Not-art Ebert on Hitman film
Helps his point, apparently.
Film critic Roger Ebert has used his review of the new Hitman film to revisit his critique of videogames as an art form - or, rather, not being one.
"The movie, directed by Xavier Gens, was inspired by a best-selling video game and serves as an excellent illustration of my conviction that video games will never become an art form - never, at least, until they morph into something else or more," Ebert writes in a review published online.
Pointing out that he found Agent 47's "lonely self-sufficiency" intriguing, he says that "to the degree" the film explores his relationship with female character Nika "it is absorbing".
Having given that much away, he heads quickly to the point he wanted to make: "Other scenes, which involve Agent 47 striding down corridors, an automatic weapon in each hand, shooting down opponents who come dressed as Jedi troopers in black. These scenes are no doubt from the video game.
"The troopers spring into sight, pop up and start shooting, and he has target practice. He also jumps out of windows without knowing where he's going to land, and that feels like he's cashing in a chip he won earlier in the game."
Agent 47 without "the obligatory video game requirements" might have been more like Le Samourai, he says, ultimately concluding that the film stands on the wrong side of "the threshold between video games and art".
Ebert is a firm proponent of the view that games are not art, having argued the toss plenty of times in the past. Then again, he probably hasn't got the "Little Rocket Man" Achievement in The Orange Box and he looks like he spawn-camps.
The Hitman film is due in cinemas (British ones, anyway) from 30th November, and stars Timothy Olyphant.
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Comments (59) Latest comment 4 years ago
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He should stick to writing purely about movies. That he does rather well.
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Story from the game
"Other scenes, which involve Agent 47 striding down corridors, an automatic weapon in each hand, shooting down opponents who come dressed as Jedi troopers in black. These scenes are no doubt from the video game.
More from action movies than the real concept behind Hitman (yeah shame they tended to do that a fair bit in the latter parts of the games).
Ebert is a TWAT.
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Seriously, he's just being daft saying that, as if he wanted to have a sly dig at games and was waiting for a movie review to fit it into.
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Thing is, he still sounds like a cunt and videogames are still brilliant fun and can be beautiful and emotive at times.
In the end, its all bollocks anyway.
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End of story, can we stop paying any attention to him now.
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I can't help thinking this article would be dramatically more entertaining and insightful if it, say, included a link to an account of someone obtaining this achievement in order to illustrate just how hard it proves Ebert wrong.
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Mr Ebert. Your argument would be rather harder to maintain were you to actually PLAY SOME GAMES WORTH PLAYING.
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Not when I've played it
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Most movies are just trash, and quite a few games are trash, also. Films based on games and vice versa are usually not art at all.
There is one interesting argument about games as a viable artform, but that is not the argument Ebert is trying to make. Perhaps games cannot qualify as art, as the spectator (player) has a lot more power (interactivity) than in any other art form. The artist has full control over a painting or a sculpture, he or she is in full control of the experession reaching the audience. Same for films, of course.
Games are fundamentally interactive; the "artist" (usually huge studios, really, similar to movies in that respect) give the audience a measure of interactivity with the "piece" no static art form can provide. So - if full artistic control over the experience, and thereby audience passitivitey, is a requirement for something to be art, then games cant be art - as you cant remove interactivity from a game and still call it a game...
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I don't think it's his statement that games aren't art that annoys gamers the most, it's this respected critic's offhand dismisal of an important and growing genre that a lot of people consider increasingly valid and damn enjoyable. I've yet to hear a single justification of why games cannot one day become an equally important expressive and entertaining medium. Anyone saying otherwise isn't looking far enough ahead, or at how far we've already come.
It's rather like me complaining that movies aren't interactive and therefore boring, before even watching one through.
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Indeed, and I'd second your changing the terms of the debate to decentralise 'art' as a critical category. Whether something is 'art' is in my view an increasingly counterproductive line of enquiry, for the term carries a lot of negative associations- inaccessibility, elitism, egotism etc. Let videogames be charming, provocative, intelligent, moving, whatever without having to be kept under glass.
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All he is saying is that videogames do not fit his definition of what constitues art. I agree with him, as my definition of art is similar to his. If your definition varies then you probably wont agree.
Also, its not about whether a particular film or game is shit or not, so stop listing 'artsy' game sin the hope it proves some sort of point. It doesnt.
Its the question of the creators vision vs interactivity that Olemak touched on that is the crux of this matter. The question really being 'Can an interactive medium ever be seen as being art, given that the artistic vision of the creator will always be influenced or diluted to some extent by the actions of the player, who is also the audience?'
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And comparing Hitman movie to Melville's seminal work is like shooting fish in a barrel with a thermonuclear warhead.
But I agree with Ebert that games aren't art yet, and I generally respect his opinions.
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I respect the mans opinions, but I do think Ebert is wrong on a lot of levels. Videogames are not art? Asthetically, many games are coming dangerously close - like Okami, which was gorgeous and profoundly deep. And unlike what every non-gamer seems to think, not all videogame plots are about guns and violence. And if they are, you look to examples like the Final Fantasy series (FFXII I'm thinking of) that are written cleverly enough that bad guys have motives, good guys have reasons. Actually, on those grounds, games have come much, MUCH further than movies, because there is still a tendancy in the movie industry to go for a bad guy who has little background, or no apparant reason for his actions.
