Movie Review: The King Of Kong (2007)

“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.”

– William Burroughs

This quote serves as the opener and general premise of The King of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, the impressive feature debut of Director Seth Gordon, whom we’ve recently seen as the man behind Freakonomics and the comedy hit Horrible Bosses.

This documentary depicts the rivalry between underdog Stevie Wiebe, a science teacher suffering from an eternal “runner up” syndrome (Arsenal fans should know the feeling), and Billy Mitchell, an egomaniac hot sauce mogul regarded as one of the best video game players of all time, as they compete for the world high score in Donkey Kong.

Yeah, sure, this is not about some major event like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or about the extraordinary feat of some guy who invents the everlasting light bulb out of a cotton swab. This movie is about video games. Old arcade video games in fact. As you can guess, the stakes aren’t the highest you can imagine.

Who gives a damn? Well, these guys do. This is serious.

The strength of the film resides in how it induces the audience to look through the lens of hard core players, making us somehow understand why those 8-bits are so important to them. This film effectively portrays the struggle for a record as an analogy to the struggle for success in life. That is why the film can relate not only to hard gamers but to just about anyone.

Surprisingly, the structure of The King of Kong is much like one we’d expect in a fiction film. In fact, the motivation of each character, the conflict, and the plot’s twists and turns are so clearly defined and so neatly exposed, you can’t help doubting if all of this is really true.

Well, in fact it’s not quite true.

The project began as a general exploration of the world of die hard arcade gamers in the U.S. The film-maker’s initial aim was to focus on the top score holders of the most popular games and delve into their live style. But they soon saw the cinematic potential of confronting Billy Mitchel with Steve Wiebe and couldn’t resist.

Billy is the archetypal movie villain in his own right. Cocky, self centered and successful, he is the ideal guy to symbolize the status quo, the mighty empire… the popular kid in an 80’s high school film. Man, he even dresses in black. Pure evil.

Steve on the other hand is a real life ‘Rocky Balboa’, both a hero and a natural underdog. A quiet, sensible guy (plays the piano, draws) that has had a life of disappointment after disappointment and eagerly searches for redemption. He’s portrayed in the film playing with his kids, driving his family car, even crying, and losing…a lot.

The film editing in this respect is superb, as we constantly see Steve practicing and playing the arcade machine in his garage, while there isn’t a single shot in the movie of Billy actually playing. We instead see Billy doing public appearances, receiving awards and constantly showing us his hot sauce business. A diva vs a hard practicing average neighbor.

The contrast was there to take, and the filmmakers skillfully arranged the pieces of reality to augment the rivalry. Many of the gamers interviewed (including Steve and Billy) and other important personalities of the arcade world (just the sound of it brings a smile) claimed to be shocked and offended by the way the facts were manipulated in the final product. Particularly pissed off is Tim Sczerby who was the real record holder at the time of the film’s production and isn’t mentioned or has any appearance in the movie.

Film is an art form and, essentially, art is a lie. A beautiful lie that is. At the very moment you aim a camera at a certain event and decide to record it, you are manipulating reality. You are choosing just a piece of it to make a point. Similarly, every time you make a cut, you are also changing the flow of reality, sticking in the mind of the audience an idea that wasn’t there in the real world.

Now, that doesn’t mean that art can’t tell the truth, or be in service of a truth. But “truth” is an overly subjective concept and not the main objective of art. And if you do choose to intend your art to tell and pursue a certain truth, you still have only lies as your building blocks, be it brush strokes, pixels or tapes.

That being said, the filmmakers here just did their job. They crafted a hell of an entertaining movie out of what they found in a strange, awkward world. Nobody is ever going to agree to be portrayed as a villain, a sleaze or a loser. It’s obvious that almost every time a documentary is made, somebody in it is going to rant about it. It’s kind of the same thing that happens when people take pictures of you at a party. You are not going to look cool in each and every one of them. And certainly, you are not going to be too comfortable with that particular one that your friend posts on Facebook where you are drunk out of your mind…

Director Seth Gordon and Producer Ed Cunningham just took what they saw and turned it into art.

At the very heart of this tale lays the fear of not being up to the challenge of life itself. That is why regardless of the mild strength and narrow appeal of the video game universe, The King of Kong is still relevant today, 5 years after its initial release and constitutes a beautiful vignette of the human condition.

Highly recommended for a Saturday night screening with gamer friends, beer and popcorn.