Made by sleaze auteurs Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who previously brought you the Crank series, Gamer perfectly captures the horror and appeal of videogames. Set a few years in the future, Gamer is about what happens when biotech advances make videogames completely real. Psychotic inventor Ken Castle – played by Dexter's Michael C. Hall in an inspired bit of casting – has invented a scientifically preposterous form of remote-controlled cell that can replace your brain cells. Inject some of his goo, and your brain turns to "Nanex," a nanotech cortex that gives your brain a unique IP address and lets people control you remotely.

Castle introduced Nanex to the world via a game called Society, which is a thinly-veiled reference to massive multiplayer game Second Life. Filled with ravers and vamps, Society is an alternate world where remote-controlled actors go to be controlled by gamers who sit at home dictating their every move. (In one horrific scene, we see a vamped-up woman in Society who is controlled by an obese man sitting in front of a bank of monitors. As he slurps up a pile of greasy waffles, he forces her to fuck everything in sight.) The game makes Castle unbelievably rich. With a creepy smile, he explains to a TV journalist, "People pay to control, and they pay to be controlled."

Now, however, Castle has released a new game called Slayers. Gamers control convicts in a deadly combat scenario, and game revenues go to maintaining the prison system. The government is a big investor in the game, and our hero Kable (an appropriately badass Gerard Butler) is its biggest star. Controlled by 17-year-old game champion Simon, Kable is on his way to getting out of jail because he's survived so many rounds in Slayers. But, of course, Castle doesn't want Kable ever to get out.

Meanwhile, a group of biohacker subversives called the Humanz are interrupting the Nanex system, sending out pirate protest broadcasts and working on ways to shield people's nanobrains from mind-control signals. They want to help Kable escape and get back to his family. And of course Kable's wife – who works as a fuckdoll in Society – wants nothing more than to get her unfairly imprisoned husband back.

Like Neveldine and Page's previous films, Gamer is awash in the balletic, stuttering violence of videogames. The scenes of combat in the Slayers game are intense, gory, and shocking. This is the kind of movie whose first line of dialogue is, "You fucking teabagged him!" Though we're given ample opportunity to revel in the violence and cheap sex of Castle's gameworlds, we also never forget that an all-emcompassing degradation seeps out of them into the real world. Gamer is intensely conflicted about the pleasures afforded by gaming.

And in the end it's that conflict that makes this movie such a winningly demented satire. The bad guys, covered in gore, sing little songs about how they're about to frag the good guys. A warehouse full of blanged-out ravers from Society get soaked in day-glo viscera when Castle's goons attack. Even Castle has an incredible zombie dance number, surrounded by his mind-controlled videogame-slurping minions, who follow his every little shufflestep because he's beaming his moves straight to their Nanex.

Will Kable escape and rescue his sexbot honey? Will the Humanz bring down Castle? Can anything ever really be resolved in a world where all our brains have been replaced with nanogoo that broadcasts our IP addresses over the Nanex network? These questions, and their resolutions, may be predictable. But every other part of Gamer is bizarre and original, from the ugly-beautiful concept design to the odd relationship that forms between gamer Simon and meatpuppet Kable. Go see Gamer for the lulz, but stay for a burning vision of your fucked up future.

Gamer opens wide across the US today.

Gamer, the feature film about multi player games where other humans are your Avatars, will be theaters on September 4th.

[via Teaser Trailer]

It's going to be very hard for me not to bust out the "Cool" and "Crazy" West Side Story call outs during Gamer, because the user-controlling movements make me laugh every single time. In fact I think there is an off button that makes the avatar slump over with one elbow protruded out "no stings attached" style, and then it's all about N'Sync, and well, I'm just going to be singing through this flick about death row inmates being forced to kill each other whilst being controlled by their teen users.

What I am enjoying about this futuristic film is the rolodex of ladies available, how many of those women you wanna bet are being controlled by the machine, or one really sick puppy pimp who just has an army of mind-wiped prostitutes. All speculation, of course, but the possibilities are endless! Gamer is out on September 4th.

It turns out there's a second game within this movie, apart from the deadly war-game that Kable (Gerard Butler) is trapped in. And the other game involves avatars who are living, breathing sex dolls.

