Genre: Sci-Fi/Interactive
Premise: In 1984, a young programmer, determined to create the best video game ever, begins unravelling during the programming process when he suspects that an unseen force is dictating his actions.
About: How cool it is to be Charlie Booker? You’ve created a show that allows you to tell ten new science-fiction movies a year. I’d sign up for that every day of the week. Today’s film, like a lot of Netflix titles, came out of nowhere, arriving on the service the last week of 2018. Its choose-your-own-adventure narrative has created a lot of discussion – some negative, some positive. But everyone seems to agree that it’s worth talking about. Bandersnatch was directed by David Slade, who has an interesting Scriptshadow connection in that he’s attached to direct, “Meat.”
Writer: Charlie Booker
Details: 90 minues
Choose-your-own-adventure stories were always more appealing in theory than they were in practice. Even as an easily entertained kid, I remember awkwardly jumping back and forth through these books and feeling like I was doing a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.
So I was skeptical when Black Mirror announced a choose-your-own-adventure movie. It’s hard enough to write a screenplay using all your best choices. Multiple-choice narratives force the writer to incorporate options he wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. Which begs the question: How do you write a good story if you’re not always using your best stuff?
But Black Mirror is the one property I’d trust with this setup. Their brand is designed to take chances and, more specifically, incorporate technology into the story. The rules are simple. Every 5-10 minutes, a character will ask a question (Therapist: “Do you want to talk about your mother?”), and two choices will appear on the bottom of the screen (“Yes” or “No”). An unobtrusive white line appears, casually shrinking inward, signifying the amount of time you have to make your choice.
The central storyline of Bandersnatch places us in the year 1984. 20-something game programmer Stefan Butler wants to turn his favorite choose-your-own-adventure book, Bandersnatch, into a video game. He interviews at the best company in town, Tuckersoft, where his programming hero, Colin Ritman, works. The president loves the Bandersnatch pitch and asks Stefan to develop the game.
Quickly, however, Stefan runs into gamer’s block. Something is missing to bring the game to that next level. Part of the problem is Stefan feels like he’s being controlled. Seconds after we’re asked whether we want Stefan to bite his nails and we answer yes, Stefan slams his hand down, refusing to engage in the activity. A new theme begins to permeate the story – that of free will. Stefan doesn’t believe he has it.
Stefan eventually goes to Colin for help with his gamer’s block, and Colin regales him in a story about how Pac-Man is a metaphor for how we’re all stuck in a maze, consuming, with no way out. The good news is, we can jump to parallel realities to alleviate the resulting insanity. Colin insists that they both get high, and we know Booker wanted this scene because we don’t get the option to say no. After they get really high, Colin suggests jumping off his high-rise to prove his parallel realities theory. We get to choose which of them jumps. I chose Colin, who jumps and dies.
The trippiest moment in Bandersnatch occurs when Stefan starts screaming to the skies that he knows someone is controlling him and wants to know who they (you) are. We’re given the choice of saying “Netflix” or a story relevant symbol. I couldn’t resist choosing Netflix, which results in “me” explaining to Stefan that I’m from the 21st Century watching him on Netflix and controlling his actions.
When Stefan brings this up to his therapist, she replies, “If you were really in a movie, wouldn’t there be more… action?” The movie then asks you if you want more action (you can only answer “yes”) and the two proceed to beat each other’s ass.
Stefan goes deeper down the rabbit hole, embracing the insanity of what’s happening to him, which results in him brutally murdering his father (or maybe I was responsible for that, since I told him to). Eventually, he creates the perfect game, which becomes a cult hit that 35 years later is turned into a Netflix show.
Ten minutes into Bandersnatch, I suspected I’d stumbled into a big waste of time. I’m choosing which cereal Charlie eats. Whether to talk about his mom or not. Borrrrr-ing. But the movie picks up once we start breaking the fourth wall.
One of the things I keep telling you guys it that when you come up with a concept, you want to explore everything you can that’s unique about that concept. Most writers don’t do this. The concept is their way into the story. But once they’re in, they write a bunch of characters and scenarios and action that we’ve seen before. If you’re going to make a “choose your own adventure” movie, you want to ask what you can do with that format that hasn’t been done with traditional movies before. If all you’re going to do is offer the viewer a bunch of fake choices that lead us to the same ending, there’s no reason to make the film.
By connecting you directly to the characters to the point where they’re recognizing that you’re controlling them fully immerses us in the experience and makes Bandersnatch unlike anything we’ve seen before. I mean think about. You couldn’t do this five years ago, much less twenty years ago. There’s no way to do this in a movie theater since everybody’s choice would be different. And movie theaters don’t have the necessary technology to be real-time interactive anyway. So all that was great.
Was the story good?
That’s tougher to answer. I was engaged throughout the movie. But a lot of that had to do with the format. I started to enjoy the fact that I was controlling this person’s decisions, which made me more focused on that than whether character arcs were being fulfilled or the pacing was on point.
But the core plot point kept things focused. By setting up the goal of Stefan needing to create the game, we always knew where we were going. And it wasn’t just that. It was that Stefan was highly motivated. We could tell that this game meant everything to him. And that’s something that’s always going to supercharge a protagonist – if they’re obsessed with achieving their goal.
It also sounds to me like there’s a lot more to this show. Some people have been obsessively watching it and choosing every different direction so as to experience every version of the movie. I’d be interested to hear if your plot breakdown is different from mine. I suspect they can only offer so many alternative storylines, or else they’d be shooting for years. But I’d love to hear if someone watched a completely different movie than I did.
That’s what’s so cool about this project. It’s different. And not only different. It took a gimmick and it did something with it. The gimmick didn’t stop at the conceptual phase, which is what happens with so many gimmicky ideas. All in all, Bandersnatch was a refreshing film. I was pleasantly surprised.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: While it kind of worked here due to the unique format, I strongly discourage writers from using the “Kid’s Mistake Led To Mommy/Daddy’s Death” flashback. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this trope. Let’s get rid of it once and for all.
