Earth is losing 0 to 2, and our hope lies in Adam Sandler. Is it too late to root for the aliens? Sandler’s character, Sam Brenner, is trying to teach American soldiers to fight against these video game-themed aliens, using the arcade machines, but none of them seems ready. And the date of the next battle is approaching… We get a quick scene of President Kevin James – I mean Will Cooper making a cake with his wife, getting frosting smeared across his face, with the event caught on video by the media (and replayed to embarrass him further). That’s when someone shows up to tell him about the aliens’ newest message and the location of the next fight. Smack-dab in the middle of Hyde Park in London, because these aliens don’t care about civilians getting hurt.
The American military arrives at Hyde Park with Sam
and Ludlow as… er… alien warfare tactical consultants? Nah, that’s too
dignified a title. Let’s just say they’re the nerds-in-chief who’ll watch on
the sidelines and, sometimes, tell the soldiers what to do. Meanwhile, Will is
in a meeting with the Prime Minister of England, watching the events unfold.
The hour comes. Soon the skies open, and a multitude of colorful blocky
mushrooms fall and set themselves in place in the air. The “expert” Brenner
immediately recognizes a set-up for Centipede. Wait, would a 3D Centipede
really work?
The monster shows up from the clouds, and I’ll admit, it looks impressive. I’m not afraid to admit that the effects in this movie are
pretty good. Sam tells the soldiers to shoot at the centipede’s head, because hitting
a segment will split it. Of course, just because they learned what the
games were about doesn’t mean the soldiers are prepared to face them in real
life, and so the centipede gets split, multiple times. To hammer in the kind of
danger the soldiers are facing, one Centipede reaches the ground and chomps on
a soldier, turning him into a pile of blocks. That’s the part that freaks me
out with this entire concept: You’re killed by these aliens, you’re somehow
turned into a bunch of cubes… are you a dead body? Or do you stay conscious?
Can you feel your body split apart in who knows how many pieces? Are you still…
ALIVE like this? …Don’t think about it, the implications will only get worse.
Coming from a nightmare near you. Although Pixels itself qualifies as a nightmare. |
Sam takes a chance when the British Admiral (played by
Sean Bean) is distracted, grabs a ray gun from a soldier and starts shootings
at the Centipedes, completely destroying them. Showing greater skill than any
of the soldiers present, Sam tells Ludlow to grab a ray gun and get ready for
Round 2.
They're not even looking where they aim yet they perfectly destroy the Centipedes behind them! That's impossible! |
Anyone else feels uneasy with the way they're holding these weapons? |
One Centipede runs off and Sam chases after it through
the street, into a hotel where it causes a lot of destruction, eventually
running into an old lady’s room and, for some reason, stopping by for a moment
to follow the on-TV exercises along with the old lady. Okay, I’ll admit I got a
chuckle out of that. This pause is long enough to allow Sam to kill the Centipede
as it goes though the wall and nearly falls on a child.
The Duck Hunt Dog is... actually kinda cute like this. The duck just doesn't care. |
Of course, during the party, Ludlow points out that
they’ll be screwed if one particular game becomes a part of the aliens’
attacks, since Sam is not a champion at that game… Sam refuses, but eventually
has to agree: Just in case the survival of Earth depends on the current Donkey
Kong champion, they need to get Eddie Plant.
Glad to see he hasn't lost the mullet. We needed that visual reminder that he's stuck in the '80s. |
Of course, Eddie Plant would be the type to request women as rewards for saving the world... |
Eddie joins the group, just in time as the next battle
will be taking place that night, in New York City. A maze of streets and
branching paths, gee, I wonder what game it’s gonna be. There’s not enough time
to evacuate Manhattan, although the American Army does everything it can to
prevent citizen casualties in the upcoming battle. A discussion with a
shell-shocked NYPD policeman reveals that he saw the creature: It’s Pac-Man.
Okay, so how do we deal with Pac-Man in this maze of
streets? Easy. Get ghosts. Or rather, as Violet reveals to the team, get cars
painted with the colors of Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. How did she get those
cars ready in a matter of a few hours? Sam can’t be bothered to remember the
model name Violet gave them, so he decides to just call them the Mini-Ghosts.
That’s not even creative! Here’s my idea: Pac-Busters. Like Ghostbusters,
except they’re the ghosts heading out to bust Pac-Man. Make that a thing
please.
Sandler’s team consists of only three people, they need a fourth
driver. In comes Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man (actually played by Denis
Akiyama), whom Ludlow greets with bows and some gibberish that he tries to
phrase like it’s actual Japanese. Add one to the list of stupid lines uttered by
Josh Gad in this film. Add one to Peter Dinklage too, as he walks up to Iwatani
and simply goes, “I made your game my bitch”. It’s a good thing that Dinklage
already had his role as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones, he didn’t suffer too much from Pixels.
