For many people, a familiar pastime in the weeks leading up to major winter holidays is gathering with family members and watching holiday movies, be they in a theater or on television. While vaccines are more widely available now than they were last year, some plans still remain the same this holiday season, but folks are still unsure about going to movie theaters. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t stop us from enjoying holiday movies with friends and family.
During the month of December, therefore, the Falls Free Press will reprise “The 12 Films of Christmas” series, focusing on new holiday movies for the year 2021—a year that can still do with plenty of spirit. We will review each film, whether naughty or nice, and let you know where to watch it.
Sony officially released the Playstation 5 on November 12, 2020. Most gamers have still not been able to play the new system, however, because availability remains scarce throughout the world. When the console does become available, store shelves are immediately emptied by anxious shoppers, not unlike toy crazes of the 1980s and 90s such as Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kids, and most of all, the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
Nintendo was so popular during the mid-to-late 80s that they reported selling 7 million systems in just 1988. As Jake Doyle (played by as an adult by Neil Patrick Harris) recalls in HBO Max’s latest Christmas adventure, 8-bit Christmas, “there she was, glistening in all her gray plastic glory, a maze of rubber wiring and electronic intelligence so advanced it was deemed not a video game, but an 8-bit entertainment system.”
In 8-bit Christmas, adult Jake tells his daughter a story about his struggle to convince his parents to get him a Nintendo for Christmas and how he and his friends fought to have their own system to play. Young Jake (Winslow Fegley) grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in a coupon-clipping household where his father (Steve Zahn) built everything he could, and his teacher mother (June Diane Raphael) found every possible way to save, even if it meant buying him girl’s boots because they were on sale for 2-for-1. Jake does all he can to secure an NES system, including selling wreaths for his scout troop, the prize for selling the most of which is a brand new Nintendo. Unfortunately, after the one bratty rich kid in the neighborhood with a game system has a dangerous incident involving a Power Glove, a 16-inch TV, and the family dog, local parents’ groups strike against video games, banning the system from all stores in the county.
Given the problems Jake had paying attention and following through with chores, the fact that he never does get a system for Christmas is a perfect example of buying kids expensive toys despite their terrible behavior, something that Ralphie’s father in the classic A Christmas Story ignores after his son’s multiple infractions of “the queen-mother of dirty words.” Not only has Jake still not shoveled the dog poop in his backyard by the end of the film, he repeatedly becomes fixated by video games, in turn losing track of his sister and his retainer—both of which he’s been tasked with watching.
The true love behind 8-bit is its 1980s nostalgia, enough that it hopes audiences will forget that it is an obvious rip-off of A Christmas Story. Recalling the many different games Nintendo released—while attempting to not show certain licensed properties, such as Super Mario Bros or the Legend of Zelda—as well as trends such as Cabbage Patch Kids, Encyclopedia Britannica sets (which everyone seemed to have), and tree houses that only Bart Simpson seems to have anymore, makes viewers remember a not quite as dark version of the 1980s that has been forgotten in flashback properties like Stranger Things and It. Nevertheless, a movie about Nintendo in the 80s coming out in a world still focused on gaming hits home far more than a 1983 film about a bb gun set in the Post-Depression Midwest—a movie that is now loved more for the nostalgia of watching it every year than for the actual story itself.
For a gaming family of today or yesteryear, 8-bit Christmas is a perfect holiday watch.
8-bit Christmas is available to stream on HBO Max.
