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Rollerball (2002) Review

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It’s time to look at the remake to the original film that I just watched. Seeing both versions on the same day definitely makes for a pretty interesting marathon watch. It’s safe to say that the original is better in just about every way though. This one has a very “Try Hard” feel to it from the start. It doesn’t seem like the creators had a ton of confidence in the story or writing so right out of the gate they’re having to add all this extra stuff and it doesn’t work.

The film starts off by introducing us to Jonathan who likes doing extreme things. He even races on a skateboard kind of device through the streets which looks extremely dangerous the instant he gets on it. Definitely not a very responsible thing to do and when the cops show up at his door, he figures it’s time to finally get into Rollerball. It’s an extreme sport filled with lots of danger. Think of it like Rollerbading meets Hockey and you’re zooming around trying to score while people are driving motorcycles and all violence is allowed. Jonathan has become the world champ here but there is a dark conspiracy afoot. More and more people keep getting injured and dying as the ratings go higher. Is there any way out of this?

I will also say that the remake tries to spell things out for you more than the first. In the first movie we never heard the exact rules of the game but you could just piece it together while watching. In this one we literally have a whole scene for the announcer explaining the rules. It’s not a bad idea by any means but it does give you a glimpse into what this remake is like right from the jump. Everything is less nuanced. The villains are super evil, complete with evil laughter and long winded speeches. The opposing teams are all in the dark as well and when push comes to shove they are ready to help. The body count is much smaller and things are allowed to be happier.

Hey, I’m all for a happier ending but the whole film just doesn’t work. Part of the problem is that this film takes place in modern days instead of in a dystopia. In the latter it is easy to excuse a lot of thing like nobody caring about all of the deaths since humanity was cooked a long time ago. In this case it doesn’t make sense that they’re still getting TV deals and becoming a huge hit. The instant the first death hits you are looking at tons of lawsuits and negative media coverage. Yes, the sport could continue but it would be more of an indie thing and not the massive mainstream audience with top ratings that we see here.

You can cut a bit of slack for this being in a foreign country and the standards are a bit more lax but the more the film goes on, the less weight this holds. You also have this company owning the border guards, and being able to do whatever they want. The host even takes out a gun and threatens the local media companies in the middle of a crowd. Alexi doesn’t care who sees him and this works in a dystopia but not here. So the film should have kept this in the future. It doesn’t make sense to be in present day.

Then to make things edgier, we have a ton of fanservice throughout the movie. The film wants to show us how depraved the villains are, so they’re all living out their fantasies degrading everyone and the scenes have absolutely no point to being here. It’s clearly a desperate attempt for more ratings and I dare say that it won’t work on the average moviegoer. Even having girls playing in this league makes no real sense with how violent it is. Another thing that I could have turned a blind eye to in a dystopia.

In fact, let me put on my conspiracy hat here for a minute. I think there are only two reasons why they added women participants to the sport for this remake. The first is for…you guessed it, more fanservice since they can add random locker room scenes. The other is just so they could throw in a big romance which would give Jonathan more motivation for later. The romance is pretty bad though, one of those really rushed ones with no real depth behind it. I’m sure the writers had a chuckle with the last line in the film as a callback to the first conversation with Jonathan and Aurora but it’s not enough to salvage the whole sub plot.

The actual Rollerball scenes aren’t bad but even this is not as good as the original which is crazy. It’s a case of trying to do too much. Now we have ramps, big jumps, you have to throw the ball into a goal instead of jamming it in there and the stage is much smaller. To make up for that, there are less players on each team but the whole thing just feels more convoluted and I can’t think of any way where it is quite as good. At most I can admit that throwing the ball into the goal would be more practical in real life but that’s it. The rest of the changes just don’t make much sense to me unless making the arena smaller was a budgetary constraint.

The cast is not particularly inspiring. Jonathan was annoying in the intro. He’s a decent guy but starting off as a delinquent isn’t great and in the whole climax he doesn’t have much of a plan except to try and murder as many of the opponents as possible. Only problem is that he’s super outnumbered so he has to be saved a bunch of times. It doesn’t make him look very smart. I don’t have any real issues with Aurora. She does her best to help Jonathan and make sure that he’s doing well while she makes the sacrificial play since she has family that she can’t leave.

It takes Ridley a little while to find his moral compass so he’s not as good but at least once he is in danger then the guy starts to move. So I can appreciate that a bit. Sure, it’s selfish and all but I can picture a lot of people making that call. You want to hope for the best to make all of the money until you can’t deny it anymore. Alexi’s a fairly generic villain. Not much to talk about with that guy, he’s okay at best.

His right hand man Sanjay is actually really interesting though. I could have used more screentime for this guy. He’s more ambitious than Alexi and smarter as well. He really thought things through and had a great scene near the end even if it didn’t totally end the way you would have expected it to be. He’s surprisingly the best character in the movie.

