Bad Times at the Battle Royale is the premiere film from Alderson Productions that originally premiered at the Port Moody Inlet Theatre in Canada, British Columbia on March 5th, 2023. Almost a month after the initial Port Moody premiere, the film was made available to stream and download for free on the Internet Archive on March 30th, 2023.
After getting teased by Jason many, many times, Johnson learns about a battle royale tournament with the grand prize being whatever one's heart desires. He and a close friend of his sign up for the competition and do battle in five different sporting events with other competitors, though not all is as it seems...
Bad Times at the Battle Royale contains examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: As part of Jason's sabotage in the penalty shootout round, Johnson gets crushed by a cow right as he scores the final goal of the match.
- An Aesop: Treat others with kindness and respect, even when it isn't the easiest thing to do.
- Beat the Curse Out of Him: After the other characters learn that Jason didn't always start out antagonistic, this makes the fight to the death between Johnson and Jason this.
- Bookends:
- The movie starts with a "Pan from the Sky" Beginning and ends with a "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending.
- The actual tournament has Johnson celebrate his first round and final round victories with a victory dance.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Jason became the jerk he was after unknowingly digesting a glass of apple juice with a small drop of a broken heart inside. After that, he started bossing everyone around and forced Emily to work for him lest she and her family perish.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- Near the start of the Ping-Pong match, after Chris P. Bacon mentions how the contest is held in a place of worship, Dick Dickenson replies with "We didn't have the funds, OK?"
- The 50 second timer for the Hide-and-Seek match doesn't actually run for 50 seconds, something that Dick Dickenson finds unusual. After the 50-second timer magically resumes right before the seeker reveals themselves:Dick Dickenson: And NOW the timer's close to running out. What, were the writers just lazy?
- Bully Hunter: Subverted. Johnson mentions at the start of the movie how he would much prefer getting even with Jason, but Hélène tells him not to do so unless it was in self-defense. Sure enough, come the final battle, Johnson does indeed fight back...in self-defense.
- Character Narrator: After all the loose ends are tied up but before the credits, Elizabeth's voice summarizes the story and gives An Aesop about treating others fairly.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Elizabeth interrupts the quiz show round, publicly announces everything Jason did to sabotage the tournament and then disqualifies him on the spot, leaving Johnson free to win the grand prize due to having accumulated the most points out of everyone else up to that point. A lovely story! If only it ended there...
- Chekhov's Gun: Right after Jason leaves his secret hideout to announce his intentions to fight Johnson in the final round, Emily eventually follows suit with a water bottle. Might not seem like much, but it becomes instrumental when Emily throws that same bottle of Rejuvajuice at Jason's face in an effort to Beat the Curse Out of Him and remove the traces of a broken heart within his system.
- Cuckoo Finger Twirl: Carlos gives this signal to Jason after the latter insults his soccer talent.
- Curse Cut Short:
- The movie cuts to a scene involving Jason and Emily as Carlos gets out the words "Oh that no-good, son of a—"
- A later scene has Jason say "Why you fat piece of sh—" but gets interrupted with Emily saying "Shouldn't we save the colorful language until after the battle?"
- Don't Explain the Joke:Jason: Don't tell me he didn't fall for our soccer-tage!
Emily: Soccer-tage?
Jason: It's a play on words. Get it?
Emily: No, sir, I don't get it. - Dope Slap: Elizabeth gives one to Jason during the freeze-frames that accompany the final battle.
- Double Take: Johnson does these...a lot.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Emily appears alongside the others in the lobby prior to the start of the tournament. She doesn't play her first major role in the story until after the ping-pong match.
- Epic Fail: Jason loses every single round of the tournament, never winning any points and staying in last place until he gets ousted as a cheater and disqualified right at the end.
- Face–Heel Turn: Before the events of the story, Jason becomes more mean-spirited and evil after drinking a glass of apple juice with a drop of broken heart inside.
