Watching a Video Game

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Obi-Wan: A disturbance in the Force! I sense a video game-like action sequence looming! Zam Wessel: Are you ready to make some keeerazy money? Obi-Wan: You're reckless, Anakin. Leaping across speeding aircars is dangerous business. Anakin: I'll be OK, Master. I've been playing lots of Strider 2 lately! —Toastyfrog Thumbnail Theatre, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

A movie or show that derives a lot of its drama and suspense from throwing elements from Platform Games - or other twitch-based archetypal games - in the path of the protagonists.

Our heroes might, for example, negotiate narrow ledges on otherwise completely inaccessible rock faces or all but Floating Platforms (like in a Platform Game), fight foes in Interesting Situation Duels (like in a Beat'Em Up or a Boss Fight), and shoot Mooks in a Rollercoaster Mine (like in a Rail Shooter). Natural obstacles provide a good part of the Plot, Conflict and suspense. Alternatively, man-made structures like factories, powerplants, high-rise construction sites, a spaceship's engine room or an ancient crypt can provide the setting. If the characters are on a journey, the terrain will typically be extremely difficult but at the same time provide an obvious path of least resistance that is nevertheless very dangerous - it seems as though the environment was created by a level designer. Another indicator is when the characters move through different environments that change as abruptly as themed levels in a video game.

As in Video Games, the laws of physics will be rather flexible, and there will be natural formations or man-made structures that are unlikely to occur in Real Life but make for grand vistas and dramatic scenes. Typically, Willing Suspension of Disbelief is stretched more than in other movies but usually efforts are made to keep it below videogame level. Completely unattached Floating Platforms, for example, are a taboo outside of settings where neither magic nor Applied Phlebotinum is an obvious explanation.

When watching a movie like this you can be tempted to suspect that it was made with the Licensed Game in mind. The truth can be more complicated: Indiana Jones, for example, took its theme and setting from old pulp stories which happened to be influential in the media of videogame as well, as in An Adventurer Is You. Then again, the videogame adaptations of Indiana Jones themselves were very successful. Star Wars is as big a name in games as in movies. Extensive use of CGI sometimes doesn't exactly help to differentiate between games and movies visually.

Typical tropes featured in Watching a Video Game are a mixture of Action Adventure Tropes and Video Game Tropes:

• Advancing Boss of Doom
• Advancing Wall of Doom
• Adventure-Friendly World
• Always a Bigger Fish
• Bottomless Pit
• Bridge Logic
• Broken Bridge
• Cave Behind the Falls
• Cave Mouth
• Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity
• Convection, Schmonvection
• Convenient Cranny
• Death Course
  • Corridor Cubbyhole Run
  • Pit Trap
• Fake Platform
• Free-Fall Fight
• Improvised Platform
• Indy Escape
• Inevitable Waterfall
• Interesting Situation Duel
  • Dangerous Terrain
• Involuntary Group Split
• Jump Physics
• Lava Pit
• Ledge Bats
• Lethal Lava Land
• Literal Cliff Hanger
• Not the Fall That Kills You
• Plummet Perspective
• Take My Hand
• Theme Park Landscape
• Walk Into Mordor
• You Shall Not Pass

If the terrain is not largely untouched by civilization, the following tropes may apply:

• Booby Trap
• Conveyor Belt O' Doom
• Death Trap
  • Descending Ceiling
  • The Walls Are Closing In
• Malevolent Architecture
  • Benevolent Architecture
• No OSHA Compliance
• Rollercoaster Mine
• Rope Bridge
• Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom
• Spikes of Doom
• Traintop Battle

Note also that this trope has to be a recurring theme within a work to make the movie eligible. Spotting a single Platform Game scene does not mean that you're Watching a Video Game. If more than two of the tropes above occur, you have a solid candidate, though.

Contrast with Video Game Movies Suck and Sudden Videogame Moment.

Examples of Watching a Video Game include:

Film

• Galaxy Quest lampshades this to no end when they encounter platformer areas going through the ship.
• Ice Age: each new movie tends to have more Theme Park Landscape and platform "gameplay" than the last one. The second movie has a plot-sensitive Advancing Wave Of Doom; the third has two "levels": the world above and the Lost World below connected by Bridge Logic (later Broken Bridge) etc.
• Inception: the dreams are like levels in a video game.
  • Ditto Sucker Punch.
• Indiana Jones: most iconicly Indy Escape and Rollercoaster Mine.
• The 2008 film of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
• Exaggerated in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for the Beat'Em Up genre. Note that here the trope, unlike in most other examples, extends to the visual effects.
• Star Wars is all about Boss Fights on platforms, specifically the new ones.
  • Attack of the Clones has a Conveyor Belt O' Doom played terribly straight.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Even when only in a mild hurry, Jedi and other force users often traverse great distances by bouncing, something the live-action movies wouldn't get away with.
• Just about anything that takes place Inside a Computer System, such as The Matrix or Tron

Literature

• The Lord of the Rings: Moria is full of Malevolent Architecture and narrow, dangerous paths; the protagonists seem to be able to run for days straight (like videogame characters); all architecture is heavily influenced by the School Of Cool - even some of the characters seem to view what happens to them as sort of a game (Legolas and Gimli). And Sauron is definitely a Load-Bearing Boss.

Western Animation

• Some Pixar movies' climaxes are reminiscent of videogames, for example Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2.
• Just about anything that takes place Inside a Computer System, including ReBoot