This other game in the world of Gamer is described as a "fetishistic 'society' game" - an Adult Sim where players can play dress up (and undress) their living avatars. While the characters of 'Slayer', the first-person shooter within the film, are all death row inmates, this first-person porn is populated with participants who are being paid to do unspeakable things while under someone else's total control. Amber Valletta plays Kable's wife, Angie, who becomes ensnared in the sex slave Sim game.

Mark Neveldine admits:

Angie is a tough role. There's the pain Amber has to go through being controlled, the sexual things the script put her through and the emotions grief and all that stuff.

Brian Taylor describes the game's dynamic as "much like the adult industry", with people being paid to enter into various sexual situations, some willingly, and some less willingly. Regardless, within gameplay these human sex dolls must surrender completely to the gamer's control. Despite the game's vibrant candy colors and glittery aesthetic, Taylor confesses "it's a very dark place."

The writers' strike has caused incalculable damage to genre television, including helping to kill great shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. But it's also inflicted maximum damage on this summer's movies. We detailed all the ways the strike impacted movies like Wolverine, Terminator Salvation, Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe a while back — it's probably no coincidence that the one movie whose script was in perfect shape before the strike hit, Star Trek, was also the only really watchable genre film in months.

(I think part of the reason I'm so over-the-moon about Trek is because I'm grading on a curve. Put it next to Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and it might not score quite so well. I was also thinking the other day that if The Incredible Hulk had come out in 2009, we might have appreciated it a bit more.)

So how about the movies coming this fall and winter, and even into next year? Did the strike hurt them as well? I did some digging, and here's what I found out about the crop of upcoming Hollywood movies:

District 9. (August 14) Not really a Hollywood movie, this Peter Jackson-produced alien imprisonment saga was filmed in South Africa and produced by QED Films. And reading between the lines of this Variety story from November 2007, it sounds as though director Neill Blomkamp and his partner Terri Tatchell had already written the script before the film was greenlit.

Pandorum. (September 4) This Dennis Quaid-Ben Foster space-horror film was greenlit in May 2008, a few months after the strike ended, and written by newcomer Travis Milloy. Which means it was a spec script, and unless it required major rewrites, it should be fine. The film only started shooting in August 2008, which means there should have been time to make rewrites, if any were needed.

Gamer. (September 4) This Gerard Butler-starring epic about prisoners who are forced to become video-game avatars for rich kids was actually filmed during the writer's strike, so its script was long since done. It's been on ice for quite some time — rumor has it test screenings in October 2008 produced almost entirely negative responses. The movie's gone through several titles, including Game and Citizen Game. So it may not be great... but that won't be the writers' strike's fault.

Splice. (September 18, limited release). Vincenzo Natali's genetic manipulation film stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as researchers who mess with the human genome... and get burned. And there was a script in November 2007, when the writer's strike started. Or at least, producer Guillermo del Toro was able to say in a statement:

Vincenzo is taking Splice to really edgy places. The moment I cringed while reading the script, I knew I wanted to help him realize his vision.

And a still from the movie came out in February 2008, while the strike was still going on. (The movie's complex visual effects have required a long time to complete.)

The Surrogates. (September 25). This one's a bit unclear. Disney bought the rights to the robot-avatar graphic novel back in March 2007. They hired the writers of Terminators 3 and 4, Michael Ferris and John Brancato, to write the screenplay. The following November, Bruce Willis signed up to star, and T3 director Jonathan Mostow was announced as director. The film was supposed to start filming in February, but the rest of the cast wasn't announced until the following April, a few months after the strike ended. So it's entirely possible the script needed some rewrites. And got them. So it may be fine. Except that it's from the writers and director of Terminator 3.

Zombieland. (October 9) This zombie buddy comedy didn't even snag star Woody Harrelson until late August 2008, a good six months after the strike ended. And co-star Jesse Eisenberg was "in talks" to appear in the film in October 2008. So I'm guessing there was plenty of time to get a script together at some point.

The Road. (October 16) This bleak Cormac McCarthy adaptation was filmed in Western Pennsylvania early in 2008, and has been on ice for a year — it was originally supposed to open in 2008. Now all we have to worry about is that producer Harvey Weinstein forced some unwise edits on the film in the interim.