Art itself is a difficult thing to quantify since it lacks actual targets, goals or points that you can tick off on a list and say "this is art". Art lacks definition - it has no definitive form, medium, image or ideal. Some believe movies can never be an artform as art needs to be "tactile". Some argue things like Clarice Cliff can't be art because it was mass-produced. Some argue that art is dead today as there isn't anything new to provoke reaction. It's this complete lack of consistancy that makes a debate on art impossible - it has no definition as such, everyone has their own unique opinion.
But, if we want to use a definition - take Britannica Online, for example;
"the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others"
By such a definition you could argue games have been art for a long time. You could argue a lot of things are art under such circumstances.
Ebert knows his stuff but I think he may overestimate his importance in the grand scheme of things. He may also be over-confident in his own self-definition of art. He is a critic and a good one, but if he doesn't like videogames then he should abandon them now. If he wants to understand them, then he should debate about it - ask people for their input, suggest good examples etc. Until then, he really should lay off sly digs at a medium that he clearly has little to no appreciation for, and little understanding of outside the same old tired old clichés. It's exactly these two points that make his opinion look worthless to a lot of people, when everything else has a point. It does not take much to cheapen someone or something, even if without intention. Which I don't believe Ebert intends to either, that is, offend gamers or disregard games as a medium, even though he can come off that way.
Films of videogames are films nonetheless. They may have a link to their game counterpart but so far in this sub-genre, the links between them have had copious amounts of artistic licence heaped onto them. In the end, they are films - judge them as films, judge them on the format they are on. We gamers know that not all games-of-movies are shit (though we know a lot of them are) after all. I think in such cases you need to yes, appreciate where it started but judge it as a seperate entity. If it doesn't work in the context of a film, it isn't the games fault - it's the directors or writers for shoehorning it in.
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It's like they pick up on the general tone of what was said and go BOO!!! until their nose bleeds.
If one was to take a minute to actually distinguish what Ebert is saying it might actually make a little bit of sense. Like someone said here, it's by his own definition of art, clearly, and that doesn't have to mean he's wrong, he's just right in a different way than he thinks.
I believe it's an interesting debate to have, but like someone also pointed out we've already had it plenty, and I have to say that these comments threads usually just sink after a while and it's impossible to keep track of the arguments with substance.
At the end of the day, I think there are two mistakes made here. One being the clear parallell between shooting and video game, which has become increasingly accurate the last five'ish years granted, but even so an unfair one. The other being that art adheres completely to his definition of it. I'm not a very broad minded guy when it comes to shooters though, I don't believe a shooter can offer anything resembling art. It's more of the natural extension of kids waving sticks around pretending they're guns. In terms of Bioshock and the like, the artistic quality is so detached from the core shooting it can't possibly be given credit on the basis of being a shooter. It could've been an adventure game just aswell and it would still be appreciated for the same things.
However, I think games through interaction and being part of what happens can be a powerful catalyst for emotions that you can't have through film, that in no way are connected to the usual dramaturgy or narration. I think games without a superficial story with emotional highs and lows are the most admirable in terms of video games as ART, and I think these completely escape Ebert simply because they escape mainstream.
If someone was to sit him down with something like Katamari Damashi and make him realise himself that he's essentially making something beautiful out of what we already are, through the game, without having that conveyed to him with actors or through a script, he would prolly feel different.
But throwing something story/cutscene heavy on him.. or even something *OBVIOUSLY ARTY BECAUSE IT'S ALL WHITE AND HAS FUNKY CHARACTERS* like Shadow of the Colossus is not gonna help. Then we're just falling back into existing definitions of art again. Like Will Wright a bit ham-fistedly tried to say, games shouldn't aspire to be art by any other artform's rules, and the "cinematic experience" road - while exciting in its own right - will never win any artsy points for gaming.
I think in a way games, becoming hollywood-ized have lost track of their own strongest qualities. In that sense, indirectly I think Ebert has a point. He just doesn't realise he's criticising a direction games have only had since they became proper mainstream and made waves among big name actors and what have you.
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When people look at a sculpture or painting, or read a book, or whatever they each form a different impression of that piece, based on their own tastes, interests and life experiences. Art isn't a matter of simple, unmistakeable ideas that pass directly from artist to viewer - it's a vague and highly interpretive form of communication, good at inspiring emotion but necessarily vague and open to interpretation.
So sure, interactive art - such as games - will show different aspects to different viewers, based on their actions. But this isn't a fundamental difference from static art, it's just accentuating an already present element. This isn't a limitation - it represents a whole new level of potential.
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How do Furbies fit into that definition?
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You can write to him on his website, you know...
Besides, he had a big series of articles on videogames and responses to them a while ago, before his cancer came back. He printed some letters, and responded to others. I'm sure you can imagine that the majority of the response from gamers to his views would have been... less than diplomatic.
