Why Ace Attorney remains the perfect video game movie adaptation

“Objection!”

The first time this is uttered early in Takashi Miike’s Ace AttorneyFor fans of the game, it’s like an adrenaline rush. Rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright (Hiroki Narimiya), looking to gain an early foothold in what’s only his second-ever case, immediately goes on the offensive, convinced the evidence he’s about to present will expose a glaring, crucial contradiction in a piece of witness testimony.

It’s the sheer brio with which the phrase is delivered that makes it so exhilarating: the sudden upsurge in volume that jolts even Wright’s own client; the unapologetic extra-ness of the iconic finger point; the volcanic aggression with which Wright then slams his desk and hurls a holographic screen at the unsuspecting police detective on the witness stand.

It’s all so delightfully unnecessary, so wonderfully extraneous — so Phoenix Wright, if you will. And in being those things, it’s the ultimate statement of intent, announcing the movie’s willingness to launch itself headfirst into the unbridled theatrics of the video games. What makes the moment feel even truer to the source material is that we barely even have time to register this apparently triumphant peak before we’re plummeting deep into a valley. Wright goes from believing he’s struck a devastating blow to the prosecution’s case to being on the back foot and on the brink of crushing defeat in what feels like the space of a millisecond. Soon he’s crumpled helplessly over his desk, desperately scrambling for something — anything — that might somehow save him and his client.

Image: Toho-Towa

That sense of emotional whiplash is exactly what fans of the Ace Attorney games would expect and demand from a movie adaptation — these are, after all, games all about impossible turnabouts, the violent swings in fortune that see you careening from euphoric highs to depressing lows, certain victory to certain defeat and back again, with the snap of a finger or the banging of a gavel. The movie oscillates at a relentless pace that might feel totally destabilizing to Ace Attorney newcomers, but feels warmly familiar to those who’ve ever set foot in the game’s courtroom, with its ever-escalating sense of urgency that comes with constantly being on the precipice of humiliation.

Tonal levels Ace AttorneyThis is Miike’s short, and he leans more into the chaos inherent in the games than trying to temper it. He doesn’t fear alienating whole demographics by displaying excessive style or presenting a slick narrative. Miike puts the chaos in the forefront: His movie’s world is like that of the Games. People pull megaphones from thin air, pets are placed on witness stands, dead lawyers ghosts outshine living attorneys, and everybody boasts a haircut teleported from another planet. There’s a perfect balance here between the source material and the creative impulses of the director that very few adaptations manage to strike. Miike rises to meet the energy of the games, punctuating the movie’s aesthetic with sparkling stylistic flourishes: split screens, dolly zooms, and a hell sequence straight out of Nobuo Nakagawa’s Jigoku.

Image: Toho-Towa

Image: Toho-Towa

Image: Toho-Towa

A feature-length film adaptation of games is more about the story than the tone. It’s about the enormity of the work, its visual novel narrative, and the size of it all. The gaming experience is enhanced by this mass of narrative. It allows players to relax after enduring the trial and all the cross-examinations. There’s a substantial amount of leisurely investigation time in the games that makes for a nice change of pace as you gather evidence and dig deeper into the inner lives of the characters, perhaps more suitable for a longer televisual format than for the big screen (although the anime series based on the games was far from well received).

By necessity, then, Miike’s movie aggressively whittles down the sprawl of the first game in the series, Phoenix Wright, Ace AttorneyThe best of three episodes were taken and combined into a single episode. This makes the show much more concise, more focused and controlled in its attempt to force you to submit with absurdism. It is not without its faults. Sometimes the plotting feels a little barebones and sometimes the structure seems a bit too lopsided. There are character details, too, that are sacrificed, most notably in the case of Maya Fey (Mirei Kiritani), Wright’s spirit medium assistant: A nuclear bundle of endearing tics and quirks in the games, her brimming personality is practically nonexistent in the movie, reduced to a mere shell with psychic abilities. Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saitoh), Wright’s childhood friend and courtroom rival, also feels tragically divested of many of the shades and wrinkles that make him such a compelling figure in the games, flatter and less morally complex.

