JMW films is an American Youtube channel which focuses on the Grand Theft Auto Online roleplay server Pro Gamer Network. The owner of the channel, James, is most known for introducing… odd scenarios to the players of this server, which run the gauntlet of Serial Killers and vigilantes all the way up to blatantly supernatural and even apocalyptic events.
The real focus, however, is the Enforced Method Acting of the very unfortunate role players who find themselves embroiled in whatever idea has been cooked up. Frequently, these reactions involve a lot of firepower.
JMW films Tropes:
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: Among the more creative events, James has also menaced his server with a giant floating chainsaw and a giant floating gun.
- Author Avatar: Any times James takes an active role in the roleplay, usually to either introduce that videos threat and/or become that videos threat.
- Ax-Crazy: Maybe every 9 out of 10 times, the thing James introduces is actively hostile to everyone and everything. The most prominent one, however, is Jip Thornville
- Badass Normal: While the natural response by most players is to start running and screaming, even from the police, the moment a threat presents itself is the moment nearly everyone present is going to pull out a gun and start blasting.
- Bedlam House: The Psychiatric Hospital of Los Santos has to actively go out and kidnap people to fill out its patient list, with the only real “disorder” assigned to any of them (if any) being ‘Main Character Syndrome.’ Their actual practices aren’t much better, and that doesn’t even mention the actual ghost in the basement. It says a lot that the previously sane Sole Survivor ends up going crazy after his stay there.
- Blessed with Suck: Seymour has the misfortune of having chainsaws for hands, which is an active hindrance to him in his day to day life, on top of making him a target for harassment. The results are predictable.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Harold, the homeless, gibberish spouting madman, is a recurring character who has displayed the capacity to build, among other things, a working helicopter out of nothing but random garbage.
- Crapsack World: The Los Santos presented in these videos is just a genuinely godawful place to live. On top of the expected criminal gangs and genuine lunatics running around, there are also actual monsters and ghosts running around, some of them ripped straight from the SCP Foundation and which defy the laws of physics so utterly that the only way to survive them is for them to stop on their own. It’s also really funny.
- Genre Savvy: As a consequence of how frequently such things occur, the players on the server are quite a bit more accepting of weird things happening, and will usually be on high alert even before anything hostile occurs. For example, the sight of a Humongous Mecha being trucked into the middle of the city is enough to send several people running in the other direction. When the guy piloting said mech gets fired by his Bad Boss, the people around him immediately start trying to talk him down from Going Postal, for all the good that does.
- Going Postal: The above mentioned Seymour and mecha pilot, but also worth mentioning are the three separate ‘Killdozer’ videos, which follow different disgruntled citizens (all played by James) as they rampage through the city in a souped up bulldozer.
- Haunted House: Haunted mansions, haunted schools, haunted public washrooms, it’s a long list.
- No OSHA Compliance: One video has a waterpark that gets hit by an earthquake and then has a nearby highways traffic rerouted through all of the slides. It just goes From Bad to Worse from there.
- Discounting the above, the limitations of the game engine also didn’t account for people doing things like going down a waterslide. This resulted in a lot of prat falls.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: There are a myriad number of ghosts kicking around, and not one of them is truly the same as the other. Special mention goes to the ghost of a murdered wife, inexplicably returned as a spotlight headed monster.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Every time James has a monster attacking people, it will always look as grotesque as possible, sometimes to the point where it shouldn’t be able to even move properly, let alone attack anyone. This doesn’t even count the number of times the monster is just an oversized inanimate object, either.
- A very good example of this is when he decided to attack people as a walking couch, of all things.
- Police Are Useless: Zig-Zagged. The cops are rarely able to mount a meaningful offensive against the Monster of the Week or Villain of the Week, and, if they do, it’s due to prudent use of Hellcats. It’s certainly not for a lack of trying, it’s just that nearly all of the monsters are in some way Nigh-Invulnerable.
- Serial Killer: Several of them, some examples include:
- A Deranged Taxi Driver
- A shotgun wielding Vigilante Man
- A Cannibal Clan, Leatherface Expy included.
- The most well known, however, is Jip Thornville, who sought out victims at the behest of his deceased wife, and who proved so popular he got his own series of videos.
- Shout-Out: Frequently. Examples include, but are not limited to:
- Christine
- Left 4 Dead
- RoboCop
- The SCP Foundation is used a lot for videos.
- Voice Changeling: Babyheads main gimmick is that it can repeat certain phrases from its previous victims. It’s return video extends this to random, completely new noises.
- Zerg Rush: On the rare occasions that the monsters aren’t impervious to gunfire, they make up for it in sheer numbers. An example would be when James gathered a bunch of his friends to attack the city as a group of… spiders.
