VGFlicks: Pixels (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Part 1 revealed that Kevin James is President of the U.S., Sandler installs electronics, and aliens are coming. Howdy.

Oh, this military base will not last long.
The aliens arenn't exactly fighting on equal grounds.

I think we can all relate to Sam's situation of hating his job,
but maybe he should emote it a little more.

Sam Brenner, Sandler’s character (gotta remember that it’s a character and not just Sandler himself in some sort of power fantasy), arrives at a normal household and proceeds to install electronics. New HD TV, new PS4... The kid living there is lucky... or not; his parents are divorcing. I'm sparing you the details on the breakup, you don't need to hear that. We meet the mother, Violet van Patten (played by Michelle Monaghan), and Sam is smitten by her. Obvious Sandler cliché is obvious, he falls for a woman way too good for him, adventuring happens, she warms up and ends up falling for him too, and then they live happily ever after.

Michelle Monaghan starts off in this movie as a seemingly-
typical housewife in emotional turmoil. Don't believe that
bullshit, she's more badass than the four main guys.
Hey, weren't there supposed to be video games?

As he puts in place the new TV, Sam talks with the kid, Matty, about video games. The classics. In an obvious generational clash, the kid thinks that Call of Duty and Halo are classics, Sam says that the real classics are arcade games. After he’s done installing the TV, he looks for Violet but finds her drinking alcohol in the closet, clearly not taking her recent breakup well. And who can blame her, really. Overstepping his bounds as a mere electronics installer, Sam goes into the closet with her and offers a shoulder to cry on. She ends up explaining her life to him… y’know, as you do to strangers who have come into your house to do their job. Sam admits that he has an ex of his own, a wife who cheated on him with a doctor. And so Violet and Sam end up sharing drinks, and then Sam makes a move, which is instantly pushed back by Violet. Ah! Finally some realism there. Sam, you can’t move in to kiss a woman you just met! You utter idiot!

I can't even imagine what it must be like to be split into
multiple pieces, still alive

During that time, the American military base at Yigo, Guam, is attacked by the pixelated spaceships, whose blasts turn everything they touch into cubes. After a violent explosion hits the command center, one soldier comes out to view the destruction caused by this unannounced attacker. A bright blue light appears just above him, and he is transported into the mothership… except he’s turned into cubes as he gets teleported out there, and he freaks out. I’ll admit, that teleportation effect is pretty cool.

Then Sam gets a call and says that he has to leave. Direction? The White House. Violet follows in her car and he first thinks she’s stalking him, leading to all the witty banter you can imagine from Adam Sandler (that is, plenty of banter, no wit whatsoever). Turns out, she’s also going to the White House. For, you see… she’s an actual goddamn Colonel, while he’s just a nerd. Will lets Sam into the Oval Office and shows him the images taken at Guam. The spaceships, their formation, and the sounds, this all reminds them of something they saw, a long time ago…

Brian Cox's character is about as pleasant as a kick to the
balls... and somehow, one that never becomes funny even
if you watch it from a distance.

After this, Will heads over to the National Security Council. The people present speculate: Who’s behind this? Moscow? Iran? Brian Cox portrays here an old admiral who’s very quick to blame literally any other country for this and is ready to go to war with that country, even if the damages done to Guam look nothing like what Earth weapons can do. And of course, Will’s theory that Galaga attacked the base are met with disbelief. Brian Cox immediately suggests that the U.S. go to war against Galaga, or Iran, because he apparently thinks Iran has weapons that turns stuff into blocks. Someone says it would make more sense to blame an enterprise like Google, then Brian Cox says, let’s blow up Google. How subtle.

Fuck, this hurts to watch. Let’s hope there isn’t an old trigger-happy military guy like that in the current administ… You know, I should stop comparing this movie to the real world, this is making me even sadder.

Needless to say, his orange NERD uniform didn't really
wow anybody in the White House.

Sam shows up and explains to the council that the version of Galaga that attacked was the original, released in 1981. A version that was recalled and modified in 1986 to correct some glitches in the original code. This would be all fine and good, except it was probably invented for the story as I found no evidence of any of this on the Internet. (It's not the only thing they invent, by the way.) Brian Cox claims that blaming a video game for the attack will reduce to shreds whatever respect the public has left in their President, and Will might even get impeached for it (and yet, if recent history has taught us anything, it's that it takes a miracle to get a President impeached these days!). Since nobody around the table believes that Galaga attacked the base, Will asks Sam to leave.

