The Movies (2005)

I'm gonna be upfront, I have a lot of love for this game. It's one of the first real PC games I ever played, because the old family computer couldn't run anything too strenuous. I spent a lot of weekday evenings in High School creating my own little movies. I'm even willing to go so far as to say this game helped instill the love of movie making in me. I was on a nostalgia kick and downloaded this game. This game isn't on GOG or Steam, so you have to be a little more creative in getting it on modern PCs.

This game is part movie maker, part management sim. You are in charge of a movie studio and you have to run it in the same way you'd run a zoo in Zoo Tycoon. You have to recruit actors & pamper and train them to become the best actors. You also want to make sure you're producing the best movies on the best studio lot. It gives you a lot to keep track off, but it also explains all of it pretty well. I was never totally lost about how I was supposed to increase a certain stat. As the game progress on, you can research new technologies which unlocks new buildings, equipment, and sets.

That being said, the management of this game can be a bit too micro. You have to constantly babysit your actors to make sure they are improving their relationships, showing up to set, and staying happy. It can get downright exhausting and detracts from the larger picture, especially since you unlock some items by completing milestones. It's one thing to keep your actors content, but trying to babysit one so much to hit that 5 star level is near suicide. Luckily, this time around I installed some mods that made their statuses much easier to manage so I could focus on having the best studio lot.

Besides actors, you have to hire crew members, janitors, scriptwriters, scientists, and extras. Luckily, these people don't have to be as looked after as your actors, just hire them and forget. The problem with them, is there is just not enough people to staff all the jobs effectively. You've got to have a lot of janitors to maintain the grounds, but you get only a few. And those you don't hire for their jobs you can make assistants to the stars, which is required to get their rating up. As you get into the late game, you've got more jobs than manpower. Again, another mod this time around fixed that issue.

This game also works as a very basic American history lesson. You run a studio from the dawn of the movie industry to the future. As such, you'll hear news stories about the Great Depression, the 50's Red Scare, the Hippie Uprising, & the war in Iraq. Again all these events are reported by a newsman with a humorous tone, the whole game is a little tongue in cheek. At the outbreak of WWII, the reporter remarks, "We're staying out of this war, unless some madman were to attack us, perhaps in Hawaii." And all these events effect what type of movies the public are interested in; Vietnam sees an uptick in action and horror, Bonnie & Clyde's spree leads to a peak in Romance films.

While scriptwriters can create pre-made movies for your studio to shoot, you can create your own pictures. This is my favorite aspect of the game. You build sets on your studio lot to use them in your films. The creator suite they give you is pretty robust, and mimics a real editor layout. They give you a wide selection of scenes to pick from for each set. You can change the weather, lighting, props, camera angles, and extras in your scenes. Admittedly, coming back to this after making a real short film, it does feel a bit rigid in what you can create. Still, you can create great movies, better than any other game I've tried.

For a 2005 game, The Movies holds up pretty well graphically. The character models remind my of Sims circa Sims 2, they even speak in mumbles during movies. Having played this game so much, and looked at those models a lot, I use them as a control group when remarking on the graphics of other older games. All the sets are well detailed with lots of little props to give it a lived in feel, and the UI is clean and easy to understand. The music is also fun, lots of tunes that are soundalikes to popular movie tracks.

There's one expansion, Stunts & Effects. I was able to download it this time around, but back when I originally had The Movies, finding a physical copy of that DLC was near impossible & those that did have it were outrageously priced. I've messed with some of the new sets, scenes, and stunts it adds. They do make the game feel complete and let you put on a bigger spectacle. I recommend playing it with S&E installed.

All in all, it's a shame this game has been abandoned. There's not been a good movie game since then. I would love to see even a spiritual sequel to this with a bit more depth, split up the film categories even more; like drama, mystery, or westerns. But if we never get another good movie maker game, I'm glad this one can still be enjoyed nowadays.