Revisiting Videogame Logic: Impossible Storyworlds in the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster

Warren Buckland

doi:10.26881/pan.2021.26.07

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how two logics (narrative and videogame) function in a select number of contemporary blockbuster films. The paper is divided into three sections: The first outlines narrative and videogame logics; the second presents examples from Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) to demonstrate how videogame logic structures the events in each film; and the third discusses how these logics create specific storyworlds (imaginary worlds distinct from the actual world) that are unnatural and/or impossible.

Highlights

In Source Code, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the game player in his capsule and his avatar is the schoolteacher Sean Fentress on the train. these films are fascinating not because their visuals or content can be read metaphorically as a videogame, but primarily because their visuals and content are organized according to a hybrid of narrative and videogame logic
I plan to explore further the dynamic entanglement of videogame logic and narrative logic, examine in more depth the ontological status of the resulting unnatural or impossible storyworlds these logics create, to draw upon Mark Wolf’s categories of world structures and infrastructures, and develop a theory of the unnatural characters and their minds who inhabit these storyworlds

Summary

Image and Narrative in the Digital Era

In the final chapter of The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich asks: ‘How does computerization affect our very concept of moving images? Does it offer new possibilities for film language? Has it led to totally new forms of cinema?’ (2001, p. 287). In formulating these questions Manovich addresses the impact of the digital age upon both the film image and film narrative He lists multiple ways filmmakers have responded to new media, including their assimilation of the ‘conventions of game narratives’ The first section outlines narrative logic and videogame logic; the second returns to my earlier work on videogame logic in contemporary blockbusters in order to revise and extend it, synthesizing the results; and the third begins to reconceive videogame logic within the broader context of theories of imaginary worlds, fictional worlds and theories of unnatural and impossible storyworlds (in which the videogame logic makes the storyworld unnatural-impossible) At this juncture we encounter a terminological choice: ‘Imaginary World’ or ‘Fictional World’ or ‘Storyworld’? In Source Code, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the game player in his capsule and his avatar is the schoolteacher Sean Fentress on the train. ( the film is more complex, because Colter is duplicated: he is an avatar in his capsule linked to his real injured self-sealed in an airtight container; and the game world is duplicated.) these films are fascinating not because their visuals or content can be read metaphorically as a videogame, but primarily because their visuals and content are organized according to a hybrid of narrative and videogame logic

Narrative Logic

The Rules of Videogame Logic

Film Analyses

Conclusion