Ah yes, because there is no better way to be introduced
to a returning character than by seeing their ass crack on
the screen. Real smooth, movie. (Fuck you, movie.)

Sam goes back to his van and drives away, only for someone hidden behind the seats to pop up. Dammit, did Josh Gad really have to have his pants down for that scene, with the ass crack fully visible? And after he startles Sam, he gets thrown backwards into the street, with pants properly on. Whoever was checking for continuity errors in this movie should have been fired. Checking on the guy, Sam finally recognizes Ludlow Lamonsoff, the Wonder Kid… er… Manchild. Ludlow hid in Sam’s van earlier, and was planning to drug him. I could only imagine the exchange, if there was an attempt at comedy here.

Sam should have just bashed Ludlow's brains in with his bat. It wouldn't
have helped the film, but it would have cut short the worst role Josh Gad
ever had in his career.

“Is that chloroform?”

“What? No, I would never drug you! It’s clear alcohol, it’s the new popular thing in Europe, I swear!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No, really! I promise! I just switched the labels around by accident. It says chloroform on the bottle, but it’s booze, I swear it’s booze!”

“I can be stupid, but I’m not that stupid, Ludlow.”

“No, really! I can prove it to you! Here, give it a good whiff! Smell that and you’ll see it’s not chloroform! I promise!”

Some people take their obsession of fictional characters too far.
Some people make shrines; others draw porn. Others become
writers for the Powerpuff Girls reboot and self-insert themselves.

Sam agrees to see what Ludlow has to show him. We enter Ludlow’s basement, under his grandma’s house, and… well, it’s exactly what I expect a crazy conspiracy theorist’s basement to be like. He thinks that the CIA is tapping his phone, that “JFK shot first”, that people are spied through cable, that Area 51 is a real thing… His walls are plastered with newspaper clippings about clones, aliens, conspiracies. The only other thing in this room is the poster of Lady Lisa, the character he had a crush on as a kid – and still does as an adult in his early forties. An obsession, rather, seeing that he even makes drawn flipbooks about himself and how things would be like “if she was real”. I sense the basis here for a very infuriating final joke in this story.

Clippings adorn all of the walls in Ludlow's room.
Merely looking at this makes me feel like I am losing
a number of IQ points.

But aside from his obsession with Lady Lisa from the fictional arcade game Dojo Quest, this guy is all about conspiracy theories. Let me go on a tangent here: I already said how much I hate conspiracy theorist characters, and Josh Gad in this movie is a perfect example of how terrible those characters can be. Almost every single aspect of his character revolves around his obsessive search for connections and conspiracies. He’s a socially awkward nerd who lives in his grandma’s basement? He’s a conspiracy theorist, what else did you expect. He has never been engaged romantically? Gee, I wonder why. He spouts off crazy theories that make no sense? He tries to drug a friend to force him into his lair? He lives as a recluse? He hides in people’s vans? He has desilusions about saving the world? He yells a lot? He’s afraid of having cable TV in his house? He has a serious distrust of any authority, especially the military? Say it with me: Conspiracy. Theorist. Lady Lisa is the only element about him that isn’t tied to his conspiracy theorist tendencies. This guy… Urgh! This guy! Josh Gad’s career stagnated for a year after this movie came out, and I can see why. This role just turns him into something ridiculous. Thank God he had his role as Lefou to save his career in the Beauty and the Beast live-action remake.

For fuck’s sake, Josh, stop yelling so much, it just makes me hate Ludlow even more.

I can think of worse things aliens could do to contact us
than impersonating Ronald Reagan.

Thankfully, we get the first bit of interesting exposition here. Ludlow talks about the tape sent into space at the end of that video game competition in 1982. He then says that the tape has been found by aliens. He was recording on his analog TV a show he was watching, and he caught the alien message airing at that moment. The aliens used various clips for their message: Ronald Reagan’s speech and Madonna are two of the three.

