"Controlled Player" Behind Out Of Control Player

By Shen Lujun

"No one knows anything," was the opening remark in the Memoirs of Hollywood writer William Goldman in 1983. In the 1980s, the aesthetics and story of new Hollywood gradually weakened, and the cinema line was weak, so new film types were urgently needed to stimulate the audience and boost the industry. After that, we know that the major companies began to actively explore business, and finally ushered in the era of "visual spectacles" in the 1990s, and the box office and film industry level also went up all the way. At that time, the script was repeatedly rejected, and William Goldman, whose career was at a low ebb, was able to return to Hollywood because of this wave of Renaissance.

Until we have this day. Worldwide, cinemas have given way to streaming media, making the epidemic worse. The film company died of the acquisition of the entertainment empire, and even the conservative paramount couldn't hold on and launched the online "Paramount +". As for the audience, they don't know how many "+" they have to pay to see what they want to see. Happy to see, more abundant capital and more diverse platforms provide different ways and possibilities to play, but how can the filmmakers develop at the moment?

All kinds of contradictions about "freedom control out of control" appear in "out of control player". In the movie, a game NPC named guy (non player character) is awakened and free because of love, and becomes an AI with autonomous consciousness. He and his creator, programmers who insist on original game development, have joined forces to fight against unscrupulous and plagiarized Monopoly game companies in the real world and in the game.

The English title of "out of control player" is free guy. The film, which was brewed three years ago, is now released as a cinema booster. However, the original fox film industry is in name only, becoming another first-line factory in the pocket of Disney after Lucas, Pixar and marvel. As film critic David Ehrlich put it, "Mickey Mouse's Imperial Star Destroyer swallowed it alive.". And the story of "out of control player" - the creator's resistance to big companies' plagiarism of personal achievements - hardly fails to remind people of "acquisitions.". But instead of being the object of ridicule, smart as Disney prefers to be the one who laughs together.

"Out of control player" insisted on pure cinema screening. This does not mean that Disney has any ritual obsession with cinema viewing. It can only be said that the development path of each of its sub brands has been clearly defined. And "Mickey Mouse" has long gone beyond the scope of film.

Marvel superhero series is positioned as film / cartoon. The "Mandalorian" and "R2D2" and "C3PO" two robot episodes obviously plot movies / TV series, aiming to drain the last drop of blood from "Star Wars" IP. Their own animation and film and television IP entity filled in the clue of film / paradise. Now, "out of control" seems to be pointing to the ninth art, the game. The sequel of the film has been confirmed to be released in three years. It will be the only original Disney sequel without an IP prototype.

This kind of powerful and controllable content product has only one direction in the end, that is to point to profitability. What about movies? Maybe after so much crossover, we can't talk about movies anymore. As for "out of control player", it is more like an assembly product with good jokes and stems, the shell of cyberpunk, the shadow of Truman's world, the image spectacle of breaking the dimensional wall, and the future middle class geeks and programmers as the main body of imagination. These elements are put together to form a bottle of eight treasure porridge sold on the screen train.

"Out of control player" has the basic plot of cyberpunk, that is, the marginal small people investigate and resist the giant company with one hand covering the sky through a detective story, but it has no corresponding texture. The core of cyberpunk lies in the criticism and Introspection of the dark world in the future and the vigilance to "high technology, low life" and high polarization between the rich and the poor. This is the contrast between pyramid palaces and metal cages in blade runner, and the protagonist's shantytowns in player number one and the corporate hall like a big apple store. But in this film, there is probably nothing more "ugly" to challenge the audience's lower limit, except for the high saturation Manhattan streets with tanks and missiles and the minimalist high-rise buildings with internet red. Beauty and entertainment make cyberpunk's critical power disappear. The out of control future interrogated and questioned by countless great science fiction works has also become a controllable illusion of human and animal harmlessness in the stupid words of "muscle death".

In Truman's world, it is the sentence at the end of the film, "I know, but I will never turn back". At least outside the studio (the false world created in the film), there is a real world that is questionable but certain. In contrast, at the end of "out of control player", guy becomes a passer-by completely (he really stands on the road in the game), sends off his beloved girl with warm heart, and is willing to stay in the beautiful virtual world. But we have to ask: what will happen when the world depends on servers and power?

"No one knows anything." long before Mr. Martin lamented that streaming media destroyed cinema viewing and even destroyed public films, movies might have been no longer movies. I don't want to call it death. The more appropriate expressions are "rebirth through the belly" and "genetic modification". It doesn't matter whether the baby is non-human or Superman. It is no longer human, it is based on the uncontrollability caused by controllability. This is the double irony of out of control player.