I have an uncomfortable relationship with the David Cronenberg film Videodrome, which is one of those movies that (like Taxi Driver or Rear Window) feels like a warning: "Don't let this happen to you!" But I feel as though I really have been through the Max Renn experience. I really used to LIKE James Woods! You know that? I liked his sardonic edge and maybe even mimicked it a bit, subconsciously. But when an actor is always at their most convincing when they're playing utter scumbags...it's not a great sign.
I rather hope that I'm not quite as scummy as Max Renn, but I feel like, too, got drawn (partly through the allure of kinky sex and psychotronic entertainment) into a strange new world that I'm still having trouble with. Except it wasn't television or videotape that drew me in...not exactly, even though these things are involved. Instead, I played too many of the wrong video games!
Max Renn accidentally reminds me of another Max I know, and that's Max Payne. He too gets drawn into a strange liminal dimension between comic books and video games and movies and other forms of entertainment. There's one striking difference, though: Max Payne gets a lot of backstory, whereas Max Renn gets zero backstory. The movie begins in much the same way as Disco Elysium, with a protagonist who might as well have been dropped into the beginning of the movie isekai style. A patient outside voice needs to tell Max what to do—haven't we all been there? er, not all—and where to go and who he is, practically. Before that point in time we know basically nothing about Max Renn. James Woods's strength as a character actor is such that Max Renn doesn't need a backstory. This is why B-movies love intense actors: you can believe they have a backstory just by looking and listening.
~Chara of Pnictogen
