The trailer for Mother to earth
At this point, a dozen years into the platform’s existence, Kickstarter documentaries are by no means a new thing. Projects that emerge from it have received virtually every major film award, from debuts at major festivals to Oscars. But for every Elstree 1976 or I’m a big bird, it feels like Kickstarter is offering at least 50 projects that look a little too niche, a little too low budget or a little too amateurish. At the beginning of this month you can have a movie feedback about the life of a British skateboard Staffordshire Bull Terrier or about the common weeds you can eat. (Disclosure: I once supported a Kickstarter documentary about a group of friends who were traveling to see LCD Soundsystem play ‘All My Friends’, because … I was a stupid college kid?)
On paper, Mother to earth sounds like it belongs under the 50s, not the one. This is a video game documentary that is not about Earthbound, not about the franchise to which gaming belongs (the Ma trilogy), and not even about the original release in the trilogy that inspires the documentary name. Instead, directors Joshua Bone-Christian and Evan Butler had a hyperfocus on this (albeit already niche) field in mind: they wanted to trace the story of how a particular English-speaker Ma prototype pattern. It leaked out of Nintendo headquarters in the early 1990s before landing online in a ROM dump around the turn of the century, eventually prompting Nintendo to release the game on the WiiU virtual console Earthbound start in 2015. (Phew.)
To put it bluntly, Mother to earth is the kind of documentary you can hardly believe. It’s a niche project about a niche project, the kind of thing the production team probably would not have been able to do in an era before crowdfunding. But if you have even a moderate interest in online fandom, Earthbound, or saving video game history, you’ll be glad they’ve succeeded. Mother to earth seems to be a surprising reminder that nowadays even the strangest topics have the potential to find an audience, grow with the encouragement of the small but dedicated support system, and can ultimately deliver something fascinating.
Around the world
It is impossible not to admire the extensive research on it Mother to earth. Apparently this movie focuses on a small moment (one prototype pattern is listed on eBay) for a small project (a NES JRPG that was never released in the US). But it never feels like a glorified YouTube commentator, because of all the bone work, thinking and care that is transparent throughout the film. The team members have been doing two years of work, research and research to connect all the diverse pieces of well-known information behind eBay. Ma prototype when they launched and funded the Kickstarter in 2016 …. and the finished film first appears late 2019. This is a documentary that is not afraid to show his work, and it feels like Bone-Christian and Butler deserved the right. The subject is perhaps narrow Mother to earth explore every facet of it in just over 90 minutes.
Without giving away all the juicy, boring, details revealed by this research, you just have to consider the scope of it. The Mother to earth team goes to Japan just to interview an obsessed collector and a first composer for video games. The filmmakers find the right people behind the comments or online handles claiming ‘first’! ‘on the message board threads about the existence of this prototype. And on top of that, they’re also struggling to capture all the established voices you want to make right now – the Nintendo employees who translated or tested the game, legal experts who can comment on the shades of gray involved is with ROM dumping an old, non-released game, and the DIY hackers who initially did the thing that inspired this whole project.
However, the most impressive thing may be Mother to earth do not get lost in these details. Instead, the film constantly places every granular research adventure within the context of Bone-Christian and Butler’s central pursuit. Much of this takes place through the filmmakers who quickly appear in interstitials on camera, to contextualize what we have just seen and how it fits into the bigger picture. Well, Bone-Christian and Butler “appear” – some of Mother to the earth’s crowd funding probably went to the charming stage production exhibitions. For example, the directors often appear as cuts against a Twin Peak-y curtain to give narration or illustrate important moments that interviewers refer to (but this happened years ago, meaning there is no footage to offer).
If you’re the type who likes extensive homework and small details, Mother to earth will strike a sweet spot. As the filmmakers sum it up at the end of their work: ‘We tracked down a random file we downloaded two decades ago on some random website from where it is today, within two decades.’ But another of the Mother / Earthbound obsessive interviews for Mother to earth can sum up even better of what awaits viewers. “In any culture,” begins Koala, a pseudonym Earthbound dealer collector / archivist in Japan, “if there are no crazy people, culture will not be preserved, right?”
Mother to earth is for rent or for sale on Vimeo. The film also did select regional shows in theaters, such as Texas. Check out the film’s Facebook page for updates.
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