By John Walker on December 22nd, 2011 at 11:02 am.
Dear me, I wasn’t paying attention yesterday. Remember that we told you about the excellent trailer for a Left 4 Dead fan-made film, that to my eyes at least look Hollywood scale? The full 10 minute version is now there for you to see. And by “there”, I mean, “just below these words”. It really is remarkably good.
So I guess they didn’t know anyone who looked like Bill.
Okay, I admit, I wasn’t expecting it to go in that direction.
22/12/2011 at 11:13 JagRoss says:
It could have been so good.
22/12/2011 at 11:45 povu says:
I still can’t believe they did that. The beginning was great, the characters looked and kinda sounded like the game characters, the atmosphere was good… Then they completely ruined it with… That.
I hoped that it would be a quick whacky joke and that *he* would run off again, but it only got worse from that point onwards.
I was excited when the teaser came out, now I feel sad. :/
22/12/2011 at 11:50 rocketman71 says:
Nice beginning, great production for a fan film.. until it degenerated into console fanboy wet dreams.
22/12/2011 at 12:53 HexagonalBolts says:
Master Chief… From Halo… In Left 4 Dead… was…….. are they trolling?
22/12/2011 at 12:53 Sarigs says:
Aye was wondering what would happen at the 6 minute mark from everyone’s comments and…..ugggh.
Complete agree with everyone else here, starts off brilliant, well judged, good mood and effects and then just descends into complete farce.
Utter waste
22/12/2011 at 14:38 Zelius says:
I have to say, though, the production values were pretty damn good. If only they hadn’t wasted it.
22/12/2011 at 19:58 spice_rack says:
Here’s my issue… if they knew from the start that they were going to go that fanboy route, then they half-assed it.
Go big or go home. There should have been a lot more characters, or at the very least, they should have given the characters more opportunities to show off what they can do.
22/12/2011 at 20:22 gamma says:
This is a utterly uncalled for Deus EX machination.
23/12/2011 at 05:29 Jackablade says:
If they’d had JC Denton or Adam Jensen turn up too they could have at least made a good visual pun.
22/12/2011 at 11:13 lordcooper says:
Watch out, Slenderman is right behind you.
22/12/2011 at 11:14 Memph says:
Bill is deaded remember.
Good stuff until 6 mins in…and then, well, what the fudge? is all i can say.
22/12/2011 at 14:00 SquareWheel says:
Bill… died?
22/12/2011 at 15:08 Hoaxfish says:
No, Bill just went to get some new armour, which obviously he can’t wear at the same time as his hat.
22/12/2011 at 11:17 Innovacious says:
Yeah, friend showed me this yesterday.
him: “remember when we were excited about this?”
me: “why ‘were’? it seems ok to m- OH DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE THEY DONE”
him: “a..”
me: “NO”
him: “i..”
me: “NO”
him: “but..”
me: “NO”
22/12/2011 at 11:21 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
Can’t be viewed in germany, because.
22/12/2011 at 11:48 StranaMente says:
That’s better this way, trust me. You don’t want to see what they did.
22/12/2011 at 12:42 Baka says:
GEEEEEEEEEEMAAAAAAAA
*falls on knees*
22/12/2011 at 17:49 aserraric says:
It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this: http://www.ibvpn.com
It’s still an annoyance, since you don’t really want to be on VPN all the time, but at least you can see the stuff everyone else is talking about.
22/12/2011 at 11:27 AndrewC says:
I…oh…oh…
OK, not for me, thanks.
22/12/2011 at 11:29 Branthog says:
A bit good? You’re kididng, right? The only part that is any good is the trailer content, which conveyed something entirely different than the ridiculous actual thing they actually gave us. I remember people responding to the trailer with comments that it seemed like a high quality and mature take on the franchise that was really going to set a new bar. What we got was a nine minute video that – while shot well – looked like it was created by a twelve year old boy in 1992.
22/12/2011 at 14:58 Persona says:
Yeah, I’m wondering if Walker watched a different video. Because there’s nothing good about this ridiculous piece of shit.