- Foreshadowing: Prior to the scene where Elizabeth explains the cup-stacking rules, Emily follows the competitors close behind with a ball in her hand. Sure enough, she throws that same ball in an effort to sabotage Johnson and Heng's round.
- Funny Background Event: In two separate scenes, Hatsuka ends up playing rock-paper-scissors with other characters in the background, while some plot-important discussion occurs in the foreground.
- Grief Song: "The Dying Swan Song" qualifies, as it's about Emily's previous relationship with Jason before he turned evil.
- Head Desk: Johnson does this repeatedly in the quiz show after he realizes that Jason's memorized most of the answers ahead of time and is inputting them before the Quiz-Tron 6,000 can even ask the given questions.
- Heel–Face Turn: After the Rejuvajuice bottle removes the traces of a broken heart within Jason's sytems, he's a lot friendlier than he was previously and makes ammends with Emily, Johnson and everyone else.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: This is how Johnson wins the hide-and-seek match. Having an inkling that the match was rigged against him, he successfully tricks Hatsuka into hiding under the blanket covers seconds before the ghost arrives to search all the blanket covers specifically. Johnson's hiding spot? Out in the open on a patio playing video games.
- Ironic Echo: Literally. Before unveiling the quiz show, Emily notes that "most battle royales will have a fight to the death as the last round" before subverting those expectations with the quiz show reveal. Later, as part of the haunted ambience after Jason forced Johnson into a fight to the death, one of the continuously repeating and echoing lines of dialogue is that very same line.
- Laughing at Your Own Jokes: After Johnson figures out the pun with Carlos' statement "Hope no sabotages kick in this time," Carlos also laughs at the joke with Johnson.
- Literal-Minded: Heng occasionally gets reminded that she doesn't need to sing every single word all the time.
- Madness Mantra: As all the other characters eventually realize that Jason forced Johnson into a fight to the death, various pieces of dialogue from earlier in the movie have been mutated primarily into repetitions of the lines "Battle royales will have a fight to the death as the last round" and "Try your hardest and you might just win a battle or two."
- Medium Blending: Stick figure sketches are used to illustrate the rules for the current round of the tournament. Stop-motion animation is used to illustrate Jason's broken heart dissipating after he is hit with the Rejuvajuice bottle.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The movie trailer doesn't show any clips of the quiz show at all and makes it seem like the fight to the death is the final round of the tournament.
- Non-Indicative Name: The battle royale tournament itself. According to Hélène, the fine print on the poster even acknowledges how inaccurate of a name it is. As does one of the commentators, Chris P. Bacon, at the start of the Ping-Pong match. Even the trailer calls it the "inaccurately-named yet incredibly varied battle royale tournament."
- Off Screen Crash: Happens twice — the first time occurs as Elizabeth hurries over to help set up the penalty shootout, the second time comes from Johnson's medical treatment after the cow crush.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: The ghost that serves as the seeker in hide-and-seek is a plush toy of a Boo from the Super Mario series, attached to one end of an off-camera fishing rod to create the illusion of it floating.
- Pac Man Fever: Averted with the session of Kirby and the Forgotten Land Johnson's playing near the end of hide-and-seek. Although one cannot see gameplay footage, the actual in-game music and sound effects can be heard and Johnson does play the game correctly.
- "Pan from the Sky" Beginning: This is how the movie starts, with a quick camera pan down from the clouds to the parking lot outside the institution building where the movie takes place.
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: After everyone goes in for a group hug near the end of the movie, the camera pans up to the clouds before the credits roll.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Two of the music tracks that begin the climax are excerpts of "Carnival of the Animals" from Camille Saint-Saëns and "Brahms' Lullaby." Some of the other public domain tracks spread throughout are compositions from Kevin MacLeod and Alexander Nakarada.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
- Jason: I SAID NO WAY! NOT YET!
- Product Placement: The cups used for the cup-stacking contest are plastic cups sold in Popeye's Supplements stores around Canada. Chris P. Bacon even mentions the supplement store by name during the commentary for the match.
- Rhymes on a Dime: The sheet of paper that Hatsuka reads prior to "The Dying Swan Song:"Normally the best is saved for last,
but this time it's not,
listen carefully but be warned:
you'll mainly see distraught. - Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Johnson tries this after Jason announces his intentions to kill him in a fight to the death, but fails as he realizes that he and Jason are fenced in with no escape.
- Shout-Out:
- The movie title itself references Bad Times at the El Royale.
- Heng occasionally singing her sentences out loud instead of speaking them references Sven doing the same thing in the VeggieTales video Lyle the Kindly Viking.
- Johnson performs the Kirby Dance twice: once after winning the Ping-Pong match and once after winning the tournament as a whole after Jason's disqualification. These also serve as Bookends to the battle royale tournament as a whole.
- The video game Johnson plays near the end of the hide-and-seek match is Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
- After Jason whispers most of his cup-stacking sabotage plan to Emily, their comments of "I like it! It's sneaky! And it just...might...work!" is pulled from the very first VeggieTales video, Where's God When I'm S-Scared?
- Some of the various guesses by the competitors as to what round 3 would be include Super Smash Bros. and Apple Scramble.
- The cow-crushing scene is reminiscent of a similar one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Shortly after that scene takes place, Johnson even refers to said moment as "getting crushed by a cow Monty Python-style."
- While he undergoes medical treatment after the cow crush, Johnson utters "Jamblasted!", a quotation used occasionally by Flamberge and Zan Partizanne of the Three Mage-Sisters in Kirby Star Allies.
- The equation "12 x 2 ÷ 2 x 2 ÷ 2 - 6 + 1" from Inanimate Insanity is one of the questions asked during Hélène and Carlos' quiz-show round.
- Buzz-Saw Louie, his "Billy has more toys than you!" catchphrase and the town of Puggslyville from The Toy That Saved Christmas are brought up during the quiz show round.
- The looping, echoing voices prior to "The Dying Swan Song" are done in the same manner as "Eternal Echo of the Thrilling Tour-our-our" from Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
- "The Dying Swan Song" itself is named after both the "Dying Swan" ballet popularized by Anna Pavlova and the "swan song" terminology used for someone's last hurrah in a work of art. To complete the reference, the Dying Swan ballet is performed to "Le Cygne" from "The Carnival of the Animals," which is used as background music for the song in this movie.
- The scene where Hatsuka is used as a battering ram to open some doors references the equivalent scene from Toy Story 2. The camera angles used are even nearly identical to the source movie in question.
- Source Music: Used lots with the scenes inside the institution building, with music that sounds like it's coming from a PA speaker.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played with. Most aspects of the hide-and-seek and cup-stacking sabotages don't exactly work because key details are said aloud by Jason. By the time the penalty shootout is about to start, Emily catches on and outright lampshades it to him.Emily: Although next time you tell me your plan, you don't say tiny parts of it or the whole thing out loud.
Jason: Why not?
Emily: Anytime you do, the plan tends to backfire. If those movies I watched on my cable box were of any indication... - Unstoppable Rage: Johnson after he gets the upper hand against Jason in the final battle.
- Use Your Head: When they're unable to exit the institution doors leading to the sports field where the final battle takes place, Hélène, Heng and Carlos use Hatsuka as a human battering ram to bust the doors open.
- We Used to Be Friends: Jason and Emily were once close friends until Jason drank the broken heart-filled apple juice one day and became evil as a result.
- Wham Line:Hélène: So Jason wasn't the bad guy after all?
Carlos: That must have been the most surprising thing I've heard all day.
Hatsuka: This can't be true! It just can't!
Emily: Unfortunately, it is true. - Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Johnson had won the final round of the tournament and secured the Grand Prize as a whole, due to accumulating the most points out of everyone else in the competition. Elizabeth is eager to give Johnson the prize right away, but Jason has other plans...
