Game Worlds in Film

So you probably play video games and have spent a lot of time in various game worlds, perhaps even in different genres. You likely have a favourite, one you return to again and again just to exist there for a little while and escape the horrors of reality. A really good game world can be so immersive that you easily lose countless hours, forget to eat, maybe even push sleep to the bottom of the list. Perhaps a game you’ve played felt like it was merging with real life and you started seeing things from the game in your day to day living (I remember starting to see elfroot from Dragon Age: Inquisition in my local park for a while after playing it.)

Is it really that bad if the virtual starts to blend with reality?

Plenty of media has attempted to tackle the question in one form or another, with many using video games as a device to show the “unreality.” Have you ever noticed that these films often show video games and the act of playing them in a negative light? It’s no secret that video games have been blamed for the actions of real people. Some might say that absolute atrocities that have been committed were inspired by a video game.

Are your feathers ruffled by that? Mine certainly are, since getting into video games changed my life in a positive way, and I’m sure many of you would say the same. Anyway, let’s get back on track and talk a little about some films that aren’t just about video games, but have created entire virtual worlds…

Tron

Tron is an obvious pick, but it’s such an interesting concept that unfortunately, across all three films, has been more miss than hit with audiences.

Released in 1982, the original Tron starred Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer who when becoming suspicious that the company he works for is stealing his work, he hacks into the system and is transported into the virtual world or “the Grid” to come face to face with the digital incarnation of an executive at his company. It was so ahead of its time and is even one of the first films to use full CGI. Yet, it still manages to miss the mark and in all honesty, I found it to be pretty boring and slow.

The second film Tron: Legacy was released 28 years later and focuses on the son of Jeff Bridges’ character who enters the virtual world to try to find him after he disappears. This edition to the franchise is much more solid than the first from a story perspective, although some aspects still fall a little flat. The visual effects and cinematography are atmospheric and the soundtrack produced by Daft Punk is phenomenal! They’re the perfect band to create music for a virtual world.

Tron Ares steers away from the plots of the previous films, instead introducing new characters, most notably “Ares” played by Jared Leto - a combat AI created within “the Grid” who has to enter the real world to the secure the “Permanence Code” - software that allows digital constructs to exist permanently in the real world. I felt like this storyline was way more cohesive than the others, plus Jared Leto in his best role as… AI…. lol!

My favourite thing about this edition is the women in this film. Two of the main characters are played by Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith who are both fantastic in their respective roles. Overall, this film is much more inclusive and diverse with its characters and the actors playing them, since the first two had predominantly male characters and any female characters felt like they were there just to make the men look better.

Also, I’ve got to mention how great the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack is! I feel like it really held everything together and it ended up being my most listened to album of 2025!

Do the Tron films do a good job of implementing a video game-like world? As you can tell from above, the general consensus is that it’s very hit or miss. While the worlds, from a visual perspective are fantastically done, I feel like the narrative often lacks emotional depth and relies heavily on the visuals, atmosphere and sound design to carry them through.

eXistenZ

*If you haven’t seen this film and plan to, please skip this part. It’s not going to be too spoiler heavy, but I really feel like you’ve got to watch this film knowing as little about it as possible*

After watching Strange Days for the first time last year (which I loved!) eXistenZ kept popping up as recommended. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it since it’s a Cronenberg and Scanners is one of my favourites, but also.. How is a director that’s well known for body horror going to tackle a film about video games? The answer is by being extremely creative and unexpected.

At the beginning of the film, we’re introduced to Allegra Geller - a renowned and revered game developer who is about to demonstrate her newest virtual reality game “eXistenZ” to a group of playtesters. As I mentioned earlier, Cronenberg is the king of body horror, but he’s also well known for “intertwining the physical, psychological and technological.” I think he did an incredible job with this one. The way he implemented a way of experiencing a video game biologically was clever and also hilarious. The game “eXistenZ” isn’t experienced by simply putting on some VR goggles…

As a viewer, you never really know what’s real and what’s “the game” in this film. Cronenberg (who not only directed, but also wrote the screenplay) manages to blend reality with “unreality” pretty seamlessly so that I felt like they were equally as disturbing and unstable as each other.

The actors were also so good - Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra was manically obsessed with her own work in a bizarre, physical sense (which maybe isn’t so bizarre when you perhaps liken her relationship to the game she created to a mother and child relationship?) while at the same time, seeming kinda clueless and airy fairy which drove me crazy! (It kinda makes sense by the end of the film though…)

I honestly feel like I can’t say much about this film without giving it all away! It’s so well written, well acted, visceral and unhinged that I’m still thinking about it weeks after watching it!

Free Guy

Sigh… I don’t like being a hater, I really don’t. The last thing I want to do is yuck anyone’s yum so if you loved this film, skip this part and know that I’m glad you had a good time with this. I wish I’d had the same experience.