The aliens claim that they received the Earthlings’ declaration of war (believing the tape's game footage to be a challenge sent to the universe by humans), and that they won the first battle, and that they’ve thus taken a trophy (the soldier who was teleported in their spaceship). Of course, they allow humanity to fight back, with each species putting their own planet on the line, in a winner-takes-all situation. They set their attacks like video games. Lose three lives, Game Over; lose three times, your planet is doomed.

...Did Madonna agree to this?

They say they want to make it fair and follow these examples of “human warfare” seen in the video… But here’s the thing. They already struck once, unannounced, undetected, and stole a point. They aired their message for Earth on analog TV (which many places no longer have), and it’s unclear whether it was a single channel or they took over all analog TVs, either way their message didn’t go through. Even if it did, how many would take this seriously? A message about aliens coming to attack the world, made from clips of '80's shows? Sounds like some hacker was bored and attacked a random channel with a fake message just for fun, like that Max Headroom incident during a Doctor Who episode (look that up). On top of that, while they do say through coordinates where they’ll strike next (but not how), it leaves the “heroes” with very little time to prepare and fight back – especially considering how varied the arcade games were. They attack with pixel creatures made of an alien technology, and we still don’t have weapons to strike back. How is that fair, aliens? That’s not fair.

Ludlow and Sam bring their discovery to Will, who proves himself to be quite reasonable. By which I mean, reasonably skeptical of all this. It’s too unbelievable. We’d need more video proof, or we’d need a clear indicator that these aliens aren’t messing around. What, he should just call India (the location of the coordinates) and go “Hey, look out for an alien attack”? As if his reputation wasn’t low enough already!

Impressive how the aliens managed to take into account
our 3D world when adapting the very 2D games they saw
on the tape.
I mean, it makes no sense, but kudos I guess.

Sure enough, we cut to India where a young couple is seen walking with the Taj Mahal in the distance. The guy proposes to his girlfriend in the cheesiest of ways, but it’s ruined as paddles appear with white cubes around the Taj Mahal and start destroying it piece by piece, like in Arkanoid. That would be fine and good, but… Arkanoid came out in 1986 (and people refer to it as Arkanoid, not the preceding game Breakout, which did come out before 1982 and would have fit much better). Unopposed once again, the aliens win this round and take the Indian guy as a trophy. Thankfully, video proof has been taken of the event.

Yep, the American Army invented light ray guns in a single
day in order to battle aliens. Um... Go America?

This time, Will reacts and brings Sam and Ludlow to the special weapons division of the American Army, where Violet van Patten is helping the scientists create various items to help them in the fight. Remember, the score is 0 for Earth, 2 for the aliens. Another defeat, and we’re done. There's these new guns being built by the researchers to specifically destroy being made of intelligent energy. Next she’ll tell us she has 4 cars ready in a few hours for the good guys.

I just realized that many of Adam Sandler’s lines in this film are witless jokes and banter. I wonder how much of it was ad-libbed on the scene, and how much was scripted. It does feel like his snarky comments come from a cheap, lowbrow place, as so many of them are mean-spirited jabs at anyone who disagrees with him. He gets nasty whenever he can spout his own jokes.

He's screaming at buff soldiers right now. I wished these
soldiers had been allowed to respond to his threats with
a good punch in the face.
I don't wish harm to Josh Gad. I do, however, wish a LOT
of harm to Ludlow Lamonsoff.

Then, we get to the part where Sam and Ludlow have to instruct soldiers on the nature of their mission… Ludlow, of course, makes a complete fucking fool of himself by going all “drill sergeant” on them, with him yelling again as much as he wants. Shut the fuck up, Ludlow. My default expression, whenever Josh Gad is on the screen and does these forced, awful bits:

The army quarters, turned into a giant arcade?
It's both funny and pathetic.

Sam soon takes over and explains, in better terms, that the Army is facing today a threat unlike any other, and that they need knowledge on video games in order to win. Unfortunately, through the following days, they’re barely able to teach the soldiers any video game tricks that would be useful in this battle. They just can’t figure out the patterns! This doesn’t look good for the third fight… which could be their final fight! Come the day of the third alien attack, the soldiers are equipped with the light ray guns, and seem ready to battle – although there are serious doubts over whether they actually have a chance.

…I… I think I’ll stop here for now. Join me in Part 3, hmm?

I'll go get some ice for my forehead.