The Gamers: Hands of Fate

I try to write reviews that focus on what others don't say. This movie is bad. The other 2 Gamer movies are treasured gems. The problem with this movie can be summed up rather briefly. It's source material is obviously MTG and as nearly the entire scene is vile, so is the movie. Where the other Gamer movies are funny this one falls utterly flat. The reason is simple, most MTG zealots refuse to make fun of themselves or the game. The film can't let itself be funny for the same reason you can't draw a cartoon caricature of Muhammad. Sad.

Of course I had to sit down and watch the 2013 movie "The Gamers: Hands of Fate", after having just watched the 2002 movie "The Gamers" and the 2008 "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". And I must admit that I actually harbored some expectations to this 2013 movie as the 2008 movie was glorious fun.

The storyline in "The Gamers: Hands of Fate", as written by Nathan Rice and Matt Vancil, focuses on gamers in the collectible card game universe, which I am not a part of and never seen the appeal in, so this 2013 movie was a swing and a miss in terms of entertaining me, especially since both the previous two movies dealt with roleplayers and not card players.

There were some returning actors and actresses from the previous two movies, which was nice, as it installed a sense of familiarity and continuity in the movie. And it should be noted that the acting performances were good.

The effects in "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" were fair.

However, "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" fell short of fully entertaining me, as I have little or no interest in the collectible card games and the card tournaments that they are used in.

My rating of directors Ben Dobyns and Matt Vancil's 2013 movie "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" lands on a four out of ten stars. It was, to me, the least entertaining and appealing of the movies in the series thus far. Of course I had to sit down and watch the 2013 movie "The Gamers: Hands of Fate", after having just watched the 2002 movie "The Gamers" and the 2008 "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". And I must admit that I actually harbored some expectations to this 2013 movie as the 2008 movie was glorious fun.

The storyline in "The Gamers: Hands of Fate", as written by Nathan Rice and Matt Vancil, focuses on gamers in the collectible card game universe, which I am not a part of and never seen the appeal in, so this 2013 movie was a swing and a miss in terms of entertaining me, especially since both the previous two movies dealt with roleplayers and not card players.

There were some returning actors and actresses from the previous two movies, which was nice, as it installed a sense of familiarity and continuity in the movie. And it should be noted that the acting performances were good.

The effects in "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" were fair.

However, "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" fell short of fully entertaining me, as I have little or no interest in the collectible card games and the card tournaments that they are used in.

My rating of directors Ben Dobyns and Matt Vancil's 2013 movie "The Gamers: Hands of Fate" lands on a four out of ten stars. It was, to me, the least entertaining and appealing of the movies in the series thus far.

Those I've spoken to who have watched G:HoF seem divided into two camps. The first camp is disappointed, because the movie isn't what they expected. In fairness, G:HoF is quite a departure from Gamers and Gamers: Dorkness Rising. The humor is more subdued, and the storyline is much more pronounced; the film is primarily character-driven rather than situation-driven.

The second camp...and I fall firmly in this camp...are pleased with the movie for precisely those reasons. I honestly think that if they'd tried to do a third movie exactly in the vein of the original, it would have fallen flat. There are only so many joking references to gaming tropes and clichés you can make before the material starts to become stale.

Instead, the third movie builds on the characters established in the second, fleshing them out and humanizing them; making them less caricatures and more fully-fleshed characters. Cass takes the role of protagonist, and while he's still the same cocky, hyper-competitive power-gamer, he's given a chance to demonstrate other facets of his personality; there's real character development here, and you find yourself rooting for him as the film progresses. Leo gets a welcome chance to be something other than "the guy who dies a lot"--I personally think that Scott Brown is one of the most talented actors in a talented cast, and it's nice to see him get a chance to show it.

The focus is on a collectible card game in this film, but I found that much of the humor is a loving send-up, not just of CCGs or gaming conventions, but of epic fantasies and their tropes, with a good dose of spaghetti Western thrown in. Most of the well-worn and well-loved conventions are here: the rebellious loner who comes to down to find it beset by a tyrannical band of marauders; the call to heroism; his initial resistance ("I'm just passing through") worn down as he comes to care for the community; his arrival at the last minute for the showdown with the villain.

One discordant note for me is Gary's subplot. It starts off funny, but quickly goes in a very dark direction that doesn't seem to mesh well with the overall tone of the film...less "Eccentric gamer" and more "Seriously psychologically disturbed gamer." While, yes, there were over-the-top acts of violence in the earlier films, those were generally confined to the characters within the games. Seeing similar behavior from one of the players comes across as less funny and more disturbing.