I’ve been going back and watching older films lately, and I think it’s because I feel like there’s something very wrong with most mainstream films that came out in the last 10 years (note that the next but is just my opinion and I’m just talking big budget mainstream films.) There’s not a lot of risk taking going on and so many of these films that are made by streaming services cost a bunch of money to make, but I watch them and come away wondering why they felt like a Hallmark movie, or the bad kind of B grade. They’re all overly glossy, one dimensional and share the exact same humour that is rehashed time and time again.

Free Guy should have been better. The premise was excellent - an NPC in the video game “Free City” starts thinking and doing things outside of what he’s programmed to do, while his creators try to expose the CEO of the company who released the game, for stealing the code they created. It’s a cool idea but I think the end result was overly cheesy.

The visual effects were great and shout out to the many stunt people involved. I liked that this was going for a summer blockbuster thing. I liked that I recognised elements from other great films like The Truman Show and The Matrix. There were also plenty of nods to video games I’ve never played like Grand Theft Auto, RDR2 and Fortnite, but none of it was enough to save this film from being disappointing.

Look, I know this isn’t supposed to be a post reviewing films, just focusing on the video game aspects of them, but this felt like it catered to one specific group of video gamers which I don’t fit into, or perhaps it’s for kids? except there was a lot of adult humour? Who is this film actually for? To be honest, I don’t know.

Now for the part that really p*ssed me off… This film tapped into the common idea that people play video games so they can be horrible people. That they can live out their The Purge fantasies with no consequence. Listen, not everyone wants constant violence in video games. Violence and fighting is sometimes a necessary evil while enjoying a well written, immersive narrative.

I really hated that aspect of this film.

Come on, Laura, lighten up. It’s not that deep.. But it is though! Video games ARE deep and there was no nuance to what happens in even a vast MMORPG in this film. Sometimes you just want to roam around, picking plants and enjoying a richly created world.

Also, we don’t have to put romance in everything!! GAH!

Gamer

Gamer is about to make a huge hypocrite of me!

After everything I said about Free Guy around violence and it catering to a certain type of gamer, this film does something similar, but it’s darker, grittier and at the same time jarring, garish and thoughtful.

This film sucked me in and I’m so surprised and confused by it! I think perhaps it was the incredible premise which wasn’t badly executed - Billionaire techbro creates multiplayer online games that uses mind-control to play them. One of the games “Slayers” utilises prisoners on death row to be controlled by the player. Enter Kable (played by Gerard Butler) a prisoner who has managed to survive multiple campaigns and now faces his biggest challenger yet, while trying to reclaim his identity and escape the game.

How good does that sound though??!

At first I thought “Oh no, not another Counter Strike situation!” But there was another mind control game called “Society” which was pretty much a spin on Grand Theft Auto where the avatars’ involvement is voluntary and they are paid a lot of money to participate.

“Society” is bright, shiny, pseudo sexy, but also violent and unhinged - an excellent counterpart to the grimy world of “Slayers.” Kable’s wife works in “Society” while trying to get back their daughter who has been placed in foster care.

Amber Valetta was so good as Kable’s wife Angie, especially in the “Society” scenes. The way she moved within the game was so well done. She was mesmerising to watch, even though the situation was pretty vile. Also, look out for a wild cameo by Milo Ventimiglia…iykyk..

This movie was released 17 years ago and yet, the ruthless techbro creator of these games is eerily familiar… Michael C. Hall plays him in a way that is equal parts delightful and horrendous. God, it felt so on the nose to watch his narcissistic antics.

The idea of developing a self replicating, microbiotic cell that can be used to mimic brain cells and then control someone’s actions and have the American government sign off on the use of inmates was a choice for a sure and there were so many nuances to the story - I haven’t even mentioned the activist group fronted by Ludacris who hack into TV and disrupt “Society” to spread the message that the technology used to play their favourite game will eventually be used to control them! Due to how much there was in this story, I inevitably felt like Gamer would’ve worked better as a limited TV series.

Overall thoughts?

Tron created a visually interesting video game world with so much potential, but the story was often underwhelming. eXistenZ explored VR and connecting it to gamers biologically, while blurring the lines between the real and unreal in a way that gave me so much to think about. Free Guy used as many video game cliches as possible while trying to hide its shallowness beneath a colourful, glossy, bubblegum veneer. And finally, Gamer, like eXistenZ, used biology to connect people physically to games with a blurry line between the controller and the controlled.

I think there’s an obvious notion that video games are generally violent and a way for gamers to live out their sadistic fantasies. I feel like that’s a terrible cliche that doesn’t fly now with the sheer volume of different kinds of games we have available and more and more people picking them up.

Let me know your favourite films about video games, video game adaptations, or even films with video game elements like Scott Pilgrim vs The World and that one incredible scene in The Beach…

Also, please check out this hilarious ode to video games by Eiffel 65…

Thanks so much for reading! If you like my posts, consider buying me a coffee! x

KO-FI