Whoever was responsible for this fan film would fit right into Kojima Productions.
22/12/2011 at 18:27 MajorManiac says:
I guess John meant some bits are good.
22/12/2011 at 11:31 Agricola says:
If they just wanted to bring game characters to the screen they should have dropped the whole L4D premise and just make a film based on a fighting tournament….
Oh dear.
22/12/2011 at 11:33 CMaster says:
Lol wut.
Well, I guess that sort of thing is to be expected of fan work, rather than original film.
22/12/2011 at 11:35 iaguz says:
Huh?
22/12/2011 at 11:35 JayTee says:
I was half expecting to see Mario headstop a zombie before exclaiming “It’sa me Mario!”
That was awful :(
22/12/2011 at 16:07 Shuck says:
Only the head-stomping appearance of Mario could have saved that video…
22/12/2011 at 17:18 Kostaja says:
Weird thats excatly what I was thinking
Left4cosplay.
22/12/2011 at 11:43 RobF says:
Aaaah, that was ace!
Made this morning start with a smile.
22/12/2011 at 13:25 max pain says:
Agree, that was actually worth watching for a laugh, in contrast to other all serioused up fan-made films. Wonderful trolling, I want more of that.
23/12/2011 at 09:36 DigitalSignalX says:
Ya, I was fine with the insertion of humor. They even cut a black frame with the word “OWNED” in after killing the heavy.
23/12/2011 at 22:18 moondog548 says:
Hell yes. Expertly filmed troll/homage is VASTLY superior to expertly filmed aping played for pretention. :D
22/12/2011 at 11:45 Navagon says:
Well I liked it anyway. It’s a bit of silly fun which these things should be, really.
22/12/2011 at 11:45 Greg Wild says:
Laugh or cry? YOU DECIDE!
22/12/2011 at 11:53 Drake Sigar says:
The script appears to have been written by an eight year old. And not in a good way.
22/12/2011 at 12:13 povu says:
Do you have any examples of a script written by an 8 year old done in a good way?
22/12/2011 at 12:22 Navagon says:
http://axecop.com/index.php/acepisodes/read/episode_0/
Five year old. But I guess that close enough.
22/12/2011 at 17:40 tailzdru says:
My… Lord…
what is this… i dont even
This has to be the single greatest thing ive read all year!
22/12/2011 at 11:58 mondomau says:
Masterful trolling.
Or just really bad film making.
22/12/2011 at 15:09 Hoaxfish says:
well, they’d certainly shifted gears by the end.
22/12/2011 at 20:05 mondomau says:
Ooo. You rotten son’bitch.
22/12/2011 at 12:04 Skusey says:
Halfway through I was about to get annoyed that it seemed to be set after Bill’s death but somehow they didn’t realise what the Witch was, but that complaint seems a bit minor now. At least the trailer was good.
22/12/2011 at 12:06 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
I don’t see why they bothered with all that buildup just to end like that.
22/12/2011 at 12:08 Waricck says:
For those of you who couldn’t view the video, I’ll summarise it for you. It was all jolly L4D until suddenly Master Chief decided to make an appearance at 6:00.
22/12/2011 at 12:10 Red_Avatar says:
Ah yes, why not introduce characters from grossly overrated console games (GoW & Halo) to ruin it all *facepalms*
22/12/2011 at 12:10 Gwynor says:
They screwed everything up, but in a very professional way.
22/12/2011 at 12:13 MadTinkerer says:
Hey, don’t forget the Xbox L4D fans outnumber the PC ones. Once I was over the shock of “Master Chief? Really!?!“, I got into it. The main disappointment is that at the end of the climax they didn’t have any dialogue explaining whether it was a dream sequence or a cross-dimensional thing or if the other characters were actually just cosplaying Survivors in the L4D universe or what.
Also, it would have been more appropriate for Gordon Freeman and/or other Valve characters, or at least characters from other modern zombie survival games to be the surprise twist.
But it was an interesting attempt despite the vagueness.
22/12/2011 at 12:39 Anders Wrist says:
No possible explanation could have saved it at that point.
15/01/2012 at 15:34 Matt says:
Camera zooms out and reveals it’s all taking place inside an Xbox 360
22/12/2011 at 12:21 I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says:
That’s what happens when you let gamers make movies. I’m surprised there were no Aliens or Predators in sight.
22/12/2011 at 12:22 ntw says:
What
the
FUCK?
22/12/2011 at 12:37 mbp says:
Another vote for shoot the scriptwriter for the stupid ending.
Apart from that though the film making is superb.
22/12/2011 at 12:38 Anders Wrist says:
Yeah.. No.
22/12/2011 at 12:38 LuNatic says:
Disappointed not to see a TF2 spy wearing a troll-face mask.
22/12/2011 at 12:52 Oozo says:
And where is Michael? To Michael!
23/12/2011 at 03:25 Talon says:
That ad is something I think is genius. This one…not so much.
22/12/2011 at 12:58 Teddy Leach says:
OK then.
22/12/2011 at 13:02 Burglar says:
Very successfully subverted viewers expectations I think!
I thought it was a good laugh and well made short. The filmmakers’ lack of taste in games doesn’t detract from that.
Definitely interesting the way it shifted gears half way through, and I think people are being a bit closed minded to experimentation here.
Watching the ‘making of’ however I always have little sympathy for people who describe their productions as “extremely low budget”, when they must be close to using a hundred thousand dollars worth, if not more, of camera equipment, even if it’s technically true.
22/12/2011 at 13:27 yhancik says:
With a title like that, what I expected was a surprise appearance of Groove Champion and Taurus
22/12/2011 at 18:30 greenbananas says:
Exactly. It wouldn’t necessarily have saved the movie but at least it’d a given it a good goddamn soundtrack.
22/12/2011 at 13:47 applecup says:
What the hell did I just watch.
A++ trolling, I guess?
eta: Thinking about it, wasn’t Impulse 76 the HL1 cheat to add allies? So, uh. That might explain a little?
22/12/2011 at 15:14 Davee says:
I think you may be right and it would surely explain a lot.
But why would allies be from console games (HL1 being foremost a PC release) and not even a single Valve-game character other than the thee to start with? Unless… They still be trollin’!
22/12/2011 at 13:47 zeroskill says:
This was a bit good until that weird guy in the metal suit showed up.
22/12/2011 at 14:09 Wisher says:
I, uhm… What the HECK!?
It seems like the director was going the right way but then he took an arrow to the knee…
22/12/2011 at 14:16 Flappybat says:
Halfway through they remembered there is a universal law that all fan films must be bad.
22/12/2011 at 19:41 Davie says:
I can refute that point at least once.
23/12/2011 at 03:27 Talon says:
I’d like to refute it as well.
22/12/2011 at 14:24 Stupoider says:
The biggest problem was that the Infected aren’t supposed to eat flesh- I think that tells you a lot about me.
22/12/2011 at 14:26 BrendanJB says:
Production, characters and costumes were all brilliant, I’ll give them that.
But yeah, after 6 minutes it goes full retard.
22/12/2011 at 14:38 Avaenuha says:
Ugh. They broke their own rules, and they didn’t even do it properly.
You set up the rules of your story so the audience know what the stakes are – if the audience doesn’t know where the limits are (ie, Lewis can’t call down an airstrike, Zoey doesn’t have magical powers) they can’t invest in the story or characters and there’s no tension because anything could happen to get the characters out of the jam. This is film making 101 – establish the boundaries.
They were doing so well with the tension, and they did one little rule-break with MC, which they could have pulled off if he’d disappeared as a hilarious “what the?” moment. But then loading in all the other characters without letting the ‘world’ compensate with tougher baddies means all bets are off. No tension, no more characterisation (notice how L, Z and F barely even react to the newcomers?) it’s just a mess of stuff happening. There’s no danger to characters anymore, so it loses all the drama, tension and point of the first half of the movie. I’ve nothing against the concept of “set it up as big serious l4d thing and then whack in all these characters out of nowhere” – they just executed it poorly.
