As you may or may not be aware, people really freaking love Portal. I love Portal. I had the misfortune of never knowing of its magic (science?) until this past Spring. Especially since the release of the proper, full-length sequel, fans from every trade and craft have emerged to express their love of all things to do with the eerie first-person puzzler. Because the series is well known for its brilliant writing and sterile, dismal atmosphere, it was only a matter of time before fan films started cropping up, right?
This past week brought us Dan Trachtenberg's "Portal: No Escape." It showed up in the headlines of every major gaming blog, shot up to 2.7 million views on Youtube, and seems to have received nearly unanimous praise. If you're one of the few who still has yet to see it, here it is:
DO NOT LOOK INTO THE OPERATIONAL END OF THE DEVICE.
As you can see, the video is a quality piece of work. Yet it suffers from one huge, glaring problem that as a devout Portal fan, I cannot ignore: almost everything about it is indisputably un-Portal. The room she's contained in is some kind of gritty, filthy holding cell more reminiscent of Saw than the pristine Aperture Science facility. Tally marks on the wall? Way too blatant to ever happen in the Portal universe; those should be tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the Rat Man dens. Don't even get me started on the blood-stained hospital gown, which screams "pretense."
How about the human guards patrolling outside of her holding cell--with guns? Or the complete lack of GLaDOS, turrets, or the promise of cake? After making these observations I realized this film is exactly what it would look like if some Hollywood big-shot got the chance to turn Portal into a run-of-the-mill action flick. I mean, goodness, there's "taking creative liberties" and then there's betraying everything that made the games unforgettable, and copying them only on the most superficial level possible.
So that may be a bit overly harsh. Again, the editing and special effects are top knotch, especially for an independent filmmaker, and I appreciate the sense of despair we get from the ending. But before I'm accused of being a total hater, here is another Portal fan film that is a million times better at capturing the essence of Portal's subtlety, sterility, and psychology. And frankly, I think it deserves much more attention and praise than the above video.
Even after the trauma of Aperture Science, Chell still loves cake.
It's fan creations like this that make me feel all fuzzy inside to be a Portal fan.
Which tribute to this wonderful series do you prefer? Sound off in the comments!