Image: Toho-Towa

Still, the broad strokes are drawn well enough to make the drama feel personal, and it’s a testament to just how perfectly Miike captures the essence of the game’s courtroom sequences that these omissions feel more like nitpicks rather than deal-breakers. What the movie understands intimately is that one of the great pleasures of the games is simply playing as a guy who’s kind of terrible at his job. There’s something uniquely delightful about stepping into the shoes of Phoenix Wright — a novice who never really gets any better at what he does as time goes on — as he helplessly flails around, presenting random objects from his pockets to the judge and jury in search of some moment of idiotic epiphany that somehow always ends up coming to him.

Never fully in control of any situation, Wright perpetually straddles the line between accidental genius and criminal incompetence, unfailingly reliant on some sort of minor miracle to bail him out of seemingly impossible situations — whether it’s salvation in the form of a psychic message from his dead mentor, his bonehead detective friend arriving at the eleventh hour with game-changing evidence, or someone yelling for the trial to be prolonged for some ludicrous reason or another. He’s a spectator to fate, a kite in a storm, and Miike depicts this passivity by having his camera swirl around Wright in claustrophobic close-ups as he claws at the piles of court documents in front of him, perfectly replicating the gameplay experience of trawling through a labyrinth of opaque information during a cross-examination. You can also see how Wright shifts focus constantly as he screams out of discomfort. Meanwhile, his adversaries, who are paragons for prosecutorial composure and stability, remain in focus.

Image: Toho-Towa

The courtroom’s anticipating audience is a prominent feature in these compositions. This amusing aspect of the games Miike enjoys taking a great deal of pleasure in amplifying his hyperbolic flair with palpable joy. The world of Miike’s Ace AttorneyA trial in this world is not about finding truth and justice, but about the thrilling spectacle of seeing two opponents savage each other’s lives. In this world, being a lawyer is to take part in bloodsports for the general public to cheer on and demand more. The movie’s reaction shots are huge to the point of hilarity, replete with visual comedy as the entire crowd responds in unison to events unfolding: leaning in to hear crucial information, staring in befuddlement at increasingly bizarre witnesses, and keeling over in seismic disbelief at an asinine statement.

Image: Toho-Towa

There’s a wonderful physicality to the movie that feels very much true to the world of the games, in which characters exist perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown, trembling with latent anxiety before erupting in spectacular paroxysms. It’s a world that can only be embodied with intense commitment, and Miike’s performers are more than up to the task, throwing themselves with reckless abandon into the madness of the script. Watching Narimiya as Wright and Akiyoshi Nakao as Wright’s friend Larry Butz in particular, as they contort their faces and fling their bodies around in Chaplinesque fashion and relishing every movement as they wage all-out warfare on the very concept of subtlety, feels like exactly the sort of thing for which movies were invented in the first place.

Image: Toho-Towa

The visual choice to have the characters catapulting giant holographic screens at each other is a magical touch, too, evoking the practically visceral sensation of triumph you get from the game when the evidence you present lands a devastating blow to the prosecution’s argument. If anything, Miike’s movie feels less like a legal drama and more like a hybrid between a Howard Hawks screwball comedy, with its ricocheting mayhem and frisson, and a boxing movie, with its savage athleticism — less Some Good MenMore His Girl Friday meets Rocky.

The joy oozing from Miike’s actors as they furiously shout and gesticulate their way through scene after scene of attritional courtroom combat is palpable, and it’s matched by the joy that radiates from Miike himself as he puts it all together. It’s that spirit, the unapologetic glee of it all, that makes Miike’s Ace AttorneyYou feel unique. It’s a rare and precious thing to be watching a movie and feeling as if its makers were having just as much fun as you are. It would suffice to be entertaining and grotesque from the first frame through the last. Ace AttorneyIt fills us up with an additional profound feeling of collective joy that can only be achieved by a movie special, which is the highest standard in its genre.

Ace Attorney It is also available digitally for rental and purchase via Amazon, Apple TV or Google Play.