If they wanted to troll by bringing in those characters, they should have balanced it by bringing in some badass enemy from other franchises as well – keep the tension going, make the ‘anything goes’ go both ways so the audience still cares – make it a big, dramatic finale where there’s real danger and stakes. Otherwise your audience just sits there going “uh, okay, now it’s just stupid. I’m bored now.”
22/12/2011 at 14:57 Stupoider says:
Haha, fan-film critics are hilarious.
Are we really trying to make sense of this flick?
22/12/2011 at 17:13 theleif says:
Well, he is right. If the build up where on both sides, it would (in a weird way) have made sense.
22/12/2011 at 14:49 HilariousCow says:
“Hey, we’re filming a left 4 dead fan movie, and we need another actor… could you play bill?”
“HAHAHA NO BILL IS AN OLD MAN LOL WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE AN OLD FART”
“Ah, well… I guess you could be a zombie?”
“NO I WANT TO BE THE HERO”
“Err… okay, but, you do understand what we’re trying to do here?”
“MY FRIEND DANNY CAN BE IN IT TOO YEAH?”
FFFfffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu
22/12/2011 at 19:39 Davie says:
I’m assuming it’s all somehow Airsoft GI’s fault.
22/12/2011 at 15:02 skyturnedred says:
I would’ve accepted someone from Resident Evil or another zombie game to make an appearance. But this is just stupid. And not in the haha-silly kinda way.
At least we still got Nuka Break.
23/12/2011 at 06:09 Jackablade says:
Ok the -real- ending (ie the one in my imagination) is as follows.
Lewis is being mauled by the Witch. Zoey and Francis are distracted be oncoming infected. Lewis reaches for his gun but it’s too far away. Suddenly there’s a flash of light. The Witch looks up and growls – Witches don’t like bright light. She’s struck in the head with a baseball bat with nails hammered through it by an off screen assailant, killing her. Cut to Lewis’s perspective. We get a worms eye perspective of a pair of blood spattered boat shoes, tilting up to reveal a man with an SLR camera hanging around his neck. It’s Frank West.
*insert pithy dialogue here*
Lewis is too badly injured to walk so Frank picks him up and carrys him, ALA Dead Rising, taking a moment to get an upskirt photo of the witch. The four of them battle their way to the safe room.
*more talky-ness here*
Frank leaves the three Survivors, heading off into the city, taking photos as he goes. You can see the flashes of the camera reflecting off the architecture for a while after he’s gone from screen.
And end.
So there we go. Possibly terrible, but I think -less- terrible.
He helps Lewis to his feet then takes an upskirt picture of the Witch. You can see the flashes of his camera for a while after he’s gone.
22/12/2011 at 15:11 deadly.by.design says:
NO! After watching this, I refuse to like it.
22/12/2011 at 15:26 Leg O'Brick says:
I was digging the master chief nod. But them they took it WAAAAAAAAY too far. Ruined a very well filmed short film.
22/12/2011 at 16:40 mire says:
So… troll? I was getting worried when they apparently experienced collective amnesia on the subject of Witches, but then… oh god… what the hell. I’m surprised Rick Astley didn’t make an appearance.
22/12/2011 at 17:31 wodin says:
I enjoyed it. Thought the twist was good to be honest.
A film about game, don’t see the problem.
22/12/2011 at 17:33 Roshin says:
No, just no.
It was quite good until Master Chief appeared. Then it was downhill with a bullet in the back. Technically it was okay, although the special infected (apart from the witch) looked like arse. What the hell were they thinking?
23/12/2011 at 10:46 RegisteredUser says:
Spoil much?
22/12/2011 at 17:37 menderslan says:
Just got so trolled.
It was so good up until THAT part.
Also, shouldn’t they all be terribly familiar with witches by this point? Why were they all “HURR DURR IT’S OK SWEETIE WE WON’T HURT YOU”?
22/12/2011 at 21:23 Text_Fish says:
Like.
22/12/2011 at 18:32 MajorManiac says:
Yeah, the part with the Witch was a bit annoying as they should have known better, but I quite liked it as a whole.
