Secret Level Review Prime Video: An Ode to Video Games That Could Have Dared More?
Secret Level Review Prime Video: Since the announcement, Secret Level has intrigued millions of fans around the world for several reasons. First, it would have been an animated anthological series for First Video. The second is because he would have treated several IPs of some of the most famous video games in circulation, from Pac-Man a Dungeons & Dragons. The third (and last) reason? From the beginning, the series was strongly desired by Tim Miller. The director of Deadpool (2016) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) in recent years an important name in the cinematographic field, mainly for having brought the Mercenary Chiacchierone of Ryan Reynolds in 2016 and for creating an anthological series that revolutionized the world of television: Love, Death & Robots. The Netflix series, on its release in 2019, had displaced spectators from all over the world to propose, for the first time in an animated version, deep and original short films that deepened visions of future and dystopian worlds. As a result, the union of all these factors led fans of the original works to have some expectations (as well as high expectations) on the release of Secret Level. Curious to know if Tim Miller managed to make the bang again.
That the Amazon Prime Video Secret Level project would have been one of those capable of generating hype, was clear from his first appearance, on the occasion of this year’s Gamescom opening ceremony. The perspective of a TV series animated by the anthological structure dedicated to some of the most famous and loved intellectual properties in the world of video games, moreover curated by the same team that gave birth to the splendid Love, Death & Robots (one of the most fascinating products in the entire catalog of the Netflix streaming platform), it is as unexpected as it is tempting. Moreover, the main exponents of our favorite medium who grant the rights to use their flagship franchises to a film production company to create a series of small stories without a common theme is not exactly something that is seen every day. In the past few weeks, amid the spread of new evocative trailers of Secret Level, confirmations on the list of titles, and even important announcements from the point of view of the dubbing cast, we had the opportunity to take a preview look at the episodes that make up this original collection of videogame-themed short films and we are ready to share our impressions with you.
Secret Level Review Prime Video: The Story Plot
You have already understood this: as an anthological series, Secret Level does not have a unique plot that crosses the stakes. Each episode makes history in itself. And these are mini tales with such a tight and frenetic rhythm that it would be really difficult to summarize the various waves. Moreover, given that we are talking about a production based on some of the most famous videogame sagas ever, the topic of each episode is practically already “explained” by the title of the video game from which it starts. From Dungeons & Dragons to Mega Man, from Armored Core to Spelunky, from Unreal Tournament to Warhammer 40,000 via Pac-Man, the world of PlayStation gaming icons and the bankruptcy Concord. Amid all this florilege, even for the less hardened of gamers or gamers, there will certainly be a name that recalls something. As an added value, we also find a cast of recall made up of famous names such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Gabriel Luna, and Keanu Reeves.
Stars that are sometimes present more than anything else in terms of dubbing, but which in other cases, such as that of Keanu Reeves, are also visible with their features. The anthological series, yes, is distinguished by its episodic nature: each episode represents an autonomous story with vertical narration. Secret Level follows this formula, proposing episodes that range between genres and atmospheres, from fantasy to science fiction, from action to horror, offering a celebration of the variety of the videogame medium. Among the universes represented, we find Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40K, Unreal Tournament, and even a surprising and disturbing interpretation of Pac-Man. Everything was under the guidance of Tim Miller, who selected and chose personally the universes to visit and entrusted each of them to a different working group full of voices and points of view different.
Each episode reflects the spirit of the reference game, thanks to the team’s ability by Miller to adapt to the specificities of each IP. However, this variety is sometimes limited by too simple narratives and sometimes repetitive, in case you choose to use it in the binge-watching series. The short duration of the episodes (between 10 and 30 minutes) does not always allow you to develop complex plots, and many episodes simply explore a central idea without going beyond. However, this dramaturgical deficiency often comes balanced by a further technical effort that enriches the episode and makes it an unparalleled visual experience. The perfect example is the segment dedicated to Sifu: the short story follows the original game, without adding new perspectives, but visually presents breathtaking animations and a refined direction that envies most of the action in circulation.
Secret Level Review and Analysis
The Spirit of Gaming
For years there has been speculation about the possibility of bringing certain gaming authors to cinema or TV: Hideo Kojima (author of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding) is perhaps one of the few to have had this ambition since the beginning of his career, but in recent times it is certainly not the only one. The gaming market, as well as the role-playing market, has achieved enviable economic goals – the reason that prompted Sony, Nintendo, and Hasbro to strongly focus on the transpositions of their most famous IPs. The 15 choices of Secret Level do not necessarily point to the most high-sounding names, but to those works that have been able to build entire universes – and therefore allow anyone who approaches them to shape their stories according to precise stylistic or thematic dictates.
Miller has given voice to extremely different worlds, united by the desire to emerge in all their splendor. The result is an anthology that certainly speaks to all fans, but which makes variety its main weapon to attract even an audience of laymen: Secret Level is a very pure show that entertains at a fast pace, showing the future of great 3D animation and the heart behind every little detail. A receptacle of different themes and tones, alternating between fantasy and science fiction, which courageously face truly unique perspectives and languages – from extremely faithful reproductions to completely crazy reinterpretations.
More Heart Than Soul?
Contentistically speaking, it is not difficult to imagine certain episodes such as the dream of many fandoms, both for what you see and for what you can guess. This disruptive show, however, struggles to find true expressive completeness: when the sense of initial wonder fails and we focus on the value of the individual stories, the idyll risks breaking already after the first few bars. No episode exceeds a quarter of an hour: the ideas are all intriguing, but most of the ideas are held back by a short duration or by obvious production interferences – some choices dampen any kind of enthusiasm in a show on the edge of the most bitter fan service.
With bright peaks, capable of making the relationship between man and machine diegetic and of facing complex discourses on life, destiny, or free will, episodes-showcase alternate whose only plausible purpose is directly connected to marketing needs or to inflate certain ratings of liking. Luckily, in most cases, the show is also supported by a message: when ideas manage to adapt to the space available, Secret Level is capable of creating small pearls of rare beauty. The crazy reinterpretation of Pac-Man, the nice New World-themed story, and a Keanu Reeves rarely so inspired would already deserve their own standalone.
Reflections on the future?
Considering Tim Miller’s enthusiasm for the project, it was reasonable to expect a product driven by a truly engaging passion. Except maybe a couple of cases, every Secret Level story wants to show off and prove that you can do it even in the chaotic world of the small screen. A calculated risk, both in yield and in final ambitions. When climbing on the swing of this series it doesn’t matter too much if the momentum proves less successful than the previous one: there is always the hope that the next spark will cause a big surprise. The Secret Level name is not at all random: every experiment (a little as a level) always hides something new, at least different. As in the best of the games, not everything succeeds as it should, but being able to count on genuinely inspired minds (or rather, on a team that loves the reference material) makes all the difference in the world. Care and entertainment will emerge, perhaps with less charm than expected, but with a great show that exploits the sweetest nostalgia to shed light on thousands of possible futures. The ideal appetizer for something immensely bigger.
For the uninitiated, the anthological TV series are characterized by a fundamental peculiarity: the episodes are unrelated to each other and have a vertical narrative, sometimes united by a recurring leitmotiv but free of visible connections in terms of settings, plot, or characters. Secret Level is no exception. Each of the fifteen short stories that make up the mosaic of this first season represents a watertight microcosm, conceived based on as many brands from the decades of history of the video game industry. At the helm of this unprecedented operation, as we mentioned at the opening, we find Blur Studio, the Californian collective founded by Tim Miller (former director of the first two adaptations of Deadpool and the last chapter of the Terminator saga) who in the past collaborated with many of the greatest exponents of the triple-A development scene by packaging cutscenes, trailers and videos of various kinds.
A respectable curriculum, therefore, embellished by the aforementioned incursion in television serials thanks to the splendid Love, Death & Robots, a similar program in the concept but, as we will discover, profoundly different from an executive point of view (here you find our review by Love, Death & Robots Season 3). As for the scripts, the production philosophy and the marked pluralism of IP involved in the Secret Level have given the Miller team some expressive freedom in terms of subjects, atmospheres, and topics covered. For this reason, we pass seamlessly from the dark fantasy settings of the episode linked to the universe of Dungeons & Dragons to those from the military-style techno-thriller of Crossfire, from the action to the fluticasone of Unreal Tournament science fiction from cyberpunk veins Armored Core. The icing on the cake is certainly the inclusion of some special content such as the one dedicated to Pac-Man or the franchises of PlayStation Studios (among which the last cycle of God of War stands out) that vigorously detach themselves from the classical imagination to deliver into the hands of fans a sort of alternative vision of these fantastic worlds, observed through the very personal artistic lens of Blur Studio.
