Dragon Quest: Your Story

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I just stumbled across this on Netflix (and amazingly, it was subtitled in English).
I am a HUGE Dragon Quest nerd and I absolutely loved it. It was completely true to the visual style, the running gags, the comforting predictability, and the general nuttiness of these games. Probably my favourite lines were:
Dr. Agon: The fairies are protected by robots.
Hero: Isn't that a bit random?
Dr Agon: What do you want me to say? That's how it is this time around.
As with all DQ games, it was equal parts corny and moving. And as with the games, if you ask too much of this film you're going to be disappointed. They don't aim for any kind of profound psychological depth, but sometimes they hit it by accident or in passing.
The big bosses had a kind of horrific hallucinatory quality to them
In short, 10/10 would recommend.
Go Team Slime!!

 

[pxp]

Wait this is on Netflix? Cool!!

 

[Shademp]

Easily one of the better video game movies ever made. This one was a welcome surprise.

 

[Theozilla]

What about the twist ending? I heard that caused a lot of controversy in the fanbase.

 

[Shademp]

Spoiler: The twist ending

I think the twist ending is amusing and it works well into Dragon Quest as a "roleplaying" game. The movie becomes both a tribute to the fantasy immersion and to the fans who played the games.

There is definitely a psychologically unnerving element with being thrown into a virtual world and spending a lifetime in there, not knowing that it's an elaborate illusion. I also feel uncomfortable when characters say that a piece of fiction is "real" to them. I'd wager the intended meaning is that the emotional investment is "real" but not that the virtual world and characters are just as real as anything else. Admittedly though it's a complicated debate when digital data becomes "real" or sentient. Are the virtual Dragon Quest characters advanced enough to count as sentient? If yes, is it not immoral to give them life and then strip them from it? Should we treat virtual life the same way that we treat livestock?

And if they are technically no more sentient than an 8-bit sprite, then why play the joke on the player characters who believes for a while that his father, wife and son are/were real? When the player character returns to the real world, will he mourn his lost wife and son when in fact they never existed?

The movie itself doesn't dive into these matters but the implications simultaneously amuse and disturb. So I can easily see how the ending might be seen as controversial.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Spoiler: Ending

I enjoyed the ending. In way it broke the immersiveness of the story and completely changed what was at stake, but on the other hand it made me reflect on myself and what gaming means to me, which I think was ultimately the point. People might not have liked such a massive breaking of the 4th wall, but it's what the film was about, and it did it brilliantly.

 

[Theozilla]

A common analogy, from people critical of the ending, was that it was like being asked to take the Rick and Morty segment

Spoiler

sketch, Roy: A Life Well Lived seriously, and just completely took them out of enjoying the narrative.