The trailer for Mother to earth
At this point, a dozen years of the platform’s existence, Kickstarter documentaries are by no means a new thing. The projects that originated in it have won virtually all film awards, from premieres at major festivals to Oscars. But for each Elstree 1976 or I’m a big bird, it seems that Kickstarter offers at least 50 projects that seem a little too niche, a little low budget or a little amateurish. Earlier this month, you could watch a movie about the life of a UK Staffordshire Bull Terrier who skated or about common weeds you can eat, for example. (Disclosure: I once supported a Kickstarter documentary about a group of friends traveling to see the LCD Soundsystem play “All My Friends”, because … I was a silly college boy?)
In the paper, Mother to earth it looks like it belongs to the 50s, not the others. It’s a video game documentary not about Earthbound, not about the franchise the game belongs to (the Mother trilogy), and not even about the original release of the trilogy that inspires the name of the documentary. Instead, directors Joshua Bone-Christian and Evan Butler had a hyperfocus in mind within this (admittedly already niche) realm: they wanted to trace the story of how a specific English language Mother prototype cartridge. It leaked from Nintendo headquarters in the early 1990s before landing online at a ROM dump around the turn of the century, so it finally encouraged Nintendo to launch the game on the WiiU virtual console as Earthbound Beginnings in 2015. (Ufa.)
To be honest, Mother to earth is the kind of documentary that you can hardly believe exists. It’s a niche project about a niche project, the kind of thing that the production team probably wouldn’t have been able to do in an era before crowdfunding. But if you have a moderate interest in online fandom, Earthbound, or preserving the history of the video game, you will be happy that they succeeded. Mother to earth it turned out to be a surprising reminder that today even the strangest of topics has the potential to find an audience, grow with the encouragement of that small but dedicated support system, and finally deliver something fascinating.
Across the land
It is impossible not to admire the exhaustive research behind Mother to earth. Apparently, this film focuses on a small moment (a prototype cartridge listed on eBay) for a small project (an NES JRPG that has never been released in the United States). But it never seems like a glorified YouTube explainer because of all the legwork, reasoning and care put into the film transparently. Team members had already put in two years of work, research and investigation to connect all the disparate bits of information known behind eBay Mother prototype when they launched and funded Kickstarter in 2016 … and the finished film did not debut until end of 2019. This is a documentary that is not afraid to show its work, and it seems that Bone-Christian and Butler deserved that right. The topic may be restricted, but Mother to earth explores every facet of it in just over 90 minutes.
Without revealing all the juicy and nerdy details revealed through this research, just consider its scale. THE Mother to earth The team goes to Japan just to interview an obsessed product collector and a beginner composer of video game scores. Filmmakers track real people behind online comments or identifiers that claim “first!” on message board topics about the existence of this prototype. And on top of that, they also make an effort to arrest all the established voices you’d like to speak at this point – the Nintendo employees who translated the game or tested it, legal experts who can comment on the shades of gray involved with ROM pouring out an old and unprecedented game, and the DIY hackers who initially did the thing that inspired the whole project.
The most impressive achievement, however, may be that Mother to earth you don’t get lost in those details. Instead, the film constantly frames each granular search adventure within the context of Bone-Christian and Butler’s central quest. A lot of this happens when filmmakers appear on camera in quick interstitials to contextualize what we just saw and how it fits into the bigger picture. Well, Bone-Christian and Butler “appear” – some from From mother to earth crowdfunding probably went to the charming touches of production on display. For example, directors often appear as clippings against a Twin Peak-y curtain to provide narration or illustrate important moments of reference of the interviewees (but this happened years ago, which means that there is no filming to offer).
If you’re the type who likes exhaustive homework and little details, Mother to earth will reach a sweet spot. As the filmmakers summed up at the end of their work, “We tracked a random file that we downloaded more than two decades ago on some random website where it came from where it is today, within two decades.” But another of Mother earth obsessive people interviewed by Mother to earth you can have an even better package than your viewers expect. “In any culture,” begins Koala, a pseudonym Earthbound Japan-based goods collector / archivist, “if there are no crazy people, the culture will not be preserved, right?”
Mother to earth is available to rent or buy on Vimeo. The film has also made selected regional screenings in locations where cinemas are open, such as Texas. See the movie’s Facebook page for updates.
Listing image for Mother to Earth