With the Thermian soundtrack.
Is that played on a theremin?
A Bug’s Life
Fred Kwan didn’t really work for me. Others might have picked up that he was a stoner from the jump, but he just seemed a bit slow to me. A scene like the one Ranger_Jeff says was deleted would’ve been helpful.
It seemed pretty obvious to me from the first scene in the ‘green room’ but the PG-13 rating required subduing obvious drug references. But frankly, it doesn’t really matter whether he is a ‘stoner’ or not; the point is that unlike the other characters, he is pretty easy about going along with the aliens recreation of the Galaxy Quest mythos even though the other characters are initially resistant, is the ambiguously ‘ethnic’ character, and comes up with the ‘genius’ solution of transporting the rock monster into the barracks with Sarris’ troops to allow the Protector crew to escape.
Stranger
The Protector crew (humans) were basically damaged each in their own unique way. It was a very nicely composed group of characters. The thermians were a little more homogenous and uninteresting, mostly. But the worst character had to be Sarris: he was just an asshole with a hair up his ass about something, and they never bothered to go into whar that might have been. Why was he attacking the thermians? “Because he was evil” is just not satisfactory.
Well, as Gwen said, it was badly written! He did have my favorite line, though,
He does not understand. Explain it as you would to a child.
As a phone-in CSR I thought of that line a lot over the years.
Nitpick: the line was actually
He doesn’t understand. Explain, as you would a child.
Damn you! I was going to do the same nitpick!
I looked for it on IMDb but it wasn’t there. Didn’t think of YT. You can probably see the whole movie there in bits and pieces.
TVTropes calls this And You Thought It Was a Game.
Galaxy Quest, Three Amigos, and Tropic Thunder are mentioned. As is The Last Starfighter, mentioned by steronz.
The Man Who Knew Too Little and Mortal Combat: The Movie are others. There are a bunch of other examples but most don’t seem to have the game as central to the plot. The early parts of Westworld had that going on but it didn’t last long.
Thanks! It’s a fun idea for a plot.
Is it? It’s been a looong time since I saw it, but I remember this one as a straight forward adaptation of the game’s plot. I don’t recall any meta stuff about the video game existing within the film, or someone thinking they’re in a fake martial arts tournament.
The only part of the movie I’ve seen is the “For me, it was Tuesday” scene, so I dunno. TVTropes says:
In Mortal Kombat: The Movie, Johnny Cage has absolutely no idea what he’s getting into. He has only been told that Mortal Kombat is an invitation-only martial arts tournament, and leaps at the chance to prove that he is a legitimate martial artist rather than a Wire Fu actor. When he realizes what the stakes and the opposition are… he doesn’t take it well.
“For me, it was Tuesday,” was Street Fighter.
Well, there you go. Two fighting video game movies I haven’t seen. I suppose I haven’t seen a single second of Mortal Kombat.
You haven’t missed much.
But the Johnny Cage thing isn’t a Galaxy Quest situation. In the game, if I’m remembering correctly, Johnny Cage is a movie star, but also a legitimate martial artist. He knows the Mortal Kombat tournament is real, he just doesn’t know about the supernatural aspect, and he enters it trying to prove that he’s a legit martial artist and not just an actor. I think the movie more-or-less follows this. I don’t think there’s any point in the movie where he thinks he’s in a fake martial arts tournament, he just freaks out when the four-armed giant and the undead ninja show up.
How about the original movie Jumanji as another example of where the game becomes real?
I took this as motivation to write a tool that I always wanted. Vibe-coded my way through the whole thing. Check out my common trope finder:
Common Trope Finder
Looks like this:
Search for titles and click on + to add to the list. The list on the right shows all the tropes they have in common.
Shout-out to gender studies! “Analyzing Gender Bias in Narrative Tropes” provided the source data.
He knows it’s a real tournament, but does he know that the losers die? That’s not how most tournaments go.