First Look – The Arcaders of PIXELS

You ever wonder if making games that allow players to massacre extraterrestrial foes may be a bad idea? Well in Pixels, it certainly is. When an alien armada picks up a feed of classic games such as Space Invaders and Centipede, games wherein players have to mow down the alien opposition like a fat kid in a candy store, they get pissed off and attack the planet. Only a loveable bunch of misfits can save the day. Also, loveable might not be on the agenda here.

Here’s your first look at the crew of Pixels, the Arcaders team of Adam Sandler, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage and Peter Dinklage’s magnificent mullet. Called into action by the US president (Kevin James), the Arcaders are former buddies and coin jockey experts of the White House commander. Well, at least they were way back in 1982.  “They’re really three losers,” director Chris Columbus said to EW.

Adam Sandler is now a TV mechanic, Gad is a conspiracy theorist and Dinklage is a criminal, forced to team up with weapons expert Michelle Monaghan, with the pic above showing the team getting ready to take down Pac-Man. Yes, that Pc-Man.

“They’re actually becoming sort of cultural heroes at this point. It’s a very important shot in the film.  “I feel very fortunate to be able to do a movie that feels extraordinarily original and unique,” said Columbus, who probably never saw that episode of Futurama where Fry had to do fight back a wave of invaders from space.

It’s a little bit of an homage toGhostbusters and all those great Amblin movies of the eighties—not only the movies that I was involved in like The Goonies and Gremlins—but the movies I loved when I was working there like Back to the Future.

Still, it sounds like a fun film. It’s got that arcadeighties charm going for it, with the visuals paying homage to those classic games. “From a visual effects standpoint, audiences are going to be seeing things that they’ve never seen before,”Columbus said.

To be quite honest, a lot of visual effects movies cover the same territory whether it’s destroying a city or superhero visual effects, they tend to have a certain amount of intense HD reality. [Here] we’re taking classic eight-bit characters and turning them into fully realized, three-dimensional, pixelated characters that are quite threatening. Didn’t you always wonder what Ms. Pac-Man was packing under that little red bow?

Pixels is out next year May.

Last Updated: July 21, 2014