Sphere

 

A GAMER’S VIEW OF THE MOVIES

by Donald J. Bingle

SPHERE

Writing this movie review column is an interesting experience, because I never know when I head for the movies which movies will be appropriate to talk about from a gamer’s point of view. I see plenty of movies, even movies I really love or really hate, that never trigger a review because there is no particular connection between the movie and anything about gaming. Other times, there is a gaming connection even when I don’t expect it. Often the connection to gaming relates to how gamers would handle the plot or situations if they were "playing the movie". Sometimes the connection is about plot holes, technical inaccuracies, character inconsistencies, or such that a good gaming session would avoid (maybe more writers should playtest stuff before they write it, like they did with the original Dragonlance trilogy). Sometimes the connection is a bit of a stretch, but gets me to a gaming subject that I feel about strongly enough to want to editorialize a bit.

This month’s movie, Sphere, as I am sure you will agree once you see it, had almost nothing to do with a classic gaming session. The story, by Michael Crichton (yes, the same guy who gave us Jurrasic Park, Lost World, Disclosure, Coma, The Andromeda Strain, and ER) basically involves a team of adventurers. . .I mean, scientists. . .who have been called together because of their various special classes. . .er, skills. . .to go on a quest. . .well, investigation. . .in a deep dark dungeon. . .actually, an underwater spaceship. . .to explore, defeat any monsters. . .I mean, well actually monsters is right. . ., and bring back invaluable treasure. . .in this case, alien technology. The adventurers/scientists include a fighter/military party leader, an illusionist/mathematician, a ranger/biochemist, a magician/astrophysicist, and a cleric/psychologist. All of the characters know each other from before the adventure and have quirky character interaction issues that we learn more about during the course of the adventure. The movie, like a linear hack and slash module, has no real interest in letting any opening character development occur, so we are hurriedly bundled into a short briefing, then sent to the deep dungeon. . .er, spaceship. . .to begin exploration.

Once the investigation begins, the party does pretty much everything in a thoroughly unscientific and haphazard way. They begin by working on opening a door with brute force, without checking for traps, trying to figure out what is on the other side, or preparing any defenses whatsoever for what unknown wet fate may await them. Once inside (the door mysteriously opens for them), they remark on how spooky it is that the door mysteriously opened, then promptly split the party to investigate. They trundle down catwalks past dark pipes (I guess the art director liked the Alien movies) without bothering to map or mark their path back to the exit. One group finds a control room in the supposedly alien spacecraft and begins to press buttons, miraculously finding some valuable, but mysterious, information. Of course, the group ignores the equally valuable information literally surrounding the mysterious information (only the entire history of the spacecraft; hardly worth looking at), which could have easily answered all of the questions they keep asking during the rest of the module. . .I mean, screenplay. The other group locates a mysterious sphere, which, of course, they promptly touch before really doing anything to figure it out. Beset by random monsters and dangers, the party continually splits up, bickers about events decades old, engages in jealous and competitive rivalries, ignores some really odd behavior by some of the party members, and generally acts less rationally than the teenagers in a bad horror flick.

Once the group contacts the all-powerful OZ. . .in this case an alien entity which speaks over the alternatingly working, not working, burning, and broken computer terminals. . .they figure out its decoding riddle in a nanosecond so they can concentrate their considerable and varied intellects on asking it inane and useless questions. Realizing its great power, they immediately do their best to anger it by refusing to converse long enough to gather any useful clues or information. Their gratuitous dithering attracts random monsters, which they then battle ineffectually for the rest of the flick. They eventually discover that their nemesis can control reality and that they themselves are the enemy. This concept, while interesting (it was a major plot device in the first classic science fiction motion picture, Forbidden Planet, and also appears in the current flick, Dark City), is not done particularly well. The PCs/scientists make no effort to really control reality until the cute, but weak, end of the scenario/film, at which time they utilize a power that I really wish I could use with respect to this movie. I’ve run a few tables of Timemaster using a reality shifting plot device (neo-psychophysics was the name of it there) and the gamers were much more imaginative and the intricacies of how the reality shifting worked were much more interactive and subtle than anything in the script for Sphere (or Dark City, for that matter, which treats reality shifting, or "cubing" as they call it, as a virulent form of the using "the Force" from Star Wars fame that crescendos into a kind of psionics not seen since the days of early AD&D or the movie Scanners).

A movie or game like this needs atmosphere and suspense and there was precious little of either in Sphere. Instead, there were random explosions, flickering lights, leaking water, and really really bad sound quality. Dark City at least had atmosphere (the look is an amalgam of Blade Runner, The Crow, Batman, and old, black & white film noir movies), though not much suspense or substance—I suspect it will be popular with that segment of the gaming crowd drawn to dark and surreal games heavy on atmosphere, like Vampire: The Masquerade. Neither film, however, matches the heroic spirit, the complex character interaction, the strategic problem solving, the intellectual challenge, or the feel of even the average horror/fantasy gaming session. Avoid Sphere altogether (at least wait for video on Dark City) and run a Cthulhu module or something for your friends, instead. You’ll have a better time and almost certainly do a better job than the writers/producers/directors of this month’s flick.

Copyright 1998 Donald J. Bingle