I’m about to tell you that a documentary of one man’s quest to dethrone the reigning Donkey Kong champion is one of the best documentaries I have seen in a long time. You have to realize The King of Kong is not just a film about man-sized children geeking out over arcade games. It’s about man’s ego and the desire to leave a legacy. It’s about celebrity and the things people will do to preserve it. It’s about picking yourself up off the ground after a lifetime of defeat and continuing to strive for perfection no matter what the psychological cost.The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters concerns the conflict between two main characters: Billy Mitchell, the self-assured reigning champion of Donkey Kong who has held that title since the early 1980s, and Steve Wiebe, a sad-sack father of three, who upon getting laid-off from Boeing in 2005 decides to play Donkey Kong obsessively. Surprising everyone, most of all himself, he reaches a level good enough to compete with the champ.
Along with those two main characters are countless other nerds, losers and dweebs (though after watching the film you probably won’t see them that way). Some support Billy, mostly out of reverence to the master (even when he refuses to play Steve face to face) and some, including Roy “Mr. Awesome” Shildt, who has a long running grudge against Billy, support Steve. Battle lines are drawn, names get called and it starts to get ugly.
Watching the die hard gamers play, you see a strange serenity and seriousness come over them. Seen in their element, (parked in front of a glowing, beeping arcade game) these societal misfits become athletes, intense with concentration, emboldened by competition. The documentary enters you into their world of classic arcade games and doesn’t pass judgment on them or offer them up to be laughed at by the audience. And that is one of the reasons The King of Kong is such a great documentary. It immerses you completely in a subculture most people would never encounter and changes your opinion of that subculture with honest depictions of that world's inhabitants and several servings of humor. Sure the gamers are a bit obsessive and socially awkward, but you’ll come away looking at these men as competitors with drive and ambition, not just as pale dorks huddled in a dark arcade.
