Web Video / Crossed

All the films presented here will have as a common denominator, a link to video games. Be it a mere adaptation, or a film which reflects on the video game media. Men, women, children: welcome to Crossed.

Crossed is a French Web Video series hosted by Karim Debbache, that ran from February 2013 to April 2014. The topic is simple: films that are either adapted from video games, or are about video games. They can be old or not so old, bad, good or okay, but Karim has a lot of things to say on every one of them, and only 10-15 minutes to say them. While the tone is humoristic and often sarcastic, it is usually peppered with detailed analyses of what did and did not work in said film, as well as comments on its (or its director's) history, or on cinematic techniques in general.

Little sketches often intervene, featuring his two sidekicks Gilles Stella (the show's image and sound manager) and Jérémy Morvan, or Kamel Debbiche, a double of him who is implied to be his second personality^note However, Chroma reveals that he's actually an Alternate Self.. The show is pretty fast-paced, and often draws its humour from it. Crossed's run wasn't very long, as Karim hadn't planned on making more than 25-30 episodes, to avoid a situation where he would have always been repeating the same things after a while.

However, in January of 2016, Karim and his friends started a new show, Chroma, that can be considered a Spiritual Successor to Crossed minus the video game topic, with longer episodes and the analytical aspect pushed further.

If you're curious but don't speak French, here's the first episode subtitled in English.

Not to be confused with the Garth Ennis comic series.

Movies reviewed in Crossed:

• Super Mario Bros. (1993)
• G@mer (a French film featuring Saïd Taghmaoui)
• Silent Hill
• The King of Kong
• House of the Dead
• The Last Starfighter
• Max Payne
• Stay Alive (2006)
• Future Cops
• Alone in the Dark
• WarGames
• Double Dragon (1994)
• Doom
• Street Fighter
• eXistenZ
• Postal (2007)
• The Lawnmower Man — known as Le Cobaye ("the Guinea Pig") in France
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
• Brainscan
• Resident Evil (2002)
• DOA: Dead or Alive
• The other Gamer movie ("Ultimate Game" in France)
• Hitman
• Ra.One ("Voltage" in France)
• The Wizard
• TRON
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

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Tropes found in Crossed

• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Karim mentions it very-briefly during his hyper-fast enumeration of the graveyard fight scene's flaws in House of the Dead (where the Asian girl uses her martial art skills), noting this trope is actually awfully racist. Similarly, in his review of Ra.One, he awkwardly points out that the movie's Chinese character is the one who knows martial arts the best.
• Antagonist Title: In the Ra.One episode, he mentions that the original title is the name of the movie's villain. But it has been changed in the French version, which is known as "Voltage" in France (which is the altered name of the hero).
• Arch-Enemy: Karim regards Uwe Boll as his, as he reviewed three of his movies and condemns his despicable behavior in his review of Postal (2007).
• Audience Surrogate: Kamel often plays this role.
• Brick Joke:
  • At the beginning of the French Gamer, Karim notes that the director Patrick Lévy changed his name to "Zak Fishman" for this film, and wonders if he should take a cool sounding English name himself. The end credits of the episode feature him as "Superman Rockfeller".
  • At the start of his The Lawnmower Man review, Kamel mentions that he always thought control over wood would be a better superpower than Magnetism Manipulation. At the end of the review Karim throws a tree at Kamel, admitting that it is useful.
• The Cameo: The episode focused on the Doom movie contains a scene involving Antoine Daniel.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Karim once warns Kamel that if he insults him once more, he will turn him into Jeremy Morvan eating a sandwich. It's not an empty threat either.
• Curse Cut Short: In the Brainscan review:

  Karim: So the whole time, I was rooting for the cops!
  Kamel: That's funny!
  Karim: Why is that?
  Kamel: Well because you're an ara-

