Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Bandersnatch |
| Original title | Bandersnatch |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | approx. 5 hours of film material, one cycle approx. 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | David Slade |
| script | Charlie Brooker |
| production | Russell McLean |
| music | Brian Reitzell |
| camera |
Aaron Morton , Jake Polonsky |
| cut | Tony Kearns |
| occupation | |
| |
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive film from the British television series Black Mirror directed by David Slade and released on Netflix on December 28, 2018 .
In Bandersnatch , the viewer makes decisions about the main character, the young programmer Stefan Butler ( Fionn Whitehead ), who in 1984 adapted a fantasy adventure novel into a video game. Other characters include Mohan Thakur (Asim Chaudhry) and Colin Ritman ( Will Poulter ), who both work for a video game company, Butler's father Peter ( Craig Parkinson ) and Butler's therapist Dr. Haynes (Alice Lowe). The film is based on a planned Imagine software video game of the same name that was not released after the company went bankrupt. It also alludes to Lewis Carroll's own works depicting the Bandersnatch creature.
Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were hired by Netflix in May 2017 to make an interactive film. At the time, Netflix had several interactive projects for children underway.
action
The film tells the story of Stefan Butler, a teenager in London in the 1980s, who dreams of creating an interactive computer game based on a science fiction novel by Jerome F. Davies. The game involves traversing a graphic maze of corridors, avoiding a creature called Pax and sometimes making decisions through on-screen instruction. Butler produces the game for the video game company Tuckersoft, which is run by Mohan Thakur and employs famous game developer Colin Ritman. Butler has the choice of accepting or declining the company's assistance in developing the game. If Butler accepts the offer, Ritman says he chose the "wrong path". The game is published months later and is critically assessed. Butler is considering trying again, and the film returns to the day of the offer in July 1984 with the viewer having the same choice.
Otherwise, Butler will start working on the game from his bedroom alone, with a deadline of September, so that Tuckersoft can publish it for the Christmas sale. As he struggles through the software bugs, Butler becomes more and more annoyed and hostile towards his father Peter. At that time, Butler visits Dr. R. Haynes for depression therapy . The viewer can decide whether butler Dr. Haynes tells of the death of his mother, who died when he was five years old. Peter had taken his cuddly bunny away because he felt that boys his age shouldn't play with dolls. Because Butler refused to walk without his rabbit, he forced his mother to take a later train, which derailed. Dr. Haynes prescribes Butler medication, which the viewer can choose to take or throw away for Butler. The viewer may have the opportunity that Butler accepts an invitation to visit Ritman at his apartment, where he lives with his girlfriend and their child Pearl. There they take hallucinogens together, and Ritman talks about secret government mind control programs, alternative timelines, and different paths. In order to demonstrate his theories of different realities, Ritman butler asks the viewer to decide which of the two should jump from the balcony. If Ritman was chosen, the scene turns out to be Stefan's dream. Ritman will still be mysteriously absent in future scenes.
As the game's deadline approaches and there are still weird bugs in the game, Butler begins to wonder if he's being controlled by outside forces and questions how much he cares about his father and Dr. Haynes trusts. He finds parallels in his and Davies' lives and sees recurring images of a "fork in the road" symbol that apparently led Davies to murder his wife. When Butler begins to break down mentally and struggles against an invisible person who determines his actions, the viewer has several options to explain this to Butler on his computer screen. One of them is that they are making its decisions about Netflix in the 21st century. The viewer may discover a vault in which they can either find Butler's old cuddles or documents showing that Butler is being monitored as part of an experiment.
There are numerous ways that Bandersnatch could end, the following of which is only a partial list. One way is to have Butler battling his therapist during a session, after which he is revealed to be on a movie set where his father is the director. Another way ends in the fact that Butler follows Ritman's advice and apparently passes through a mirror to his five-year-old self to "die" with his mother in the train crash, which leads to Butler's body suddenly dying in the present. Other options give the viewer the choice of getting Butler to kill his father, burying or hacking the body, or killing Ritman or Thakur. Burying the body results in Butler going to jail ahead of the game's release; Chopping up the father and failing to inform his therapist about the murder leads to the successful publication of the game. However, Butler also goes to jail shortly afterwards.
In some endings the viewer is shown the critical reaction to the game and the fate of Tuckersoft. Other endings conclude in the present with a grown-up Pearl who is now a Netflix programmer trying to produce an interactive movie, which leads to her seeing the same “fork in the road” as Davies and Butler.
The ability to intervene directly in the action makes Black Mirror: Bandersnatch a hybrid between film and computer game. A total of five hours of film material is divided into 250 chapters, hidden behind the respective decisions of the viewer.
synchronization
The German synchronization created the synchronous company TV + Synchron Berlin for a dialogue book by Tom Sander and the dialogue director of Dana Linkiewicz .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Stefan Butler | Fionn Whitehead | Patrick Keller |
| Colin Ritman | Will Poulter | Konrad Bösherz |
| Mohan Thakur | Asim Chaudhry | Tino Kießling |
| Peter Butler | Craig Parkinson | Peter Flechtner |
| Dr. Haynes | Alice Lowe | Dana Friedrich |
music
The soundtrack comes from Brian Reitzell, who has already received an award for his work on Lost in Translation . The Bandersnatch soundtrack includes Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood , Hold Me Now by Thompson Twins , Here Comes the Rain Again by Eurythmics , Too Shy by Kajagoogoo , Making Plans for Nigel by XTC , Superman by Laurie Anderson , New Life by Depeche Mode , Bermuda Triangle by Isao Tomita and Love On a Real Train , Phaedra and Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares by Tangerine Dream .
A scene in the record shop lets the viewer choose between Tangerine Dreams Phaedra and Isao Tomita's Bermuda Triangle with a click of the mouse . Depending on the decision, the respective album can then be heard repeatedly in the film.
Awards
- Outstanding Television Movie
- Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media Within A Scripted Program
Web links
- Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official website at Netflix
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Bernd Mewes: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch - Interactive film and video game. In: Heise online . December 29, 2018, accessed December 30, 2018 .
- ^ Matt Reynolds: The inside story of Bandersnatch, the weirdest Black Mirror tale yet . In: Wired UK . December 28, 2018, ISSN 1357-0978 ( wired.co.uk [accessed February 7, 2020]).
- ↑ Stuart Heritage: Black Mirror's Bandersnatch: Charlie Brooker's meta masterpiece . In: The Guardian . December 28, 2018, ISSN 0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 7, 2020]).
- ↑ https://news.avclub.com/bandersnatchs-stockpile-of-black-mirror-easter-eggs-inc-1831365758
- ^ "Black Mirror" review: "Bandersnatch" on Netflix. December 28, 2018, accessed on January 4, 2019 (German).
- ^ Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on January 7, 2019 .
- ↑ Ryan Middleton: Listen To The Music In Black Mirror's Bandersnatch Movie. Retrieved January 4, 2019 (American English).