We all know by now that convergence is all around us--we see how different media franchises fall into and all over our lives. We see people talking about how they watched Tron: Legacy and how they raved when they were able to play as Tron himself in Tron: Evolution on the Playstation 3.
The thing is, it's hard to not let convergence happen when we have so much available around us right now. After all, it's our own imagination that makes all these happen.
..and speaking of imagination, what I'm about to show you (if you haven't already seen this) takes FREAKIN COLOSSAL IMAGINATION.
Thus I now present you:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Well, now, for those of you who haven't watched this yet and are planning to do so, then please go ahead and watch it before you proceed! There might be spoilers here, you see.
You're back? (Or you're still here?) Then, let's move.
So originally, Scott Pilgrim was a comic book. After the first volume, it was immediately planned to have a film incarnation. It was so visually stimulating and new, probably, that it was hard to resist having it done on film. (Not to mention difficult!)
The obvious convergence here is definitely the way how the comic book made its way to the film and--get this--in the Playstation 3.
Like I said, it's so easy to see how convergence happens--people have too much time on their hands, too little money on their pockets and too much ideas in their heads make for a potent money-making scheme. It would have amused me before, when I was still a fresh mind in Media studies, but of course now that I know better, it takes more than that to amuse me.
..and then this comes up.
The movie literally converges an ordinary musician's life into a game. An adventure starts, as the games of today say. For a gaming enthusiast like me, this has got to be one of the best movies I've watched in a while.
If only real life was like this:
Another aspect of the movie that made me bow down was with how the movie was put together with extreme editing precision. For an aspiring editor like me, darn, this movie is unwittingly wicked.
I've seen cinemas that are "interactive," in the way that the viewers get to "play" games that are projected onto the screen, while the players are tracked by cameras that are placed near the front. (This is SM Cinemas' Wiinema. Yeah I see the resemblance, too.) Thing is, that can also be seen as "convergence," since the word "entertainment" was handed to the viewers both in the form of just plain cinema, and also through how they had them play that game.
In SPvTW, the creators made the movie seem like one big game. The editing was made to look like an actual game complete with power-ups, coins, impact bubbles and such. Essentially, they made a movie-game. (I've played a few games that actually seem like movies, what with long CGI movies and a nicely-put storyline, so what I said isn't really that far-fetched.)
This for me is a great example of convergence, albeit one which doesn't really show convergence in a macro scope, but nonetheless shows how the technology is openly available granted that one has ample time, resources, and a gut to go with it in order to succeed.
...oh, and did I mention Scott Pilgrim has to battle SEVEN Evil Exes (bosses)?!
Game on,
Jb
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