Machinima media is media that uses the existing digital assets and graphics engines of video games to create original animated works. It's been around for a long time, with the popular "Red v. Blue" series still going after twenty years. Two recent Machinima documentaries - or rather documentaries that use significant amounts of Machinima - have been getting some attention, so I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge a part of the cinema landscape I'm not very familiar with.
"Ibelin," or "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" in some markets, chronicles the life of a Norwegian man named Mats Steen, an avid gamer whose life was limited and cut short by a severe form of muscular dystrophy. After his death, his family discovered his online life, based around the "World of Warcraft" online game, where he found friends and even love. Director Benjamin Ree made one of my favorite recent documentaries, "The Painter and the Thief," and displays the same playfulness with the narrative here. We jump backwards and forwards in time, and significant portions of the film are spent in-game with recreations of Steen's interactions, using the "World of Warcraft" graphics. The graphics are pretty outdated looking, and the animation is nothing fancy, but they still get across the personalities of the people involved.
While there's a lot about "Ibelin" that feels piecemeal and cobbled together from secondhand accounts, it successfully makes its case that gamers can develop meaningful relationships in digital spaces. And this was especially important for an individual who didn't have a chance to create those relationships otherwise. Most of the events of "Ibelin" took place in the early 2010s, and gaming culture has changed considerably, but it's nice to have an optimistic look at how online gaming has the potential to make a positive impact on people's lives. I was surprised at how much real emotion the filmmakers were able to evoke from scenes of fantasy RPG avatars just having conversations with each other.
Because I'm not much of a gamer, part of me still thinks of modern video games as resembling "World of Warcraft." So, I was completely knocked for a loop when I got a look at "Grand Theft Auto Online," the setting for "Grand Theft Hamlet." This is a pandemic film, where a pair of UK actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, are playing "Grand Theft Auto Online" during lockdown together, when they get the bright idea to stage a production of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in the virtual environment. Sam's wife, filmmaker Pinny Grylls, documents the process of holding auditions, assembling a cast, trying to keep the rehearsal process on track, and finally holding the live performance. It's not an easy venture, with so many amateur participants, and everyone tends to get killed a lot by griefers.
Though the emotional hooks aren't as strong as in "Ibelin," I still found "Grand Theft Hamlet" thoroughly watchable. A big part of this is because the graphics of "Grand Theft Auto Online" are so much more cinematic than "World of Warcraft." The gameplay takes place in a virtual recreation of neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area, with much more realistic and sophisticated graphics. Crane and Oosterveen come up with their bright idea when they stumble across the game's version of The Hollywood Bowl - standing empty and ready for a performance. Their version of "Hamlet" ends up being staged in multiple in-game locations, including rooftops, street corners, and even on a moving blimp. The whole time, they're under threat of their avatars being shot by machine guns and blown up by rocket launchers.
As with "Ibelin," "Grand Theft Hamlet" often feels pieced together out of available footage and whatever limited recreations the filmmakers could manage on a minimal budget. However, I like that the whole film, aside from a brief coda, takes place in the game. We hear the players discussing their personal lives and real world complications, and a particularly poignant moment comes when we witness a marital heart-to-heart, but we never leave the "Grand Theft Auto Online" world. A fascinating reveal late in the film, which I wish had been expanded on, is that one of the organizers is spending much more time on the project than anyone else because it's the only thing he has to focus on in lockdown.
As for the "Hamlet" performance itself, we only get to see the highlight reel, but it's thrilling nonetheless.
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