GameStop: Rise of the Players (2022)

GameStop: Rise of the Players review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

In early 2021, a whole bunch of gamers decided to push the stock numbers of GameStop up. GameStop had been the punching bag of the late 2010s for retail gaming stores seemingly less appealing in the age of online gaming and downloads. But when times were tough and the rich got richer, a bunch of gamers decided to boost up the price of the GameStop stock and make the hedge fund managers pay for trying to short the video game retailer. The results led to a massive increase in the stock price. Then a massive drop. Then a slight rise. Then a leveling-off period where GameStop was becoming a tad more stable. As of recently, there was a massive drip in price with GameStop losing over $150 million since its last earnings report.

But this film doesn’t want to cover the gory details, mostly because filmmakers scrambled to make this documentary not long after the stock rose. This rushed approach led to GameStop: Rise of the Players, a film that is less about highlighting what led to this brief stock stunt and more about embellishing and championing the keyboard jockeys who thought they were being revolutionaries for playing the stock market.

For the first third of the film, the documentary is too standard. We get the boring exposition of GameStop and its market influence. We get a lot of talking heads of traders and gamers who spend most of their time talking about the basics of hedge funds and why they like gaming. Notice how very little of gaming culture is placed under the microscope for this film and this very much seems to be on purpose. The film wants to portray the investors as the heroes here, communicating that their online campaigns were valiant and dealt a major blow to Wall Street. True, they shook up some hedge fund firms…for a bit. But eventually, things went back to normal and a handful of people walked away incredibly rich or incredibly poor. You know, like with all stock trading. It makes the comparison to Occupy Wall Street seem incredibly weak and a major stretch.

The film feels more like propaganda in the way it lavishes on the triumph of the underdog than questioning any of the tactics. The many streamers and Redditors behind this movement adopted some questionable terminology and tactics, calling themselves autistic and degenerates as badges of honor in a mixture of both pejorative and reclamation. This is a common tactic among the weirdos who favor cryptocurrencies, where they take everything you use to make fun of them and then embrace it as a joke or meme without questioning it. Oh, and don’t expect this film to address any of the cryptocurrency spillovers because that’s a massive can of worms that a film as light as this couldn’t even handle.

What we ultimately get is just a bunch of stories of investors given the glossy treatment, complete with video game graphics to appeal to the gamers who will no doubt champion such a picture. If none of this seems like a red flag, the finale featuring an animation of Elon Musk blasting off to the moon should signal to you just where this film lies. Now, detractors would say that I’m just shilling for Wall Street by not appreciating what the gamers and traders did. The problem with this film is that this is the only thing it will do. It’s not a film meant to deeply decipher just what went on with the GameStop stock and how there’s a larger conversation about the corrupt nature of trading. Because, really, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of this, not much has changed.

This is a documentary that will probably only appeal to those engrained with the social media landscape that a good documentary need only feature their favorite YouTubers streaming and shouting “LET’S GOOOO” any time a stock price rises. There’s nothing of value here that you can’t learn from any deeper insight that an economics expert could better divulge. It’s a pat on the heads to the gamers who held their ground and kept a stock price up. What a grotesque payoff.