eHero

First of all, I'm not a gamer. Prior to viewing eHero, I knew nothing about the culture. Having seen the movie however, I think I have a degree of understanding of what gaming is about. For that aspect alone, I feel this movie is noteworthy. I love movies that are intriguing, coherent, and able to hold water. The character development is convincing and it was easy to find myself cheering for the good guys and despising the jerks. What a great ending!

A pure evil antagonist character, a damsel in distress, a pure good protagonist. The protagonist band of merry men. From this data U can write out the plot, just punch in a few scenes to flesh it out and add 30 minutes of first person shooter gaming filler.

For novelty have one of the merry men be a graphic die hard pot smoker, this is to show its ok for our gaming youth to embrace something that kills brain cells, they should have thrown in a positive spin for a teen age alcoholic as well.

I thought the acting was pretty good across the board, but in my book it was wasted on the 'just connect the dots' movie script

Actors were great! Storyline was very good. Characters were real and funny at times. The music throughout the movie was impressive. Gaming sections were fast and easy to follow with lots of action! I have a better understanding what drives so many gamers to reach the top. Very competitive. Love the tender love story. Overall, I really enjoyed watching the movie. I would highly recommend it!! Lastly, the Director pulled this one off. This is no easy topic.

EHero is basically a teen sports movie, if you replace sports with eSports. From start to finish the film is peppered with details that competitive gamers will appreciate, but it's still enjoyable by casual gamers and those who grew up watching siblings play games. The game of choice is "Reflex Arena" which is a First Person Shooter inspired by Quake. Outside of the movie, the Reflex developers and community came up huge in support for eHero to provide over 20 minutes of high quality choreographed game-play footage per the script that showcase frenetic action along with an attractive in-game art style across a variety of worlds.

The movie is in a weird place as far as budget goes as it is too big compared to most indie films, but way too small for Hollywood. A major production company with a larger budget may have been flashier with effects but left out certain struggles (no spoilers!) that professional gamers encounter. Although some people will inevitably bash aspects of the movie here and there, I think it hit the perfect mix of realism in gaming and drama.

As an avid gamer I'm always disappointed there aren't more eSports and generally video game themed movies out there so I was quite excited at the prospect of eHero. I haven't enjoyed anything of this obscure sub-genre since the excellent Video Game Highschool (2012).

It tells the story of a young man (Aren't they always when it comes to gaming themed stuff) who after a high profile win gets the chance to join a team and really progress his eSports career.

Well first off consider me jealous, that would be right up there on my list of dream jobs but though it's increased on popularity I still have absolutely no faith in it as it's simply not taken seriously by enough people (The ones with money and power).

Now again I was looking forward to this, I thought it was likely to be a 90 accurate portrayal of someones journey into professional esports. Alas I was sorely mistaken.

eHero is Hollywood eSports, what I mean by that is instead of doing a standard realistic movie based on the industry they adopted all the usual sports movie tropes (To the letter) and threw ridiculous amounts of needless backstories and dramatics to keep people interested. We don't need that, we needed an enjoyable movie that tells a story within eSports not THAT!

If you've seen a sports movie, any sports movie at all then you'll know exactly how this is structured. Trouble is you know all the macho nonsense that usually goes with them? Yeah that's present here as well and simply shouldn't have been.

eHero on paper is something that I should have really enjoyed, it's something that quite frankly I crave. The end result? A cliched mess made by people who have absolutely no clue when it comes to gaming or eSports. And if I'm wrong and the people do know about those two things, then that is SO much worse.

Should be a movie for gamers, isn't.

The Good:

Decent concept

The Bad:

Unlikeable characters

Poor soundtrack

Opts for dramatics over realism