RE: Real Movie with a Video Game in it.

Trust me. It wasn't Sony at work here. The movie came out long after the game and that game wasn't selling well anyways. Also, if Sony was paying, they wouldn't have said the wrong name.

The game was never supposed to be a big part of the movie... but the game itself did matter I think. My guess in the writer/director of the film was a fan of the game or at least knew what it was. The video game did serve as an escape from the real world, but the content of the game itself (content that was made clear in the film), did play an a role in the story. In SotC you deal with insurmountable odds. One small person vs a foe larger than life itself. I find it an interesting parallel to the extremely large problem that Sandler can't seem to overcome in his personal life.

Notice that when he starts to open up to Don Cheadle's character and lets him play the game it parallels with him letting Cheadle in into his very closed off life. They take down these colossi together just as they work together in the real world to deal with the real life problems. Remember they both have problems that each friend helps each other out with.

Secondly, notice that Cheadle becomes somewhat dedicated to keep playing the game paralleling his determination to help out Sandler. He wants to stay and give it "one more try" until he defeats the Colossi or whatever while Sandler is trying to get him to go home.

When Sandler kind of snaps and starts to push Cheadle away, you see Sandler return to playing the game alone. Remember... this is a game that he repeatedly plays over and over throughout the film, as if he can never quite beat it... just like his real life Colossi. Even in scenes where he isn't playing you can see the game still on in the background.

I might be overreading the part of the game in this movie, but this is how I saw it(it has been awhile since i've seen it though). The films creator took time to show closeups of the game at several points making it clear the premise of the game. The film was shot quite beautifully and it was clear that the director wanted to show the beauty of the game as well. If it was marketing... they would have picked a game that would have actually sold... Plus I don't think the audience for this type of movie is an audience Sony is trying to sell video games to. Now Gears of War in Die Hard... that's marketing.

This may be the biggest stretch... but perhaps the Shadow(s) plural(ness?) was intentional because the story was about two friends working together to defeat this insurmountable "foe" in Sandler's life. It wasn't just one "Shadow"... but two.

Film is very calculated when done well. Reign Over Me's creator wrote and directed it all himself. Content isn't just thrown in haphazardly. I feel he knew what he was doing with SotC. I may sound like I'm full of crap... but reading into this stuff is done the same way in film as it is in literature. I don't know if movie critics saw it the way I did. I think it almost takes someone with an understanding of this game to maybe catch these parallels... although maybe not. In fact I should look up what Ebert said about it since SotC is "art" in my opinion and he thinks no video game is art.

All in all I thought the movie was pretty good as well. I liked the performances quite a bit. Don Cheadle never seems to fail me either.