This achieves a transcendence on the couch. It is the same mythos of the heroes journey. Eerie as he reaches there, we are suddenly viewing this film no different than Lord of the Rings or The Odyssey. It delves into Y2K, and we get that once in a while, the Mayan Prophecy, etc...
Comedically, this is the natural escalation of post-irony: we go so far into self-reference, the illusion would be breached. The mystery of those 8-bit games is they are so much larger than the screen because they exclusively operate in our imaginations due to limited graphics and technology.
I often wondered there must be untold secrets in those 8bit worlds, and I was not alone...new secrets are being found, new records achieved. It's as if the mathematical limitations of the code are constantly tested in our attempts to surpass the limitations of material existence.
The thing is Nietzschean as it explores the human impulse to break the code. By pioneering and stretching the spectrum of irony, one is constantly surprised to find there are outcomes.
It challenges Warhol that everything has been done. Evolution demands things be done.
It barely ever shows the game, it doesn't delve into the challenge. It isn't interested in the science fiction of it. The film is everything but the film. It just shows him on the couch. A theater of the slacker, where even the genX slacker is now an archetype from history.
Then in the process of finding the secrets of the game, he becomes the game. The One. The post-irony often lands at changing history because this is the current day digital frame that accommodates us-anywhere we take it, it accommodates-our narcissism has become the world entire. In indulging this, it somehow grants millennials and post-millennials outcomes, saying whatever is the economic, cultural, or societal collapse, everything is going according to plan.
