The acclaimed studio NEON has a new documentary coming up, GameStop: Rise of the Players.
If you are interested in the Wall Street, the stock market or the video game retailer GameStop, you might want to check this one out.
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Read why in our review below.
When GameStop Was On Top
It was an event that went through the media. The stock market uprising of GameStop, a stock that has been basically declared dead for years, went through the roof over the course of a few days. It was the one topic in the daily news and Hollywood reacted quick and greenlit a bunch of projects (film and series) that will cover the event. To All The Boys star Noah Centineo will lead a film about the Gamestop stock market phenomenon for Netflix, which will be written by the Oscar winner Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker).
But before we get to see this event unfold through the lense of Hollywood, the Oscar winning studio NEON released Gamestop: Rise of the Players, a documentary that covers how this entire event came to be and shows audiences, the people, who predicted that this phenomenon would happen at a time, where GameStop has basically been declared dead. It gives audiences an insight into basically a sub-culture of hobby day traders and shows how a group of people bonded, because they bought GameStop stocks.
When I watched the trailer, I was a little worried as the trailer showed a hyperstylized, over-edited, mess of colours and memes and I didn’t even know what exactly it wanted to tell audiences. Luckily the full film isn’t like that. It is very organized and while it does have some stylistic choices, that come as little 8-Bit animated openers or serve as transitions, those are technically unnecessary and it’s almost always the same one, but those bring some life to the film, which is always helpful for a documentary.
I really like Gamestop: Rise of the Players. I’ve always been interested in the stock market and the Wall Street and obviously heard of this event last year, but I never really researched it, so I didn’t know what exactly and why it happened. The documentary picks up right there and explained the entirety of the GameStop stock from the beginning. It introduces us to a group of people, who believed that this stock had potential, even though they were laughed at by other traders in their community.
Those people tell their story and why they like to invest, especially why they invest in Gamestop. They basically tell us the story from their perspective, while the documentary interrupts that to explain technical terms, bring in people with another perspective and another background or just explain in general what happened on a technical viewing point, without the personal side of our protagonists.
This feels very balanced, as even as someone, who doesn’t know a lot about the stock market, it felt like the film took you by the hand and explained everything to you, so you always understood what the group was talking about and never felt lost or overwhelmed. There are no lengths and nothing felt stretched, as it told the complete story without any intermission. It could have been easy for the film to dive even deeper into the topic, explain more about the stock market, Wall Street or other company’s stocks, but it didn’t.
It just explained exactly what you need to know to understand the next scene and it shows you just enough from tools like StockTwits or Reddit in which this community comes together, but it never falls in the trap of explaining unnecessary information. It gives you enough to be captivated the entire time and you leave the film with the feeling that you actually learned something, but I personally would have liked to know even more.
So, if you are interested in the Wall Street, day trading or if you just want to find out what exactly happened with GameStop, this documentary is exactly what you are looking for.
4/5
Super LTD will release GAMESTOP: RISE OF THE PLAYERS in theaters on January 28th, 2022
Directed by Jonah Tulis
Produced by Jonah Tulis, Blake J. Harris, Dan Braun, Josh Braun
In January 2021, the brick-and-mortar video game retailer GameStop had been the top story on everynews network in the country. Its stock had risen over 2500% amidst a wild flurry of volatility, despite nonew news coming out of the company. The run was fueled by an epic “short squeeze” on a handful ofbillion-dollar hedge fund behemoths, netting online investors millions and costing the hedge fundstens-of-billions of dollars in the process.
But this wasn’t just a run on a stock. This was a battle that has been brewing for years. It’s a David and Goliath story of a band of contrarians who bucked conventional wisdom to bet on themselves, their own research, and a business that Wall Street had given up on.
What do you guys think? Are you planning to watch it? Let’s discuss everything in the comments down below and on our social media.
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