It must be said, however, that in principle the US collective didn’t tread its hand too much in creating complex narrative warps: the vast majority of the episodes, also thanks to the relatively short duration (the length of the episodes varies between ten and thirty minutes), limits itself to exploring simple concepts avoiding lingering in particular food for thought or brilliant narrative subtexts. And it is a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially considering the excellent communication skills manifested by some of the best iterations of Love, Death & Robots. This does not mean, however, that Secret Level is somewhat tedious, far from it: almost all the pieces of the puzzle designed for the Prime Video series appear pleasant to follow and edible even to those who do not have a thorough knowledge of the reference material, provided, of course, to digest the small bottles of narrative vertical typical of TV series structured in this way.
To give some examples, without ruining the taste of discovery, the Warhammer 40K segment focuses on a particularly dangerous mission in which we find the Chapter of the Ultramarines of the young Demetrian Titus (the same protagonist of the two Warhammer 40K: Space Marine by Saber Interactive); that of Unreal Tournament it is a sort of history of origins of the cybernetic warrior Xan Krieger, one of the participants in the lethal tournament imagined by the famous Epic Games; that of Sifu follows the same concept of the game: a spiral of blood and revenge in which the hero has to face a following of tremendous melee duels that will have evident repercussions on his psychophysical condition. Everything flows smoothly like oil and lets itself be looked at serenely but, we don’t hide it from you, we would have liked a little more courage in drafting slightly more complex plots or at least incorrectly exploiting the articulated mythologies that act as a pillar to most of these narrative universes. Miller’s study likely had to submit to specific dictates promulgated by rights holders who did not allow them to express all their explosive creativity. There are, as we said, some exceptions to this rule, among which it stands out the splendid horror-colored digression (!) on the genesis of Pac-Man which declines the recognizable iconography of this legend of the videogame Olympus according to an original stylistic code and is capable of leaving its mark.
It is only unfortunate to note that it is (almost) a unicum in the context of Blur Studio’s productive effort that would have had all the credentials to amaze even with all the other intellectual properties that participated in the project but that instead, whatever the reason, he had to play a decidedly more conservative game. Even the choice of the sagas included in the package is frankly difficult to explain and speaks volumes about the probable pressures exerted by the publishers asked: alongside authentic giants such as D&D, Warhammer 40K and Mega-Manthe indie phenomenon also finds space Spelunky (protagonist of a delicious short film) but also titles that needed promotion such as Amazon Gaming’s MMO New World: Aeternum; The Outer Worlds by Obsidian who is about to welcome his second numbered incarnation and even the hero shooter of Firewalk Concord, recently canceled following the disastrous sales numbers and sentenced to damnatio memoriae definitively by PlayStation Studios. Summing up, we can say that the first season of Secret Level suffers from ups and downs: on the one hand, we find an assortment of pleasant scripts, seasoned by the undeniable charm of the treated worlds but on the other there is an excessive linearity in writing that does not allow the Prime Video product to make the leap in quality that it would have deserved.
The Tenth Art?
On closer inspection, the same observations that we made to the narrative part of Secret Level can also be extended to the technical aspect set by Tim Miller’s company. Despite the excellent work done on their previous creature, with episodes characterized by different directorial systems and animation styles, Blur Studio does not seem to have infused the same inventiveness even in this new work which, on the contrary, seems significantly more traditional. Where the different editions of Love, Death & Robots were created using a wide range of tools that ranged from “simple” three-dimensional computer graphics to 2D animation, sometimes also passing through stop-motion and other miniaturization techniques, almost all the shorts included in the first season of Secret Level were developed using the typical in-engine CGI techniques which can also be found in high-budget video games that populate the modern market. The result? A large slice of stakes gives the impression of being a little more than extended promotional trailers, rather than the result of careful planning by the team responsible.
Mind you, the qualitative average appears somewhat high, with some situations that touch the proverbial photorealism, but we would have preferred to find some of that eclecticism and audacity that had made Blur’s previous anthological serial great. We certainly did not expect the exceptional feats of the SpiderVerse films or the latest Ninja Turtles (which would probably have required an even higher budget) but, given the past, it would have been reasonable to expect a dose of extra courage that could have raised the project to higher levels of excellence. As proof of the validity of this speech, we refer to the episodes of Pac-Man, Spelunky, and Sifu which were painted using a specific stylistic code that mixes handcrafted drawings and animation in computer graphics, more or less (with due proportions) as happens in the series Arcane: League of Legends by Fortiche Production, with truly enchanting results. For the rest, we feel compelled to applaud the direction, capable of emphasizing the spectacularity of the most exciting moments, and the fighting choreography, all incredibly fluid and engaging.
