{"id":331,"date":"2024-04-26T22:35:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T22:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/?p=331"},"modified":"2024-05-01T23:44:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T23:44:39","slug":"boy-kills-world-is-a-litmus-test-for-fans-of-video-game-inspired-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/2024\/04\/26\/boy-kills-world-is-a-litmus-test-for-fans-of-video-game-inspired-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy Kills World is a litmus test for fans of video game-inspired movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<figure>\n      <img alt=\"Boy (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd, in a red, sleeveless leather jacket, and spattered with about a gallon of blood) stares grimly into the camera with his mouth hanging dorkishly open in Boy Kills World\" src=\"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MCDBOKI_RT015.0.jpg\" \/><figcaption>Image: Roadside Attractions\/Everett Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>What makes a video game movie fun? And does this movie\u2019s incredibly brutal mortal combat make a difference?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p--has-dropcap p-large-text\" id=\"m6JK8T\">The most crucial thing to know going into the action-thriller <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> is that it eventually features a phenomenally bloody fight scene \u2014 a brutal extended throwdown where faces are smashed, fingers purposefully dig into open wounds, and combatants slowly drag a sharp object through each other\u2019s bodies, ripping through skin and muscle with a tactile squelch. It\u2019s a fight so grueling and brutal that even seasoned action-movie veterans might clench their teeth and mutter in reflexive empathy. <\/p>\n<p id=\"ON1036\">But while squeamish viewers will want to know how messy the movie gets so they can steer clear, everyone else will want to know what to expect because <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> otherwise seems so weightless, goofy, and far from reality that it lacks any kind of serious combat stakes. The smirky way director Moritz Mohr frames combats around video game references \u2014 complete with voice-over narration saying things like \u201cFatality!\u201d and \u201cPlayer two wins!\u201d \u2014 doesn\u2019t exactly prepare viewers for a face-off where the combatants\u2019 pain meaningfully matters and the characters actually seem to be getting hurt.<\/p>\n<div class=\"c-wide-block\">\n<div id=\"agQSR4\">\n<div style=\"width: 100%;height: 0;padding-bottom: 56.25%\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Boy Kills World | Official Trailer | In theaters April 26\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\" style=\"width:640px;height:960px;\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iDWQorTluFs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"v1FpQ2\">But that final fight gives <em>Boy Kills World <\/em>more weight than the rest of its run time, and opens it up to action and martial arts fans who might otherwise be put off by the movie\u2019s strident, referential humor. The film was largely built strictly for a specific brand of video game movie fans: It\u2019s a checklist of retro beat-\u2019em-up references and meta comedy tropes that some audiences are inevitably going to find broad, excessive, and off-putting, and some are going to find playful and energizing.<\/p>\n<p id=\"M7P4Xx\">This isn\u2019t quite Edgar Wright\u2019s <em>Scott Pilgrim vs. the World<\/em>, with its pop-up \u201cPow!\u201d and \u201cKerblam!\u201d animated effects for big hits, or its antagonists exploding into coin-drop victory rewards at the end of every fight. But it\u2019s just about as silly and surfacey, with world-building that\u2019s little more than an apathetic shrug, and a plot that\u2019s largely an excuse for creatively staged fights that range from dopey humor to surreal mind game to that final, surprisingly serious battle.<\/p>\n<p id=\"YqdUHC\">Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd stars as the otherwise unnamed Boy, a tragic victim, comically hapless doofus, and world-class combatant whose skills were honed through years of jungle training with The Shaman (martial arts movie stalwart Yayan Ruhian, of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/22878589\/the-raid-redemption-10-anniversary\"><em>The Raid: Redemption<\/em> and<em> The Raid 2<\/em><\/a>). Boy is none too bright and painfully na\u00efve, and he\u2019s all-in on the mission The Shaman has given him: to take down Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the totalitarian figurehead ruling their country. <\/p>\n<div class=\"c-wide-block\">\n<figure class=\"e-image\">\n        <img alt=\"Boy (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd) crouches between two allies (Isaiah Mustafa and Andrew Koji) on a TV set styled like a winter wonderland, and holds up one hand decked out with a ridiculous fist-gun in Boy Kills World\" data-mask-text=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MCDBOKI_RT022.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n      <cite>Image: Roadside Attractions\/Everett Collection<\/cite><br \/>\n  <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"soKuxx\">Naturally, she has a small army of well-armed mooks and a monstrous family Boy has to battle his way through as he climbs the ladder to avenge the family she took from him \u2014 including his little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), whose death he vividly remembers, but who hangs around him as a cheery hallucination who sees his grim battle for vengeance as a fun adventure where she gets to dress up like a ninja butterfly. <\/p>\n<p id=\"Zckk8s\">Boy had his tongue removed and his eardrums burned out when he was a child, part of the legacy of brutality in his vaguely delineated, clich\u00e9-riddled fascist state. His deafness is played for uncomfortable laughs \u2014 all the audible dialogue throughout the film is stylized as what he gets from lip-reading, so when he meets someone he can\u2019t interpret clearly, they appear to be spouting gibberish that Boy then literalizes and vividly visualizes. And his muteness is played even more for comedy, thanks to a wall-to-wall voice-over from H. Jon Benjamin, doing his best Mortal Kombat<em>&#8211;<\/em>announcer bass rumble as he narrates