Why Ace Attorney remains the perfect video game adaptation

“Objection!”

First time this is uttered early in Takashi Miikes Ace Attorney feels like a shot of pure adrenaline for fans of the video game series the film is based on. Trying to find a quick foothold in only his second case, rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright (Hiroki Narimiya) immediately goes on the offensive, confident that the evidence he is about to present will reveal a glaring, crucial contradiction in one witness will uncover testimony.

It’s the sheer brio with which the phrase is delivered that makes it so intoxicating: the sudden increase in volume that shocks even Wright’s own clients; the uncompromising extravagance of the iconic finger pointer; the volcanic aggression with which Wright then slams his desk shut and hurls a holographic screen at the unsuspecting police detective on the witness stand.

It’s all so delightfully unnecessary, so wonderfully incidental — according to Phoenix Wright, if you will. And since it’s about those things, it’s the ultimate statement of intent, heralding the film’s readiness to plunge headlong into the unbridled theatrics of video games. What makes the moment feel even more authentic is that we barely have time to register this seemingly triumphant peak before plunging deep into a valley. Believing he has dealt a devastating blow to the prosecution’s case, Wright finds himself within a millisecond of a deficit and on the verge of a crushing defeat. Soon he’s curled up helplessly over his desk, desperate for something – anything – that might somehow save him and his client.

This emotional whiplash is exactly what fans of the Ace Attorney games would expect and demand from a film adaptation – after all, these games are about impossible turns, the violent twists of fate that send you flying from euphoric highs to depressing lows, certain victory to certain defeat and back again, with a snap of your fingers or a blow of a hammer. The film oscillates at a relentless pace that may feel utterly destabilizing for newcomers to Ace Attorney, but feels warmly familiar to those who’ve ever set foot in the game’s courtroom, with its ever-escalating sense of urgency that accompanies it , constantly standing on the precipice of humiliation.

On a tonal level Ace Attorney nails the brief, leaning into the games’ anarchic entropy rather than softening it, and unafraid to alienate entire populations who might be alienated by the stylistic excess or inverted narratives. Miike brings chaos to the fore: the world of his film, like the world of games, is a world where people pull megaphones out of thin air, parrots are put on the witness stand, ghosts of dead lawyers outshine their living counterparts, and everyone boasts a hairstyle beamed from another galaxy. There is a perfect balance between the source material and the director’s creative impulses, which few adaptations achieve. Rising to face the games’ energy, Miike punctuates the film’s aesthetic with scintillating stylistic flourishes: split screens, dolly zooms, and a hell sequence straight from Nobuo Nakagawa jigoku.

A feature-length adaptation of the games, then, is less about the tone and more about the sheer scope of the beast, the overwhelming volume of the visual novel narrative. This mass of pure story is crucial to the gaming experience, as it allows the player to relax after straining through the brutal courtroom duels and cross-examination to the point of an aneurysm. There’s a fair amount of leisurely investigation time in the games, which makes for a nice change of pace as you gather evidence and delve deeper into the characters’ inner workings, perhaps better suited to a longer television format than the big screen (although the anime series , which is based on the games, was far from well received).

Inevitably, Miike’s film aggressively curtails the spread of the first game in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, taking the best bits from three of its five episodes and condensing them into something far slimmer, more manageable and focused to coerce you into submission with absurdity. There are sacrifices in this process: without its original connective tissue, the drawing can sometimes feel a little superficial, the structure a little sloppy. There are character details that are sacrificed too, most notably in the case of Maya Fey (Mirei Kiritani), Wright’s spirit medium assistant: A nuclear bundle of endearing quirks and quirks in the games, her effervescent personality is virtually non-existent in the film, reduced to one mere shell with psychic abilities. Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saitoh), Wright’s childhood friend and courtroom rival, also feels tragically stripped of many of the shades and creases that make him such a compelling character in the games, flatter and less morally complex.

Still, the broad strokes are drawn well enough for the drama to feel personal, and it’s a testament to how perfectly Miike captures the essence of the game’s courtroom sequences that these omissions feel more like nitpicks than deal-breakers. What the film understands perfectly is that one of the great joys of the games is simply playing as a guy who’s kind of terrible at his job. There’s something uniquely delightful about following in the footsteps of Phoenix Wright – a newcomer who never really gets better at what he does over time – as he helplessly whirls around and the judge and jury in search of random objects from his pockets presents a moment of idiotic epiphany that somehow always comes to him.

Wright is never in complete control of a situation, constantly walking the line between accidental genius and criminal incompetence, always relying on a small miracle to save him from seemingly impossible situations – whether it be salvation in the form of a psychic message from his death mentor, his stupid detective friend who arrives at the eleventh hour with groundbreaking evidence, or someone yelling for some ridiculous reason for the trial to be extended. He’s a bystander of fate, a dragon in the storm, and Miike embodies that passivity, spinning his camera around Wright in claustrophobic close-ups while clawing at the stacks of court documents in front of him, perfectly mimicking the trawling gameplay through a maze of opaque information during cross-examination. Also, watch as Wright constantly shifts in and out of focus as he tenses with discomfort while his opponents, paragons of prosecutorial composure, adopt stable, robust compositions.

Outstanding in these compositions is the expectant audience in the courtroom, an amusing feature of the games that Miike amplifies with obvious delight with his trademark hyperbolic streak. Mike’s world Ace Attorney

is a world where a trial is less about stitching together information to unearth truth and justice and more about the gladiatorial spectacle of two competitors watching them beat the life out of one another. Being a lawyer in this world means participating in a blood sport where the public can cheer and roar, screaming for more action with every twist and turn. The film’s reaction shots are huge to the point of hilarity, crammed with visual comedy as the entire crowd reacts in unison to the events: leaning forward to hear crucial information, staring in confusion at increasingly bizarre witnesses, and tipping over in front of you in seismic disbelief stupid statement.

The film has a wonderful physicality very similar to the world of games, where characters are constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, shaking with latent fear before bursting into spectacular fits. It’s a world that can only be embodied with intense commitment, and Miike’s actors are more than up to the task, throwing themselves into the script’s madness with reckless abandon. Watching Narimiya as Wright, and especially Akiyoshi Nakao as Wright’s friend Larry Butz, grimace and fling their bodies around Chaplines-style, enjoying every move while waging an all-out war against the concept of subtlety, feels just like that Things movies were invented for in the first place.

The visual decision to have the characters catapult giant holographic screens at each other is also a magical touch, evoking that practically visceral sense of triumph you get from the game when the evidence you present delivers a devastating blow to the argument of the land prosecutors. If anything, Miike’s film feels less like a legal drama and more like a cross between a Howard Hawks screwball comedy, with its bouncing mayhem and Frisson, and a boxing film, with its fierce athleticism – less A few good men and more His girl Friday meets Rocky.

The joy emanated from Miike’s actors as they scream and gesture wildly is palpable as they prevail scene after scene of the courtroom’s attrition, and is matched by the joy Miike himself exudes as he puts it all together. It is this spirit, the uncompromising joy in everything that makes Miike special Ace Attorney feel so unique. It’s a rare and precious thing to watch a movie and feel like the creators are enjoying it as much as you do. Being insanely entertaining from the first to the last frame would be enough, though Ace Attorney fills us with an even deeper sense of collective ecstasy that only one special film, the gold standard for films of this kind, could achieve.

Ace Attorney can be rented or purchased digitally from Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube.