King of Kong / Exclaim!
I really enjoyed King of Kong, and I’m amazed at the reaction to it from certain members of the, er, classic-arcade-high-score-gaming community. I’m always surprised when people think documentaries purport to show some sort of absolute, objective truth, though I suppose I should be getting less surprised. The journalist panel at MIGS (which I still haven’t found time to talk about) similarly surprised me with the amount of people who think reviewers intend to offer the same, but that’s another story.
I thought some reviewers were a bit cruel about King of Kong (to the level where they missed the point entirely.) The quote from Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post “The competition is so vicious because the stakes are so low” stands out in my mind, because I don’t think that’s true, but I do feel like the reaction to the film is so vicious because the quibbles are so small.
We actually have a thread (began by Robert Mruczek, who looks like a horrible unwashed nerd in the film with no effort on the filmmakers’ part) where people don’t seem to understand the concept of editing!
To be fair, a lot of people have their head on straight, and see that there really is no issue. Twin Galaxies is represented very fairly, and even Billy Mitchell, who, if you’re to believe some people’s reaction, may as well be seen eating babies while driving a combine harvester over a field full of puppies during the film, is given depth. In both cases, though, that is within the framework of the narrative that Seth Gordon has (to an extent) constructed using the power of filmmaking techniques! Oh the humanity!
I do wonder what the reaction within the spelling bee community to Spellbound was. I bet it was just as angry.