• Department of Redundancy Department: In the Silent Hill review, every sequence taking place in the real world starts with "Meanwhile, in the true real world of actual reality..."
• Designated Hero: In-Universe, Karim explains in the Brainscan review that he views the main protagonist as a teen Jerkass deprived of any redeemed quality, partially explaining why he despises this movie.
• Excuse Plot: While a few of the movies reviewed have this, Karim notes that Mortal Kombat: Annihilation goes beyond that point by not having a plot at all and being basically just a succession of random fights.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Some of the latest episodes have a long subliminal message that appears for a split-second and is always hilarious to read if you pause at the right moment.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: In the G@mer review, when his double calls him out for lying when it seems like the film has nothing to do with video games.
  Kamel: Do you mean you're an asshole who doesn't keep his promises?
  Karim: Of course not, young viewer, I'm an asshole who does keep his promises!
• In Name Only: A few of the adaptations he reviews, obviously (beginning with Super Mario Bros. (1993)), but this is usually not his main complaint − but rather the fact that these films still try to throw winks and references to the original game despite having little connection to them. He actually liked The Spirits Within for not trying to do that.
• Jump Scare: In the Resident Evil (2002) episode, Karim complains that the horrific part of the movie is so bad that the moviemaker added this trope everywhere. The episode features a couple of parodic Jump Scares with a smiling Jérémy appearing while quietly saying "Booh".
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: In the Street Fighter episode, he says that about half of the characters are useless and only there for Pandering to the Base. He then adds that he could make movies himself with this recipe, then shows a short (barely) animated sequence featuring Son Goku, Slash, Totoro, Batman, Freddy Krueger, and ET, hanging out in the street before being arrested by Harry Callahan.
• Musicalis Interruptus: The music often stops in the middle of an explanation of the movie's plot, just the time for Karim to insert a sarcastic remark, before starting again.
• N-Word Privileges: In the Brainscan review, Kamel calls Karim a "bougnoule", which is a derogatory term for people of Arabic descent in France.
• Once Original, Now Common: Invoked, while he admits that the faces in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within often go in the Unintentional Uncanny Valley, he still wants to remind us that the movie was technically way ahead of its time.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The late part of the Doom episode has Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre as a musical background.
• Questionable Casting:
  • In-Universe, during the Alone in the Dark review, it is how Karim reacts to Tara Reid being the archaeologist Aline Cedrac.
  • This is also how he reacted to Christopher Lambert not reprising his role as Raiden in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Because Lambert was working on Beowulf (1999), probably the worst film of his career.
• Running Gag
  • In the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation review:
  Karim: When suddenly…
  Kamel: Brawl!
  Karim: Brawl, yes, but [laconic description of the fight]
  • Gilles is a big fan of Jurassic Park, and will bring it up at every opportunity. Karim is also a fan and often brings up how many years before or after it a movie with bad CGI was released.
  • invoked Karim calls special forces in movies "lones" since the review of Alone in the Dark and him sarcastically explaining to his French audience that the film is true to his title since "alone in the dark" means in French "lot of cops fighting monsters".
• So Bad, It's Good: invoked What he thinks of Future Cops and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. At the end of the latter's review, he even throws a long monologue about what this kind of film can bring to us.
• Sophisticated as Hell: While he usually keeps a polished speech, he's not above dropping a Precision F-Strike here and there.
• Spoiler: The reviews usually have a summary of the whole plot, including the ending. When this is a film about videogame which has a twist ending, he precedes said spoiler by a warning screen advising the viewer to stop the video here if they want to watch the movie and discover the ending by themselves.
  • Averted in the Ra.One episode. He stopped the plot's summary in the middle of the review after stating that the movie was basically a Terminator 2: Judgment Day rip off, and that describing it any longer would just spoil the latter movie.
• Talking to Themself: The show treats the gags where Karim talks to Kamel as this, although this is contradicted in Chroma, which establishes that Kamel is actually Karim's Alternate Self from an Alternate Universe.
• Take That!: Played for Laughs in the quick summary of Mortal Kombat: The Movie.
  Karim: So Liu Kang kicks Shang Tsung's ass because it's not very nice to kill people's brothers, is it, Mr. Henry Fonda?
• Toilet Humor: Mocked in the review of House of the Dead, where he cheers with his friends at each element of the sacred trinity - a puke joke, a pee joke, and a crap joke.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: The Gamer review starts with Karim solemnly declaring that he has a problem he wants to talk about... he likes Crank. Then Jeremy starts talking about his drinking problem but Karim stops him with "It was a joke dude, it's not an actual meeting."
• You Keep Using That Word: In the DOA: Dead or Alive review, Karim points out that the characters constantly use "shinobi" with the meaning of "traitor", while it is in fact just a synonym of "Ninja".

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