I think it could have been improved with the inclusion of Mario and a menagerie of bads, not just heroes.
22/12/2011 at 18:40 seruko says:
should have ended in a rick roll if they were gonna go that route.
22/12/2011 at 19:37 Davie says:
The weirdest thing about this is that I swear to god I saw an earlier trailer for this that was nothing but Bill getting ready to go out and shoot shit. It was very similar in tone to the pre-title sequence in this bizarre thing.
So unless there’s another excellent-looking L4D fan film in the works, they actually did find someone to play Bill, and then opted to kill him off before he ever actually showed up and replace him with every preteen boy’s power fantasies.
22/12/2011 at 20:22 mpk says:
…the fuck?
22/12/2011 at 21:16 piratmonkey says:
That was…unexpected? Costuming was quite pretty though.
22/12/2011 at 21:23 Text_Fish says:
Before I watched this I didn’t realise quite how gay those medpack backpacks look.
Also, WTF with all the console game characters? Gordon Freeman should’ve turned up at the last minute and lodged his crowbar in the tank’s head.
22/12/2011 at 21:32 DOLBYdigital says:
Wow that beginning was really quite something though… when they popped out and the slo-mo takedown, really top notch stuff… Not even going to talk about the horrible ending but yeah great first half :)
23/12/2011 at 00:15 Radiant says:
Somebody REALLY likes their xbox.
23/12/2011 at 07:09 Jikid says:
What exactly was good about it? I found it boring to watch due to unoriginal dialogue and story with the only originality in the video being the ending which felt like a deeply insecure person disliking playing the weak characters of l4d and toughening the human side into power-masturbatory overkill. Even the mighty tank who seems like an unbeatable monster for the regular man, humbled in front of the personifications of gamers.
But mistake not – save the “pretty” visuals, it was bad long before we even got to that.
23/12/2011 at 09:16 RogB says:
WHAT DID YOU DO
23/12/2011 at 09:40 chiroben says:
That was just like the movie Super 8.
23/12/2011 at 10:22 Chris D says:
Hmm. The problem is the secret of comedy is timing and this is a joke that took too long to get through the set up so by the time the punchline arrives your reaction isn’t “Well done you for subverting my expectations” but “Really? All this for that?”. Then we hang around awkwardly for the remaining third of the film.
8/10 for production values but I’m afraid I can’t go higher than 3 for scripting and overall concept.
23/12/2011 at 10:45 RegisteredUser says:
The first 5 minutes 50 are to the rest as The Matrix 1 is to 2+3.
Or: Best 5:50ish minutes of videogame tribute video I’ve seen in recent time!
23/12/2011 at 16:52 The13thRonin says:
Why? That is my only question…
If they had of painted the Mona Lisa would they have capped that off with a fake mustache and troll face too?
23/12/2011 at 18:29 elfbarf says:
Early on it seems as if that group of Infected is eating someone despite the fact that they aren’t supposed to be doing that (according to the games’ story). Yeah, they attack/kill people, but they don’t eat them afterwards.
The Green Flu is some sort of mutation of rabies, it doesn’t kill people and turn them into generic zombies.
23/12/2011 at 20:00 Bart Stewart says:
I had the same reaction as most when MC appeared. Suddenly what had been a promising and well-made story went cartoonish.
But as more game characters showed up, I started wondering: what if there really is a larger point being made here?
I don’t like L4D. I’ve played it, and I absolutely hate getting to the end of a level and being swarmed to death (more than once) no matter what I do. Maybe I’m supposed to take it metaphorically as a comment on real life being unwinnable; whatever.
So the idea that the only way to “win” a game filled with infinite zombies is to go equally unfair by bringing in the Justice League of gaming heroes. “So — this is what it would feel like to have a fighting chance in this wretched game,” I thought. “Cool.” That would have been very satisfying.
Except that the film then went absolutely nowhere with the idea. It could have been done, subverting the initial impression that the film had just turned into a “console gamer’s wet dream.” It should have been done. But no.
Never let engineers write code.
Never let gamers make movies.
No amount of money and enthusiasm can make a bad idea good.