Wednesday, June 24, 2009

There Will Be Brawl

There Will be Brawl is a fantastic mini series that has been running since the beginning of this year. The series is essentially an amateur film presented in 10 - 15 minute episodes, loosely based around the cast of the very popular video game series Super Smash Bros. The characters have been taken from their respective ideal worlds of black and white morality and placed in a modernized film Noir setting. To give an idea of what this means for the characters, Link is the police chief, Bowser, Ganondorf, King DeDeDe, and Mewtwo are all mob bosses, and Kirby is a serial killer cannibal that eats his victims and wear's their skin (an obvious parody of Hannibal Lector.)
I can practically hear you asking what makes this one different from all the other "gritty" interpretations of the Nintendo universe, almost all of which are terrible. First of all, there are the costumes. They are of a general fantastic quality, from the Mario Bros. over sized noses to the particularly amazing King DeDeDe. Even the Kirby and Meta Knight dolls are great. It is obvious that they have some talented people working behind the scenes on this one. Second, there is the acting. Most of the cast are aspiring actors, and as such the acting is of a much higher quality than your general fan film. There is, of course, some bad acting, but all the important parts are well acted. Third, there is the attention to detail that is only possible because the creators are great fans of the source material. It is great fun to see the little details that have been worked in and how your favorite characters have been adapted to this dark setting. Last, and most importantly, there is the quality of the film itself. The creators are taking this seriously; there is no other way to put it. This is a real movie. It wasn't thrown together over a weekend for a couple of laughs.
I suspect that There Will Be Brawl will go down as the best live action video game movie ever made, and I include Hollywood productions in that statement. I certainly haven't seen any that compare to it. Be warned that the film is not meant for people younger than 17, though I personally think that the content is closer to PG-13 than R. Here's an address if my links don't work right:
http://therewillbebrawl.com/index.php

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