The Wizard (film)
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| The Wizard | |
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 DVD case for The Wizard. |
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| Directed by | Todd Holland |
| Produced by | David Chisholm Ken Topolsky |
| Written by | David Chisholm |
| Starring | Fred Savage Christian Slater Beau Bridges Jenny Lewis Will Seltzer Frank McRae |
| Music by | J. Peter Robinson |
| Cinematography | Robert D. Yeoman |
| Editing by | Tom Finan |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1989-12-15 (USA) |
| Running time | 100 min. |
| Language | English |
| Gross profits | $14,278,900 (USA) |
| IMDb profile | |
The Wizard is a 1989 movie about a boy (Fred Savage) and his emotionally disturbed brother (Luke Edwards) who run away from their Utah home to go to California. Along the way they meet a girl named Haley (Jenny Lewis) who convinces them to compete in the ultimate video game championship.
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[edit] Plot
Corey (Savage) lives with his father Sam Woods (Bridges) and his older brother Nick (Slater). Corey's younger half brother, Jimmy (Luke Edwards), lives with his mother and her new husband. After witnessing the tragic drowning of his twin sister, Jimmy developed some sort of traumatic condition which limits his speech. Jimmy's stepfather has become frustrated with his treatment and decides to put him in a care facility, to which Jimmy's mother reluctantly agrees. Corey then decides to run away with Jimmy, and they set off for California with very little money and no idea how to get there.
Along the way, they meet Haley (played by Jenny Lewis), another runaway, and discover that Jimmy has an incredible talent for video games when he scores 50,000 points at Double Dragon. Together, Corey, Jimmy, and Haley hitchhike to California for a video game tournament to prove that Jimmy doesn't belong in a home. Meanwhile, they are being pursued by Putnam, a bounty hunter hired to retrieve Jimmy, with the rest of the family not far behind him. They also have an encounter with Lucas Barton, who owns every NES game, plus the Power Glove. Lucas is perhaps most remembered for his classic line "I love the Power Glove...it's so bad." After a stop in Reno to gather the money to enter, the three finally reach California. Jimmy enters the tournament, and manages to beat Lucas in the (yet unreleased in the U.S.) game Super Mario Bros. 3.
The movie features footage from many classic Nintendo Entertainment System games, but this footage contains many factual errors. It also features a "preview" of sorts for Super Mario Bros. 3, which was to be released the following year. Though often critically panned as a "90-minute video game commercial", it remains popular among video game fans, primarily for its value as camp.
Universal Studios released The Wizard on widescreen DVD on 2006-08-22. The film has been available on DVD in Germany since 2001-03-01, albeit with a pan-and-scan presentation.
[edit] Trivia
- In Germany, this movie was retitled Joystick Heroes.
- The most prominent game featured in the movie, Super Mario Bros. 3, went on to become the best-selling video game not packaged with a console [1]. Many of the other games featured in the movie were also major successes. The Power Glove, however, failed to catch on.
- Several of the games featured were played as standalone arcade machines, and one (Ninja Gaiden) was a cocktail cabinet. NES games did not appear in these formats, although Ninja Gaiden and Double Dragon were popular arcade games before being ported to the NES (the games shown were the NES versions), and all of the games played by Jimmy were available in the arcades through the PlayChoice 10 system.
- The concept of a child who was cut off from the world except through games was also used in The Who's rock opera Tommy. The child in Tommy was deaf, dumb and blind to the world around him—but somehow possessed an almost supernatural talent for pinball, similar to the talent which Jimmy demonstrates for NES games. The title of the film is also similar to the rock opera's most famous song, "Pinball Wizard".
- While hyped as a "brand new game", Super Mario Bros. 3 had already been released in Japan a full year prior to this film's release.
- Tobey Maguire has an uncredited role as one of Lucas's friends(pic).
[edit] Video game related errors
Fans of the Nintendo Entertainment System are quick to point out that there are numerous errors within the movie involving the console and its games. Some examples:
- In the scene where Haley challenged Jimmy at Double Dragon, Jimmy has just scored over 50,000 points. However, when Haley finishes, she has just set the new high score on the same machine at just over 25,000 points.
- In one scene, Haley marvels at Jimmy's skill as he plays Ninja Gaiden, commenting on how he had played through the game twice and not taken a hit. However, his life bar shows some health missing, indicating he has taken at least one hit.
- At one point, Sam is playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link when his game is interrupted by his son Nick. He claims he just reached the Sixth Palace. However, when Nick unplugs the NES, a shot of the TV screen is shown before it goes blank, showing him in a town.
- When Jimmy's turn in the preliminary round of Video Armageddon is completed, he walks away from the game he's playing, but the game continues to play on its own. In addition, all of the monitors are showing the exact same actions. This shows the actors were not playing the games themselves, but most likely all the TVs were hooked up to a VCR running a playback.
- When the final round to Video Armageddon begins, the three finalists' scores - each of them represented on a television monitor by lightning bolt-riding knights - begin going up immediately. In addition, several things that cause a gain or loss in score in the competition (losing or gaining a life, or finding a warp whistle) do not cause a gain or loss of score in Super Mario Bros. 3. This may not be an error, as the tournament may be using an alternate scoring method.
- Also during the final round, when the announcer declares that each player is entering World 2, they are actually still in World 1 (entering stage 1-3). The players apparently skip over stage 1-2.
- Roger Ebert has pointed out that, during one scene, Sam announces he has reached the third level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when the screen clearly shows the first level[1]. This is not an error, however. Sam stated that he had almost defeated the boss of the third level (Mechaturtle), and it was very likely he was starting over.
