Mazes and Monsters: Difference between revisions

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''"[[Serious Business|Is it?]]"'' |'''Lieutenant Martini''' and '''Daniel'''}}

 

A [[Made for TV Movie]] from 1982, ''Mazes and Monsters'' is the story of four college students who are heavily involved in the titular fantasy role playing game. All four students play the game as an escape from their own various personal problems. Jay Jay's mother redecorates his room at the drop of a hat and tends to ignore him. Kate is still reeling from her father walking out on the family and her struggles as a woman and a writer. Daniel's parents repeatedly pressure him to switch schools to MIT and become a programmer despite his yearnings to be a game designer. Finally, Robbie flunked out of his last college and still can't cope with his feuding, alcoholic parents nor the disappearance of his older brother Hall. At first the four bond over their shared experiences within Mazes and Monsters, and Robbie and Kate begin to go out. However, when Jay Jay manipulates the group into a [[LARP]] in a local cavern, Robbie's mental state shatters and he believes himself to actually be his priest, Pardieu. Eventually, he runs off to New York seeking The Great Hall, forcing his friends to try and track him down when the [[Police Are Useless|police prove useless]]. While they get him home safely and the three other students abandon ''Mazes and Monsters'' in favor of true adulthood, they learn that Robbie's delusions have yet to vanish and they end up indulging him in one last game of ''Mazes and Monsters''.

 

 

The other notable element to the film, besides its place in gaming history, is that Robbie was played by a 26-year-old [[Tom Hanks]], still in his early television days before he'd truly broken out as a major star.

 

* [[Ascetic Aesthetic]]: Jay Jay's mother turns his room into an example of this. Jay Jay compares it to a hospital room.

** One has to wonder if this was done intentionally by whoever wrote the movie. Think about: one of the main fundamentals for writing is being creative so being commisioned to make an anti-D&D movie would be enough to cause some messing about.

** It's also strange that a film so vehemently against the idea of using one's imagination had a sequence early in the film where the struggling Kate's mother actually ''encourages'' her to use her imagination in her writing.

* [[Covers Always Lie]]: The image on the DVD release of the film depicts a dark castle surrounded by a hedgemaze, with a dragon flying overhead and a ''significantly'' older Tom Hanks.

** The VHS release shows the actual characters in the film, dressed as their game characters, implying a fun sword-and-sorcery picture.

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Kate's father walked out on her family, now having remarried. Kate is still bitter. Meanwhile, Jay Jay's father is never seen or referenced, leaving a strange unexplained absence when the other three kids have the whereabouts of their parents accounted for.

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: Jay Jay, feeling left out of the group when Robbie and Kate start dating and spending more time together, plans on a suicide in a local cavern, expecting it to make him famous. When he actually goes to the cavern, however, he stops his suicide attempt when he realizes it would be the perfect place for a ''Mazes and Monsters'' [[LARP]]. He's not even truly suicidal, he's ''bored''.

 

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{{reflist}}

[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]

[[Category:Film]]