Screen Rant is pleased to present an exclusive clip from the upcoming video-on-demand release of Virtually Heroes. Ten years after it was originally screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, the film is finally set to release to a wide audience. Virtually Heroes was executive produced by Roger Corman (Frankenstein Unbound, The Wild Angels), and directed and produced by GJ Echternkamp (Frank and Cindy, The Car: Road to Revenge). The film stars Robert Baker (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Brent Chase (Shameless), Katie Savoy (How I Met Your Mother), and Mark Hamill (Star Wars). Virtually Heroes will be released on video on demand on January 17th.
This Call of Duty-inspired story features two self-aware characters who must battle endless enemies and their own existential crises in a video game world. Sgt. Books (Baker) seeks help and finds riddles in the straight-talking Monk (Hamill) whose personality recalls a similar enigmatic character Hamill himself had to face in The Empire Strikes Back. In Virtually Heroes, Monk teaches Books the “cheat codes of life” which enable him to break free from the endless battles and damsel-in-distress rescues that the game keeps putting him through. With this breakthrough, he just might convince his fellow gaming warrior Lt. Nova (Chase) that this game world may not be as awesome as it seems, as the following exclusive clip presented by Screen Rant will attest.
What To Expect From Virtually Heroes
Screen Rant’s exclusive clip from Virtually Heroes sets the stage with a scene that appears straight out of a ’70s war film. Books and Nova are trapped on a boat while their adversaries set up on a bridge overlooking the river. Books exclaims that this is his least favorite way to die, but Nova is ready and willing to enter the fray and take what he seems to think is a heroic death. Queue his jumping off the boat towards danger, while Books undergoes a scene familiar to gamers everywhere – the search for the correct weapon. He slowly works his way through his cache of pistols, rifles, and even what appears to be a paint palette before he pulls the weapon he’s been looking for the whole time. With this trusty rocket launcher, he’s able to easily dispatch his enemy, and take out the bridge they inhabit. One is left only to wonder what happened to Nova.
The trailer gives a further look at the self-aware Virtually Heroes and the characters that populate the film, and Sgt. Books during one of his many mundane in-game deaths. Books is weary of his world and the ever-churning brutality and death. When he meets the Monk in the jungle, he gets some engimatic wisdom that leads him on a new path. With the help of his own in-game start-up menu, he and Nova will seek a new path away from the monotony of destruction.
Virtually Heroes takes its place on a 2023 slate ripe with gaming adaptations across film and television. On January 15th the highly anticipated adaptation of zombie game The Last of Us begins airing on HBO and streaming on HBOMax. Chris Pratt will debut his take of an Italian American accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie in April. The Witcher will premiere its 3rd season, and final with Henry Cavill in the title role, on Netflix this summer. The biggest role-playing game in the world will give its second shot at a theatrical film release with Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Virtually Heroes will be released on video on demand on January 17.