King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
On the surface, Seth Gordon’s The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters seems like a joke. It follows two men, both involved in the world of competitive classic arcade gaming. It has already alienated a good sample of the potential audience with that choice. However, upon viewing you realize there is so much more. It may be about nerdy adults and Donkey Kong, but it serves as a microcosm for some surprisingly universal ideas. Its themes are so much a part of the American experience that, regardless of bias, prejudice, and assumption about its subject matter, it is hard to not love.
The film follows two characters. One is from Hollywood, Florida and the other from Redmond, Washington. Even geographically, they are opposites. Billy Mitchell is the face of classic video games. To his disciples, fellow arcade gamers, he is successful beyond their wildest dreams and an ideal to aspire too. Meanwhile, Steve Weibe loses his job the day he and his wife sign the papers on their first house. Struggling to keep his wife and two children afloat, he finds a job as a teacher. It does not pay enough and, as many can relate, feels he has little to be proud of.
So he seeks for an outlet. Out of curiosity he comes across the official records for classic games on the website, Twin Galaxies. Billy Mitchell’s name is at the top. A natural competitor, Weibe sets the goal of toppling that score. He attains an arcade machine and program card and begins to play. He practices and works hard, determined to make a name for himself. He sets up the video camera and hits record, capturing the game of his life, topping one million points, a feat never before achieved. He sends the footage to Twin Galaxies, only to, through a series of devious means, have his score dismissed as a possible fake. All he can do is set out to get the recognition he deserves.
Consider the themes in the above paragraph. It is essentially the formula for every sports movie out there. Weibe is the ultimate underdog. He has heart, but bad luck knocks him down. He was a star baseball player in college, only to have an injury sideline him. His bad luck continues as the long arm of Billy Mitchell, via lackeys Robert Mruzcek and Brian Kuh, determines that his game board may have been tampered with only because a rival has helped Steve Weibe in procuring one. These are classic elements of any drama. It plays to one’s inate sense of fairness, the back bone of the good versus evil story. Weibe was discredited and discarded, as he always has been in life, and as an audience you are in his corner instantly.
As we discover later in the film, Billy Mitchell has not played Donkey Kong in public since he initially set his record. Weibe travels to sanctioned gaming locales to challenge his score in a forum where he cannot be seen as a cheat. Even while playing in the arcade in Billy Mitchell’s town, Mitchell is too cowardly to face off. Yet Billy Mitchell has this alarming sense of entitlement. He breathes “I’m number one.” His power tie is red, white, and blue, with lady liberty proudly featured. His moniker on the arcade machines is U-S-A. Every small victory for him he announces as moment of glory for the annals of human history. Even when he sets rules, he makes sure that he is allowed to break them. Billy Mitchell is a character, even a villain, no-one dare write: a delusional, megalomaniac whose great achievement is getting an 8-bit character past a giant ape throwing barrels.
The tide slowly shifts in Weibe’s favor. After what is, in some ways, a loss, there is the feeling that despite the tournaments’ outcome, here and in the future, good has triumphed over evil. Weibe has retained his integrity and won the respect of small community. It is a small victory but a victory all the same.
These personalities are the greatest strength of the film. How they discovered this society of classic game enthusiasts is baffling. Even more so, how did they find this specific rivalry? Smartly, the director and crew are practically invisible. They know that the real story is stranger than fiction and should be told by the inhabitants of this bizarre world. The camera lingers an extra second, past the point where the subjects being filmed think the camera would have quit rolling. As a result you catch genuine emotion beyond the face they put on for lens. The fear of Brian Kuh as his idol, Billy Mitchell, seems to be unseated. The look on the face of Twin Galaxies founders and head referee, Walter Day, as it dawns on him that he has wasted so much of his life upholding and supporting this farce of the Billy Mitchell regime. These moments take people most would consider mere losers and humanizes and elevates them to characters in the battle of right and wrong.
In the four years since its release, it has been optioned for a sequel and plans were set for it to become a fictionalized television series. This makes sense considering there is something distinctly American about King of Kong with its the central focus on competition and exceptionalism. The characters are larger than life and the story is so easy to fall into Those who view this film are in for the long haul. It has become a favorite of mine and one I always show the skeptics. I, along with many others, still keep up with who holds the record, despite a passing interest in the games themselves. Thus you the real strength of this documentary and documentaries as a whole. I am invested in the subject matter and want to learn more.
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