The Wolfman. (November 6) This is another one that's been sitting on ice for ages — Benicio Del Toro signed up for the lead role in March 2006 (!) and there was a script review in August 2006. (If anything, looking at this crop of movies, I'm starting to wonder why so many were delayed for so long.) Del Toro got a costar, Emily Blunt, in January 2008, and it looks like the film was filmed soon after.

2012. (Nov. 13) We covered this in our rundown of the writer's strike and summer movies — because it was originally supposed to come out this summer. (Yes, another delayed film.) But the strike didn't actually impact this film much at all, because the script was bought right after the strike ended.

Avatar. (December 18) James Cameron has been working on this film since before you were born. And yes, I don't care how old you are, it's still true. In any case, chances are he's had plenty of opportunities to tinker with the script. Here he is, talking it up in 2006.

The Book Of Eli. (January 15). The Hughes Brothers (From Hell) signed up to direct this post-apocalyptic bibliophile samurai pic back in May 2007, and they were trying to rush it into production in the fall of 2007 "before a possible strike." Obviously, this didn't work out — the film's star, Denzel Washington, wasn't even announced until September 2008, and filming didn't happen until earlier this year. So count this as another film that was delayed — maybe due to the strike.

And I think from there on out, you're looking at movies that were greenlit after the strike, so you're probably all good. Looking at the crop of movies coming up this fall and winter, the main thing that's jumping out at me is that a lot of them were delayed for various reasons — probably not all to do with the strike. There are a lot of movies coming out from August to January, which were originally supposed to come out much earlier, but they were kept in the freezer. Make of that what you will.

In Gamer, Kable (Butler) is the poor death-row inmate sold into slavery in evil Michael C. Hall's real-life video game. Butler is a puppet for a wealthy user, competing in a first person shooter war game. The kid pictured above can literally step into Kable and control his every move, pinning him against other inmates. After a certain amount of never before reached wins, Kable gets his freedom.

Official synopsis:

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player (Butler) from a game called "Slayers" looks to regain his independence while taking down the game's mastermind (Hall)

Here's the high res. version of that image:

Gamer will hit theaters September 4th.

Here is the official synopsis from the film:

Gamer is a near-future action/thriller starring Gerard Butler (Kable) as the champion of an on-line game called "Slayers". Mind-control technology has taken society by storm and "Slayers" allows humans control other humans in mass-scale, multiplayer online game. With his every move tracked by millions, Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and launching an attack on the system that has imprisoned him.

No mention of the rave, but from the trailer, we get the feeling that this is Kable's wife has been taken over, both her mind and her dignity, as leverage to keep him in the game.

Gamer will be out on the 4th of September.

[via Movie Web]

God spare me from Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" song being used in yet another trailer or soundtrack but, besides that, this little foreign clip has sparked my interest. The movie is set in the near future, where Gerard Butler is on Death Row. Somehow, he winds up in a human video game where he's controlled from afar. As you might expect, Butler eventually tires of being controlled and seeks his independence from the game's creator, Hall.

Apart from all of the terrible reviews we've been hearing from Game test screenings - Apparently bad guy Michael C. Hall is laughably bad in it - I have to say that the action here looks pretty tasty.

Game will be out in theaters September 4th.

[Via Trailer Addict]

In Game, convicts take part in a kind of video game, being controlled remotely via brain chips by viewers. The game is a brutal online fight where many will perish. Michael C. Hall, of Dexter fame, plays the villain and Gerard Butler plays the action-figure man controlled from a far.

Sexy Whisk (the AICN spy) insists that the movie is, "beyond boring and the action was completely unexciting."

Simply said:

I'm sure most of you remember "Children of Men" - whether you loved it or hated it - you must agree how amazingly chaotic and action packed it was without ever having to cut the camera! Now that is talent. GAME however is the complete opposite - it's trying sooo hard to be exciting and fresh and appeal to "gamers" - its cuts from dark to computer screens to action to more computer screens to close-ups...

The informant insists that the movie tries way too hard and delivers nothing. The action scenes are apparently so confusing they become boring, and not even Gerard Butler can save the terrible work. Also they claim that Hall isn't used at all and got a meager few minutes on screen — and he has a weird accent.

Still this is a very early screening, and they've pushed the release date way back, hopefully to deal with many of these issues. Game won't be released until the summer of 2009.