So it’s an easy deal: Sam, Ludlow, Eddie and Toru will chase down Pac-Man in
the streets of New York. Hit him three times and he’s done for.
Oh good, someone else getting pulled into this mess. |
And yet, when they get there in their Pac-Busters and
see the spherical beast, all Sam can utter is “Pac-Man is the bad guy?”
Sam, you dense motherfucker. You’re told by that officer that the monster in New York is Pac-Man. You’re put behind the wheel of a car designed to be like a ghost from Pac-Man, and Violet tells you that your job will be to hit Pac-Man three times. And you are STILL surprised when you get there and see that Pac-Man is the villain to take down? Wow, Sam, you really are a fucking moron.
Sam, you dense motherfucker. You’re told by that officer that the monster in New York is Pac-Man. You’re put behind the wheel of a car designed to be like a ghost from Pac-Man, and Violet tells you that your job will be to hit Pac-Man three times. And you are STILL surprised when you get there and see that Pac-Man is the villain to take down? Wow, Sam, you really are a fucking moron.
O O Pacman doesn't care. |
To Pac-Man, anything is a dot to comp on. Well, except the ghosts, anyway. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. |
Does it look cool? Eh, kinda. Does it make sense? NOPE! |
Round 3 is tougher, as there’s only Eddie and Sam left
to face the beast. Eddie speeds up to hit Pac-Man but it takes a turn; Eddie
cannot slow down in time and falls into the river. And of course, Pac eats a
power pellet before Sam reaches it. Making use of these fantastic and improbably-excellent
driving skills, Sam drives in reverse into a multi-level parking, giving Pac
plenty of “dots” to chew on to slow him down. How can he climb up the floors of
this parking garage while in reverse without hitting the walls? Mystery. Pac’s
10 seconds of power end just as Sam is plunging in reverse from a high floor of the
parking towards the top of another building, and the yellow sphere’s mouth
clamps around him exactly at the moment when the car is going back from blue
to red. Pac-Man loses its final life, and that’s a victory for the heroes,
bringing the score to 2-2!
Let me take a time-out to discuss Eddie’s super-speed
here. It’s clear that he’s using tricks he shouldn’t be allowed to use and that
it’s gonna bite the heroes in the ass eventually. How did he do that? Simple:
Cheat codes. I mean, oldie arcade games all had cheat codes, am I right? (I am
NOT right. That was sarcasm.) Yep, Eddie cheated to hit Pac-Man twice. What’s wrong here? EVERYTHING is wrong here.
Let’s assume that Eddie somehow input cheat codes in
his car to get super-speed.
Hell, it's stated they were driving the "Mini-Ghosts"! Cheat codes for the ghosts? ...Why? |
Problem #2: How did he input that code in the car?
They were driving relatively normal cars, and there was likely no way to do the
required manipulations. Did he just so happen to have a secret joystick in
there?
Problem #3: Let’s say he did input the code. How did
the car turn out capable of said super-speed? How, I ask, how did he go from a
dead end to an open street at what looks like 2000mph for a single second? You
can’t pretend that the aliens made it possible, as there is no proof up to this
point that the aliens included the cheat codes in their versions of the games –
they included some glitches, as shown with Galaga, but I doubt they could
recreate cheat codes.
Problem #3.5: Even if the aliens did make it possible
for cheat codes to work during their battles against humans, and they are set
on playing it fair, then why would they make these codes work? It’s right there
in the name: Cheat codes. The aliens wouldn’t allow their opponents to cheat,
would they? That would just be stupid from them. On top of that, they do
eventually figure out that cheat codes were used in the Pac-Man battle, and boy
are they displeased. Very, very displeased.
Needless to say, Eddie's face when the car falls into the water is priceless. |
Problem #5: Okay, so let’s say it wasn’t super-speed as they claim,
it was teleportation. Same problem, the cars were made by humans. Violet and
her staff couldn’t possibly have made the cars capable of teleportation with
our technology. Which brings me back to the aliens and how they wouldn’t allow the
cheat code to work either.
Problem #6, and the biggest one: The original Pac-Man
arcade game didn’t have cheat codes in the first place, so Eddie’s super-speed
is a moot point as no such code exists.
The researchers for this movie should have been fired.
They got the patterns right for the four ghosts, but fucked up royally here.
Sure, you can pretend that they did it to further the story (Eddie’s cheating
tendencies are a major plot point after all), but it’s nonetheless infuriating
to see it done so poorly.
Urgh! Okay, I’ve had enough for today. See you in Part 4.
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