by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Hailee Steinfeld, Kevin Alejandro, Jason Spisak, Remy Hii [voices]
Intro:
… incredibly good, arguably in a class of its own both as a video game adaptation and as an animated work in general.
The curse of video game adaptations has slowly but surely been waning over the last few years. Like all filmic categories, the bad stuff is never truly gone (hi, Five Nights at Freddy’s), but after years of being associated with the likes of Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and the numerous hack jobs of Uwe Boll, audiences can realistically hope for quality from these properties. We have Edgerunners, The Last of Us, increasingly-good Sonic movies… and we also have Arcane. And in the wake of its home media release (along with its second season slated for later this year), it’s worth examining within the larger trend.
Arcane stands out for two main reasons: Its treatment of the original IP, and its presentation. On the former, this is a definite outlier due to its enticing bespoke worldbuilding and character work (rather than inherited from League of Legends). Sure, the game itself is inherently plotless, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped filmmakers and showrunners before or since.
When the show explores the class divide of Piltover and Zaun, the sibling rivalry of Vi and Jinx, and its cautionary tale about the price of scientific progress, there is a total and highly refreshing lack of any need for familiarity with the original game. Even if you don’t know what a ‘MOBA’ is, you’ll still feel the surprisingly intense drama on display.
Speaking of display, the presentation stands out not just from its fellow game translations, but from pretty much every other animated work currently in circulation.
French studio Fortiche, who have collaborated with LoL developer Riot Games consistently over the years on the property, employ their signature painterly approach to 3D animation from those eye-catching music video reveals, and breathes raw expressionist life into everything in sight. From opulent golden sunsets to the scratchy etchings of a mind in crisis, from quiet pathos to high-energy throwdowns, it never fails to look impressive. Even in a post-Spider-Verse animation market, where maximalism and eclectic experimentation are part of the mainstream, it carves its own throne from equal parts surreal magic and finessed technology.
Seeing the creative process in the bonus features on the first season’s blu-ray release adds to the experience. Getting a first-hand look at the design principles of Fortiche is an interesting look behind the curtain, as are the spirited testimonials of the writers and actors bringing this world and its citizens to life. But the most revealing aspect is shown gradually through the ‘Breaking the Rift’ series, where showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee get into the troubles that they encountered during production.
In what can charitably be considered the Golden Age for video game-based media, audiences could easily take for granted that it’s even possible for work like this to exist. From the outside looking in, it’s a Netflix show based on a game with an obnoxious fanbase, designed to run on the most basic of potato PCs, from an animation studio whose main televised work up to that point was Rabbids Invasion, and a game studio already under the microscope for its bro-y workplace culture, neither of whom have attempted anything like this before. It’d be easy to see the League of Legends sub-title on this and dismiss it as just another piece of tie-in content. How good could it be, right?
Well, Arcane is incredibly good, arguably in a class of its own both as a video game adaptation and as an animated work in general. It’s still too early to tell if this can stand in the gilded halls of the all-time greats in either category (as any Game of Thrones fan will tell you, the wrap-up season can change everything about a show’s reception), but between its expressive animation, terrific use of soundtrack, and intoxicating depth of writing, there’s more than enough here to engender hope that it could eventually take that spot. But regardless of what comes next, Season 1 can still lay claim to being one of the more adventurous and ultimately-successful attempts to make the audience feel the heart beneath the pixels.
