far more busy on a day-to-day basis than I was when I started here and as such I don't have a huge amount of time for podcasting or even going out to movies or watching TV, unfortunately. If he and Austin want to take over the BOB podcast, they have my blessing.

intro nujabes as fuck

I'm sure the sequal Voxels will be more interesting.

Ended up listening because of seeing the tweets on the front page. How come half the discussion is taking place to people in general on twitter instead of to the person doing the commenting in the comments section of the podcast itself? I think it's obvious you guys thought it was bad, but I suppose I'd be surprised if I was expecting Alex to snark the whole way through.

I enjoyed hearing you guys talking about a movie, anyway. I'm never going to see it. It's sort of a special case since it's a video game movie, but when another comes oui(Is the next big one the WoW movie?) I'd like to see you cover that too. Hopefully, it's a better one.

Groovy opening.

Thank you Alex and Austin for doing this so I know all about this terrible, terrible film.

You're so damn right

Can't believe Alex didn't recognize Ashley Benson from cinematic titan: Spring Breakers.

I'm wondering why this still isn't showing up in my GBP feed on Pocket Casts. Hrm.

Definitely would like to hear more podcast of film reviews like this!!!

"Everybody needs play. That's why they call it play." - Roger Ebert

This was an excellent listen. Alex and Austin, please make more of these.

Do watch eXistenZ, for exactly the reasons this man just stated.

I'm having the same problem with Pocket Casts on Android. The feed doesn't have the latest podcast.

I think Wreck-It Ralph used its video game theme in a way that served the characters and told a story that was very human at its heart. The old games versus new games element of that film had weight to it because the characters themselves existed in those games, so in a way it was just about a man who felt under-appreciated and outdated, which is relatable because everyone feels inadequate at times; it's a problem that could be transferred to any number of situations. In a film like Pixels, where the main characters are just random dudes who happen to like video games, I don't think that conflict really matters, because in reality the dichotomy between old and new games isn't an issue that's actually important (or at least, the way it's presented in this film isn't, because it just comes across as older people being bitter about younger people). I suppose it could be a greater examination of culture as a whole shifting in new directions, but there are plenty of films that I think have explored that and I wouldn't expect an Adam Sandler film to carry any legitimate weight in that regard. I think it just comes down to the fact that the story in Pixels is not really applicable to reality in any way. I agree with what you guys said about how films like this try to justify people's passions by implying that they could save the world in some ridiculous fictional scenario, whereas the real value in someone's passions should come from the enjoyment they get out of them.

@bbalpert: I seem to recall from his Jack & Jill film that a majority of the budget goes to paying himself and his friends, so if he ever did become less 'bankable', taking a pay cut would would even it out.

Hey, tagging @edgework and @frobie in here. Lots of folks having trouble getting the GB Presents feed up to date on the Pocket Casts feed app.

@darkan_omegamu: totally dig the opening tune too

@tikicobra said:

It's not a major part of the film, but Wreck-It Ralph at least contrasted old games and new games against each other, with Ralph and his old arcade games sorta facing off against a new obvious-Halo-stand-in-but-it's-also-kinda-Call-of-Duty.

From the sounds of Pixels, all it has is one short, super pointless scene where Sandler's character doesn't really get the point of newer games, and all that establishes is that Sandler's character just completely stopped playing video games like 30 years ago for some arbitrary reason.

@outrager: There's a thread about this here

Wouldn't those technically be Voxels?

For no reason

@johnnymcginley: Negative. Not seeing it either. Last update was June 26th on this one. Is it a premium feed only?

It actually appeared in my pocketcasts feed today, so apparently either it got fixed or fixed itself

@miningguyx360: that is some smooth jazz

@tajasaurus: Toru Iwatani, the creator of Pac-Man, does have a cameo in Pixels as a repairman but he isn't playing himself. In the film Iwatani is played by the actor Dennis Akiyama.

Here is that sick ass intro music for those wondering.

One of these every week, thanks. I really enjoyed listening to you two discuss the movie.

Pixels was fun.

Pixels hit Starz, I just finished watching it and I thought it was largely fine. I mean it certainly wasn't a great movie, but not the egregiously offensive thing you'd think it was from reading the tirades that certain members of the gaming press felt compelled to commit to word. It seems emblematic of an unhealthy amount of cynicism and hate pandering among said press - the culture of "dunking on things" as Austin says.

Listening to this podcast is the closest I'll ever come to watching Pixels.