Avalon AKA dothack live action

[Bobtheduck]

Has anyone seen this? It's a polish movie (that's right) made by a Japanese director, the director of Ghost in the Shell... Those of you looking for something original should be drawn to that fact alone... Of course, if you've seen .hack, you may be in familiar territory... There is so much of a similarity to .hack I'm beginning to think they came from the same source.

There is this online game that people obsess over. People make their entire livings on it, actually (just like real MMORPGs) It's a WWII sim mixed with a fantasy style RPG, and... It's illegal. They never say straight out why it is illegal, but I guess it's because of one of the side effects for certain players... Players who went where they weren't supposed to ended up in comas... Uh huh... That's right... The players that ended up in the comas were doing things they shouldn't have been able to do, exploiting a virus or bug in the form of a ghost of a little girl... yeah, that's right... One of the characters that entered a coma, can you guess what happens? Yeah, that's right, he's still playing in the game...

All similarities to .hack aside, this is a decent movie... I prefer this to .hack in some regards, and .hack to this in others... For one, the visual style on this movie is great... There is a whole lot less talking in this movie than in .hack, so it has the opposite problem, but I tend to prefer the more quiet movies to ones where they talk about the situation for half an hour. Of course, to help "dumb american audience" understand it better, the dub (and the only subtitle track in english, there appear to be more but they are all clone tracks) contains narration explaining parts of the story while the Polish track contains no such explanation...

I prefer the less serious treatment of the game in .hack... Players in this game (Avalon), even the ones who don't chase after the ghost, freak out over the smallest things, and they get so serious it borders on rediculous...

One thing that I never saw in .hack, though I never beat the games, was anything like the ending of this movie... I still don't quite get it... They were very clear about certain things to set you up for the ending, but at the last moment they pull a switch on you... I just don't get it...

Anyhow, this movie is worth checking out, particularly for .hack fans... Keep in mind it does have an R rating, though I'm not quite sure why... Ash plays the game in very thin shirt and underwear and that's it... That my have earned it a PG-13 rating, but I can't see that getting it an R... Even the violence is very tame compared to many PG-13 movies...

Anyhow, if you want to see something different and yet the same, check out Avalon!