Machinima!

The latest issue of Film Quarterly features a review by Irene Chien of the "machinima" movies Deviation and Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Machinima movies (the word comes from a combination of "machine" and "cinema") are computer-animated films shot within video games that reveal possibilities and pitfalls in the growing convergence of cinema and video games.

At the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, audiences encountered the big-screen debut of the machinima short film Deviation . . . The film follows a team of four soldiers tearing urgently through underground tunnels. One discontented soldier named Macintyre cynically believes that they have experienced this suicide mission innumerable times before, and vainly tries to convince the others to break out of the rote cycle of carnage. Acted out through standard avatars provided in the online multiplayer video game CounterStrike, the film imagines the existential horror of actually living one's life within the bloody, militaristic, single-goal-driven world of a first-person shooter game. As the soldiers charge through the claustrophobic maze of tunnels, under the omnipresent threat of attack, Macintyre becomes increasingly vocal about his misgivings. "Doesn't it strike you as strange, I mean we keep doing the same thing over and over again?" He is silenced by the team leader right before the soldiers climb up through a manhole to be slaughtered off screen in a rain of bullets and blood. Macintyre looks on in disgust.

Wasn't this already done with Mario?