Apart from that, though, the film's a very solid and enjoyable one, and one I plan to both own and watch again.

Though initially dismissive of customizable card games and its player base, when the abrasive Cass meets beautiful gamer girl Natalie he enters a tournament for the CCG Romance of the Nine Empires in order to wrangle a date from her. In an alternate reality, the heroic princess Myriad searches for a way to protect the kingdom of Holden from the wars that rage across the world of Countermay. She begins to suspect, however, that her fate is controlled by something altogether outside of her reality. Will Cass get the girl? Will the land of Holden survive the coming war? The fate of the land of Countermay depends on the outcome of Cass's CCG tournament...or is it the other way around?

For viewers unfamiliar with the previous movies The Gamers and The Gamers:Dorkness Rising (the original movie was more of stand-alone, extended sketch comedy skit than a full-fledged movie, and featured few of the same characters from its two sequels) , the story should be pretty easy to follow, though a few elements may leave some people scratching their heads, and some of the humor might fall a little flat with those who aren't familiar with the gaming community and its tropes. Also, it should be noted that this is a low budget, Kickstarter-funded production, so the production values might be lower than what most viewers are used to which could be a turn-off.

For returning fans, while Dorkness Rising focused on nice guy Lodge and his frustrations with both his dysfunctional role-playing group and a case of writer's block, Hands of Fate shifts its focus to the ultimately good-hearted jerk Cass. There's also a larger focus on the real world plot than there was in the last movie. I think Cass is an entertaining lead protagonist, so these aren't problems so much as things to be aware of.

If you're hoping for a continuation of the story-within-a-story that was the focus of Dorkness Rising, you'll be disappointed, as one of the sub-plots of Hands of Fate is the fact that the gaming group can't seem to get together to play. Instead, we get to see into the world of Romance of the Nine Empires, a fictional CCG, and its inhabitants are their own entities rather than the extension of their players in the real world. This is a negative, in my opinion. It's not that the CCG world is any less engaging than the RPG world was, it's just that the fantasy storyline was never the point in the first place--it was the dynamic of seeing the characters switching back and forth between their real and fantasy personas that made the whole thing fun. Unfortunately that's mostly absent here.

As far as the acting is concerned, I thought the the main cast was pretty good. Brian Lewis as main character Cass did a great job, and takes a character that was originally designed as kind of an antagonist in Dorkness Rising and turns him into a relatable protagonist. One of my favorite performances is actually Scott C. Brown as Leo--while Leo was new to RPGs, he's actually experienced in CCGs, so his character gets to transform from fumbling newb to wise master, and I thought he was able to pull it off without it seeming like we were looking at a new character with the same face.

Some of the less prominent acting can be a little hit or miss around the edges which is to be expected since the cast seems to be fleshed out a bit with amateur actors. What might be a problem to some viewers though is understanding when the acting is bad on purpose, such as when a character in the movie is himself playing a character and is meant to be bad at it. For instance, there's a sequence where a number of people are Live Action Role Playing, a sequence filled with bad deliveries and cheesy speeches--but they're supposed to be that way. I can see how some people might not get it if they're not really understanding what they're looking at.

I do have a few nitpicks, mostly it just seems like a little more finesse could have been used. Sometimes Checkov's gun is set on the mantle a little too obviously, or points where I feel an emotional payoff for a storyline seemed a little too calculated. The one major problem I had was with the plot for the Gary character--it starts off amusingly silly but then goes off into a really darkly absurd place that's out of sync with the rest of the movie--while still being treated as just slightly kooky.

In all, don't let the low budget or the niche genre nature of the material turn you off to the movie--it's a funny, smart movie about gamers. Sometimes they antagonize each other, sometimes they have different ideas on how things should be played, but at the end of the day they are there because they love gaming.

I loved Gamers 1 & 2 and was really curious how they would keep the story fresh. I loved all their D&D jokes on the last two but wasn't sure what they would do to keep the momentum going; the answer was to change and take a risk.

That can often be a tricky thing to do in a trilogy, but they pulled it off. At heart, this is actually a sports movie, just the game is a card game rather than a physical game. This, combined with a much higher budget, allowed them to do all sorts of fun bits that they couldn't have done if they just would have stayed with the same tried and true formula.

I'm glad they mixed things up while still keeping it a very entertaining ride. Can't wait to listen to the commentary tracks to see how they did so much with so little.