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Fark.com1. Toys (1992)
The film: A surreal horrorshow in which ludicrous man-child Robin Williams has to stop his evil-general uncle from weaponizing a terrifyingly whimsical toy factory.
The game: A rapid-fire stream of swooping aerial shots combined with explosions, big holographic guns and lurid kill markers. Actually, we kind of wish this had been the Toys cash-in licensed game, because frankly it looks awesome.
The scene: Leslie Zevo (Williams) sneaks into his uncle's "restricted" wing of the factory to discover that he's training children to be killers using (gasp!) videogames. Only they're literally killing people, as the "games" are really just remote-control consoles for heavily armed combat drones. We've also tacked on another typical "characters go nuts staring at videogames" scene, this time with Williams and crew screaming and leaning in unison while wearing virtual-reality helmets.
Why it's stupid: This is some seriously ham-fisted anti-game demagoguery right here. Like Inside Man, the scene's real target is probably something else - in this case, the way the military-industrial complex co-opts playtime with war toys, which also seems to be central to the film's clumsy message - but it's not doing gaming any favors, either. From the glazed stares to the animal snarls to the casual attitude toward human targets being worth 1,000 points, this scene is meticulously engineered to feed parents' fears that videogames turn children into soulless monsters. And then there's the creepy way Williams waddles around pretending to be a kid. It's enough to make your skin crawl.