What about acting performances? We saw Secret Level in the original language and we appreciated the contribution offered by an all-stars cast borrowed from great Hollywood productions: between convincing actor tests such as that of Claudia Doumit and Ricky Whittle on Crossfire; those of Gabriel Luna and the stainless Arnold Schwarzenegger in the dubbing of New World and that of Keanu Reeves struggling with the dark sci-fi of the franchise Armored Core by From Software, the Blur Studio team did things big. Other big names involved include Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Temuera Morrison, Michael Beach, and Laura Bailey but we let you find out for yourself what stories they lent their voices to. If we had to make a note, from a technical point of view, we would indicate some uncertainty in the audio mix which tends to favor environmental sounds over the volume of speech making it a little difficult to follow some passages. Nothing too debilitating, however.
From Pixels to Prime Videos
Considering Secret Level a mere exercise in graphic talent would be an injustice, let’s be clear, despite the variety of techniques used, always well used to give maximum charisma to the portrayed worlds. If on the one hand, it is undeniable that the first impact is based on what we see on the screen, a demonstration of how the experience gained with Love, Death and Robots has been put to good use, one cannot help but recognize that the episodes that enclose this anthology are written by expert and competent hands, not only of the games mentioned but also in terms of building narrative times and creating pathos, tickling the curiosity of the spectator’s thanks to an enviable narrative variety. Secret Level does not remain tied to a single narrative identity, but relies on different settings, thus being able to rely on different emotional keys. From epic to irony, passing through action, the natures of paid games become the emotional root of these animated excellences, managing to seize the favor of both the players and those who approach to enjoy an amazing, animated experience.
Especially in the latter respect, Secret Level stands as a point of reference, exactly as it was before Love, Death, and Robots. The moment I up Netflix another animated product derived from a famous video game dominates the scene, arcane, Tim Miller’s new adventure shows that not only the world of pixels is increasingly devoted to a high-profile narrative, but that this vis can be declined in other media, provided, of course, not to enslave the medium to an easy game of citations and fan service. Miller and Blur Studios have made an anthology based on history and setting, in which to experiment with an adventure end in itself and not as a sterile reiteration of game experiences meanly adapted to the serial context. A perfect opportunity also to make fun of some trends in the gaming world, a wink at gamers. The vision of what is hoped to be only the first season has been completed Secret Level, the feeling is to have witnessed one of the best dissemination operations of the videogame context, while acknowledging that some episodes show excessive lightness in terms of inclusiveness for those who do not know the inspiring title. Fortunately, this is a fleeting sensation compared to the chirality of the proposed adventures, giving the spectators of Prime Video one of the best-animated experiences of recent years.
Secret Level Review: The Last Words
Secret Level does not remain tied to a single narrative identity, but relies on different settings, thus being able to rely on different emotional keys. From epic to irony, passing through action, the natures of paid games become the emotional root of these animated excellences. All things considered, the first edition of Secret Level can be considered a success for Blur Studio it has been able to adequately encapsulate the colorful inspirations of the original material by setting them in a frame with remarkable production values: with some additional shrewdness from an artistic and narrative point of view, the Prime Video series could have expressed its full potential which, on the other hand, remains somewhat trapped in the cage of conservatism. Secret Level is a sight for the eyes, a dream that breaks down the boundaries of the media and enters the mainstream from the main door. A work born from an overwhelming and chaotic passion, which fascinates with its ideas but often leaves something to be desired with the scope of its stories. To emerge is a basin of great ideas, although not all apt, which demonstrates a narrative and stylistic potential that is simply indescribable.
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, Kevin Hart, Heaven Hart, Temuera Morrison, Ariana Greenblatt, Claudia Doumit, Ricky Whittle, Gabriel Luna, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Merle Dandridge, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Elodie Yung, Emily Swallow, Brenock O’Connor, Raffey Cassidy, Leah Harvey, Clive Standen, Gideon Emery, Michael Beach, Steven Pacey, Lily Cowles Studio
Streaming Platform: Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
Secret Level Review Prime Video: An Ode to Video Games That Could Have Dared More? - Filmyhype
Date Created: 2024-12-10 19:49
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