As a side note, the whole climax is easily the best part of the film, starting from when Jonathan breaks a window and challenges the villains. Suddenly it was like Jason Bourne where he is taking everyone on and using every object imaginable. He even has a Captain America type moment where he blocks a bullet. Yeah the editing is so bad that it makes Taken 3 look impressive as there are literal frame cuts so we see Jonathan teleporting around the map but we can assume he’s that fast. I was glad that we were getting some real action outside of the arena at least.

Overall, This film had a ton of problems. They range all the way from narrative ones to pacing issues and just plain ole logistical issues. It was trying way too hard in all the wrong places and so that was a recipe for disaster. It can be an entertaining movie for a while but by the end the negatives just racked up way too high to be overcome. Ultimately you are way better watching the first film over the remake. Trust me, this is one that you will definitely want to avoid if you are given the choice.

Overall 4/10

Rollerball Review

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This review is of the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a dystopia film that also doubles as a sport title. A rather bizarre one at that but the whole movie has a bit of an odd vibe to it. Everyone is so far gone that nobody even realizes how crazy the whole setup is and it’s a grim reminder at how anything can seem normal after it has been the status quo for a while. So just be careful out there.

So the film takes place in the future where there is one sport that unites the world, Rollerball. Basically you have 2 teams of 10 players take the field and the goal is to grab the ball that is fired into the arena and jam it into the opponent’s goal area. Everyone wears rollerblades and is armed with diamond studded knuckles. 3 members of each team use motorcycles to drive around the place. There are penalties that are loosely enforced but you are still encouraged to use whatever means are necessary to get the ball and win. Victory is everything and so this is a sport where you can and will lose everything.

The main character here is Jonathan and he has become a global sensation. This becomes a problem for corporate because part of the point of the game is team spirit. The game must always be larger than the individual person and there seems to be some kind of conspiracy about keeping individuality away in general. So they want Jonathan to quit but he refuses and now corporate is going to play hard ball. They will cause him to leave the game even if it means through death. Can he defy these guys?

The first question you’ll probably have here is why anybody even plays the sport to begin with. Sure, competitiveness and adrenaline will cause you to do a lot of crazy things but playing in a sport where your only realistic outcome is either death or a gruesome injury? Maybe if the alternative is being homeless or something then that’s what you would do but the film doesn’t explore this desolate future too much outside of the game. We see that the rich people have nothing to do in general beyond the game though. They go to the forest and burn down trees for fun, otherwise they just laze around all day. It feels like the world has become empty and that’s a very interesting angle but a lot of it will end up having to be headcanon.

The other question is why are Jonathan’s teammates so slow on the uptake? We see that as early as the semi finals the other teams barely even care about the match anymore. They are focusing on just murdering all of the players. It makes sense as a strategy because then there is nobody to defend the goal. At one point 3 of them team up to execute Jonathan’s friend and it’s not like they’re hiding this fact. Jonathan retaliates by murdering one of them and so the cycle continues.

The problem is how oblivious the other players are. There’s one scene where we see one of the players reach for the ball as if this is a normal sport. He’s promptly thrown into the wiring and murdered. Did the guy not see what was happening all around him? Almost every player loses because they were oblivious like this. Look, if there are no penalties and there is unlimited time, then it makes sense that you have to take out the other team. At the very least you need to practice active self defense so you aren’t just taken out of the picture right away.

Jonathan did good in not bowing to corporate here. The whole thing seemed suspicious and so he decided to stay in the sport all the way to the end. He gave them ample opportunity to explain their position and they never did so at that point he just had to do his own thing. Jonathan was quick on the uptake which I was glad about. At one point they tell him to go in the Helicopter and he will be driven to the game so instead he takes the bus with the team. We all know that if he went into that Helicopter then he would have never been seen again.

His own fame helps protect him a little bit as the company decided not to just murder him in the streets since it would be a big controversy. I think the company may have been overthinking things though because with how brainless the masses were the whole time, they might have barely noticed. They seem to be worried that Jonathan will end up leading some kind of revolution or something but that doesn’t seem likely yet. In fact, their attempts are only making it way more possible since they are attracting so much attention.

So the actual world building was a bit underdeveloped I’d say but the game itself was interesting. While they don’t do a deep dive into the rules, you can quickly understand the fundamentals here. It can be annoying to see the games unfold with everyone acting like NPCs but the matches are handled well. You can see just how dark this future is without the film being downright exploitive about it. I thought the violence was handled well enough and didn’t go too far.

Overall, Rollerball is a decently good movie. I had a solid time with it but you do get the feeling that corporate got real sloppy on this one. It should have been a really easy win for them here but they got overconfident and in the end that was their downfall. They could have had the first girl be a little less obvious about following orders, instructed the wife to be more subtle, bumped Jonathan off with a decent cover story, etc. The ending ends up being satisfying either way though and it was the right way to wrap things up. While we don’t get all of the answers, it does help to keep in a good amount of mystery.

Overall 6/10