Boy\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n<p id=\"WmKaYP\">That voice-over is taken from Boy\u2019s favorite childhood video game, <em>Super Dragon Punch Force 3<\/em>, a fictional game <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/24118252\/boy-kills-world-game-super-dragon-force-punch-3\">getting its own release as a tie-in project<\/a>. And it\u2019s a make-or-break element for <em>Boy Kills World. <\/em>Anyone who doesn\u2019t see Benjamin\u2019s nonstop stream-of-consciousness chatter as hilarious is likely to find this movie unbearably grating. Mina\u2019s chirpy commentary on Boy\u2019s violent misadventures in assassination is just as intrusive: He knows she isn\u2019t really there, but still can\u2019t stop himself from arguing with her or fighting to save her from danger, which throws an extra layer of slapstick on top of the already absurd action. <\/p>\n<div class=\"c-wide-block\">\n<figure class=\"e-image\">\n        <img alt=\"One of the antagonists in Boy Meets World, a woman in black and yellow biking leathers, with a motorcycle helmet where the visor is made up of LEDs, in this case reading DIE\" data-mask-text=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MCDBOKI_RT024.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n      <cite>Image: Roadside Attractions\/Everett Collection<\/cite><br \/>\n  <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"DlaqH7\"><em>Boy Kills World <\/em>feels like a litmus test for self-identified fans of video game movies. It\u2019s a worksheet-style experience where anyone can add up the elements this movie does and doesn\u2019t share with other films in its subgenre, and do the math about what makes a video game movie really land <em>as a video game movie <\/em>for them. <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> doesn\u2019t have the specific, recognizable characters; nostalgia factor; or cultural cachet of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2020\/2\/13\/21136742\/sonic-the-hedgehog-movie-review\">Sonic<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/reviews\/23669990\/super-mario-bros-movie-review-references\"> Super Mario Bros.<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/24022852\/minecraft-movie-jack-black-steve\">Minecraft movie<\/a>. It does have the tongue-in-cheek attitude that beat-\u2019em-ups are not-too-serious fun, and that everyone recognizes the tropes and references that come with them. It isn\u2019t immersive or experiential, but it does follow the escalating flunky-to-miniboss-to-boss-fight dynamics familiar from so many games. <\/p>\n<p id=\"nzHFoQ\">A character taking extreme damage, eating something, and shaking that damage off? Yep. Cutscenes that progress the story while the protagonist stands by and can\u2019t interact with anything? Yep. Ridiculously colorful antagonists, including a woman (Jessica Rothe) whose LED-enhanced motorcycle-helmet visor spells out insults and orders in combat? Check. Unlikely weapons, from improvised stabbing tools (in one case a carrot) to a brass-knuckles-plus-gun combo? Ayep. A power fantasy where one person can slice his way through an entire oppressive government, one fight at a time, through sheer skill? Sure. A story built around elaborate combat sequences? Certainly. All <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> is missing is upgrades, loot drops, inventory-swapping, and gathering mechanics for crafting. (Don\u2019t laugh; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/23548793\/mark-hamill-movie-virtually-heroes-video-game-satire-interview\">some video game-inspired movies<\/a> lean hard into those kinds of mechanics.)  <\/p>\n<div class=\"c-wide-block\">\n<figure class=\"e-image\">\n        <img alt=\"Some of the baddies in Boy Kills World stand in a run-down slum they\u2019re terrorizing, with yellow-and-black-clad soldiers holding a crowd of locals down on their knees in the background. In the foreground: a couple more of those soldiers, nattily dressed dandy Glen (Sharlto Copley, in red pants, black vest, and blue striped suit jacket), and thuggish Gideon (Brett Gelman, in a big black open-fronted fur coat).\" data-mask-text=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/MCDBOKI_RT028.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n      <cite>Image: Roadside Attractions\/Everett Collection<\/cite><br \/>\n  <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"UxkPab\">It isn\u2019t that any of these things specifically defines a video game movie, or even, more specifically, a satirical action movie expressly made to feel like an installment in a specific video game subgenre. It\u2019s more that the game of recognize-the-trope or get-the-in-joke is the entirety of <em>Boy Kills World. <\/em>Mohr knows exactly the audience he\u2019s aiming for, and it\u2019s a fairly specific, narrow one. It isn\u2019t enough to know the kind of games he\u2019s lampooning, have a strong affection for them, and have a taste for graphic bloodshed without needing it to be played seriously.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-end-para\" id=\"AoCCfi\">It also isn\u2019t enough to find Benjamin endlessly hilarious, though that certainly helps. <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> requires viewers to thread a specific needle of caring about Boy and a few other side characters enough to engage with their goals and feelings, but not caring so much that they poke at the many holes in this world, or squint a dubious eye at the way the film revolves around just a few white characters, on both sides of the good\/evil divide, slaughtering their way through a field of people of color. It\u2019s a curiously specific movie, a gag aimed at fans of joyously culty, messy nonsense like <em>Guns Akimbo<\/em> or <em>Crank \u2014 <\/em>at least, until that final fight suddenly starts taking the narrative seriously. Even then, though, it\u2019s best to watch <em>Boy Kills World<\/em> with the same snarky detachment the rest of its run time encourages. <\/p>\n<p id=\"ekFAyD\"><small><em>Boy Kills World<\/em><\/small><small> debuts in theaters on April 26.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Roadside Attractions\/Everett Collection What makes a video game movie fun? And does this movie\u2019s incredibly brutal mortal ...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dulcipass.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}