The Wizard (1989)

(On TV, October 2020) As it happens, I was just about the right age to be fascinated by The Wizard when it came out… except that even then, I was a PC player rather than a console one. I distinctly recall the Nintendo-driven marketing push for The Wizard—the Power Glove, the reveal of Super Mario 3, the early glimpse at what would become the eSport scene… but somehow, perhaps fortunately, didn’t see the film until now. Which may have been for the best, considering the period feel that now distinctly lends some unplanned charm to The Wizard. The plot itself is a bizarre amalgamation between a video-game tournament entirely sponsored by Nintendo, and a teen road movie with some very dark undertones featuring runaway kids making their way across the continent for closure. Borrowing a page from the Tommy rock opera, our teen protagonists anoint themselves the guardians of a savant videogame player and decide to exploit his gaming skills by taking him to a tournament with a substantial cash prize. Following them are the worried sets of relatives (the genealogy of the characters is complex) and an unscrupulous bounty hunter. There’s more plot than expected here, although much of it does feel subservient to the demands of the film’s marketing-driven premise. A lot of it has aged, but the jury will stay out for a while as to whether it’s now dated or charmingly quaint. There are some sequences fit to make anyone cringe (I’m specifically thinking of the introduction of the !!POWER GLOVE!!), but there is some rather nostalgic value in seeing the characters react to now-classic gaming paraphernalia. It does add quite a bit to a story that, absent the videogame angle, would have been almost instantly forgettable. The film may have otherwise been only known as a minor early entry for Christian Slater and Beau Bridges. As it is now, it’s a bit of a time capsule for Nintendo’s glory days with the original NES—something that plays well to today’s 1980s nostalgia wave.