Paintball - A Movie That Somebody Just Had to Make
Rather than trying to create a story that deals with the sport of paintball, Daniel Benmayor (director) and Mario Schoendorff (writer) have created a horror movie that apparently deals with paintball. The basic plot is that a group of strangers come together for a weekend of paintball, but rather than playing with paint, someone is shooting real guns.
The whole idea of integrating the sport of paintball seems to just be an excuse to get a bunch of people out in the woods where they can't call for help. I can almost hear the Jaws theme now.
When you look at production pictures ("fotogramas" at the bottom of the page) you do see some interesting paintball gear setups, though they also only wear goggles over their eyes (obviously because of the difficulty in showing emotion through a real paintball mask). I'm hopeful that some positive aspects of the sport will be shown, but I have serious doubts.
I don't know whether the movie will ever be widely released, but just the title does raise some interesting questions. What would it take to actually make an interesting movie about paintball that would accurately reflect the sport? Could such a movie ever be made and distributed by a major studio? What kind of a story would interest the non-paintball crowd? If you have any ideas, please share them. While the movie Paintball might be much better than it sounds, it's unlikely to become the new face of the sport in the mainstream media.
This would be terrible for the sport, just what we need is for people to think they can get shot with real guns…Here’s what I think for a movie, have it where it’s an afterthought in a teen movie where the popular kids play speedball(a fast paced form of paintball for those who don’t know). That way it makes paintball seem like something cool to do.