[AICN]

In an interview with Bridges, the L.A. Times got a somewhat more coherent synopsis than we've seen before:

Gerard Butler ("300") plays Kable, a death-row convict who is plucked from his cell and dropped into the rock-'em, sock-'em combat. He's proves so adept at carnage that he becomes a pop-culture star to the global audience watching the grisly game unfold. Bridges plays a character nicknamed Humanz who is not a fan; he's part of a resistance effort that sees the game as an ethical affront and have a plan to use Kable to bring down the entire game.

Dexter's Michael C. Hall plays the evil genius who created the game, and Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) plays someone named Gina Parker Smith. (Weirdly, the article doesn't even mention Milo Ventimiglia's character, whom Ventimiglia has described as "Moonraker, silver grill, with a latex outfit making him look like a bumblebee. [Laughs.] With I think the perverse nature of...a teenage boy on speed." Sure, Milo, sure. Whatever you say.)

Bridges' character is a "renaissance man" who gets upset that convicts like Kable are having chips put in their brains to control them. The "intense" Game comes from writer/director duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who created the insane Crank movies, so it'll probably be way more demented than Death Race, and possibly a lot better as well. [LA Times]

We've blogged about this movie a couple times, but not recently. In a nutshell, Butler is Kable, a convict who's stuck in a deadly online multi-player game (like Death Race, but without cars) and if he wins 30 games, he gets his freedom. A resistance group that opposes inventor Ken Castle's online games sees Kable as a crucial part of their effort to take down the game. Acording to Neveldine and Taylor, there's a huge action sequence involving a battered old truck and two snow-plows. The movie also features B-movie babe Amber Valletta, in a candy-floss blue wig, and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter from Heroes) as a nasty guy named Rick Rape.

The duo are currently working on Crank 2, and they speculate about how cool it would be to have Crank star Jason Statham fight Game star Butler in a cage match — or maybe the two could star in a gay porn together. (Tonight, we bareback in Hell?) [Empire, via Rama's Screen]

According to Butler, "It's this descent into madness but explained in such a sane way that you totally feel it yourself." Which doesn't make much sense now, but we'll go along with it. If all future comic book related DVDs received this much attention to detail, it might create a new market and medium for comic books. Just imagine X-Men: Days of Future Past, The DVD. Unfortunatelty, it also means you'll have to double dip at the theater and later on DVD if you want the full experience. [Empire Online]

• Emily will keep getting closer to Jake on Jericho now that her city-slicker fiance Roger is out of the picture, judging from this new preview pic. Plus Emily bakes a cake to console Jake's mom over his dad's death. Thrilling. [Televisionista]
• Fox confirmed it won't screen Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem for critics, a surefire sign of toxic buzz in the making. [Cinemablend]
• The X-Men's Wolverine spin-off lost a little bit of its appeal when Gerard Butler [300] said he was definitely not co-starring. [MovieHole]
• Another movie nobody has high hopes for: video game adaptation Tekken, directed by Dwight Little (Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid.) Near-future scifi, man against evil corporation, martial arts, you get the idea. [Slashfilm]
• Rhona Mitra (Boston Legal) stars in May's Doomsday as a leader of an elite military squad sent into a quarantined Scotland to find a cure for a deadly virus. [Actress Archives]
• The Cloverfield monster bites emo dudes' heads off and rubs its body against buildings, and then little creatures crawl away from its body and fuck things up. [AICN]

We've heard it compared to the video game series Sim City, although it sounds more like a version of the Schwarzenegger / Stephen King film The Running Man than anything else. Gerard Butler plays a convict who is forced to compete in the games. If he wins 30 matches, then he gets set free. Pretty straightforward, right?

Not so fast. costar Alison Lohman let it slip today that although Gerard plays the gamer convict, there's also a player playing him. Which brings us full circle to 1982's Tron. In that movie, we were shown how the "players" in the games were basically slaves serving out sentences under the evil Master Control Program. In one memorable scene, one of the players in the popular "Light Cycles" game dies, and we see two kids playing the game in an arcade. They shrug their shoulders and walk off, having unknowingly killed off some poor sucker.

So if you take one part The Running Man (win the game to be set free) and toss in a bit of Death Race 2000 (the government forces you to play in a game that is popular all over the nation) and mix it liberally with Tron (human gamers controlling the lives of players), you'll come out with Game... or a big tasteless mess of bubbling goo.

Alison Lohman's got 'Game' [MTV Movies Blog]