This must be a slow news day or something. I fail to see why Ebert needs to be brought up again. As wrong as he is on this point, he is a great man - certainly the best living film critic.
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Exactly my point as well. Stop posting what this twat is saying, no one cares. D:
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I'll echo what someone else said though, I'd really like to have a proper discussion with him, sans the obligatory "FUCK OFF AND DIE!" replies of gamers who don't even want to understand what the discussion is about.
Actually, that Julian Eggbrecht guy (sp?) had some similar things in mind talking about games as an artform. Of course Lair was absolute tosh so nobody will listen to him, but nevertheless I thought what he had to say was incredibly insightful.
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He is, or at least used to be, a very interesting movie reviewer, but in this case he's just an old irrelevant man discussing things he doesn't understand.
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I rather think it does, it's just that his definition of "video game" is just the general trend of videogames lately. Something like Halo or Gears of War or GTA are on the forefront of videogames making the most noise, but are they really the essence of what you can do with the medium?
Because I reckon they aren't. They are good in their own right, but they borrow too much of the appeal of movies or other - like Will Wright put it - linear mediums.
I think Ebert would have a harder time arguing his point in the face of something like Tetris that has NOTHING in common with ANY other art form. Its appeal is purely derived from its mechanics and nothing else, and the things Tetris makes you feel could not in any way be achieved with a movie.
That's where I think games become art. Likewise, if a movie doesn't embrace its inherent qualities but rather hitchhikes on the appeal of other mediums, it's not making the most of what it could be and is far from art itself.
Personally I don't really care about what Ebert chooses to call it, I just find out what he means by the word and take it from there. If all we do is arguing semantics then we're not really getting anywhere in the real discussion, which I happen to think is pretty interesting.
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And yes, have him play Grim Fandango.
On the other hand, so many videogames are mindless, uninspired, unambitious cliché-laden fluff that I can't really blame him for his opinion.
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Ooooh, right.
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tl;dr Ebert is an ignoramus
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(hint: a warm gun)
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Yep. His definition excludes more than just games, however. It actually excludes Shakespeare. You read that right. Shakespeare, or any other dramatist, doesn't control how their works are performed (at least, not after their deaths). Consequently, "Hamlet" is not art. Or maybe it's only art if it's performed well, or in line with Shakespeare's intentions with the piece, whatever they were. Maybe "The Merchant of Venice" is only art if Shylock is played as a comic character reflecting the inherent greediness of the Jewish people who gets what's coming to him.
And don't even get me started on music.
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And this is the guy who writes the screenplay to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. and spends much of his time reviewing mainstream crap. Blanket proclaiming that games cannot be art is as absurd as saying movies cannot be art just by looking at what he spends most of his time reviewing.
I think one thing most people would agree on is that Clive Barker really didn't help the "games are art" side with Jericho.
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I'm sorry, but that's what he IS saying. If you've read more of his comments you'll come to understand that his arbitrary definition of art is merely a front for his utter contempt of and bias against videogames, even though he knows absolutely jack about them.
I really wish there was a way to contact Mr Ebert to have a mature discussion with him about the points he raises about the game and the film and how together they prove games are not art.
Any discussion to be had with mr. Ebert might seem civil on the outside, but will reveal itself as a simple repetition of one thing: games can't be art because I say so (among veiled insults towards your person).
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[responding to the point that video gaming suffers where it mimics other mediums, and will eventually make its own, unique contribution to art]If or when that happens, I hope I will approach it with an open mind. This debate has taken on a life of its own. In countless e-mails and on a dozen message boards, I've found that most of the professionals involved in video games are intelligent and thoughtful people like yourself. A large number of the video game players, alas, tell me "you suck" or inform me that I am too old. At 63, I prefer such synonyms as "wise" and "experienced."
It's also worth noting the latter part of the quotation here (entirely ignored by most posters in this thread)- games will never become an art form - never, at least, until they morph into something else or more. Whether hedging his bets or a genuine sense of perspective, you decide...
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+oo
It is very obvious that Ebert hates videogames despite knowing almost nothing about them, and therefore he is not to be taken seriously on this subject.
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I also declare movies are not art. I base this statement on only watching "Armageddon" and "Buttman 4".
Can I apply for Ebert's job now?
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Nope, you're already overqualified
Eberts' ignorance really does have no bounds.
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That's all I got.
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So by that logic, if anyone hates the Beowolf movie (or game), poetry can't be art. If anyone makes a bad film based on a book (Total Recall as an example. It is a bit cheese, but I still love it) then it isn't art.
So nothing can be art anymore because nothing will be loved by everyone!
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Actually, he did review a couple of games back in the day. They were pretty positive, I seem to remember.
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at one point it degenerates into a who's who of north american tv shows. whilst feeling like a shwarznegger movie at the same time.
truly awful, i encourage anyone to watch this drivel and please, tell me what you found to be redeeming.
Whether or not games are art or not, this is clearly not art, or at best is very bad art.
edit -im never going to get that arnold bloke right without googling so therefore i wont bother trying