Bandersnatch

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Warning: This entry contains spoilers.

About

Bandersnatch is a 2018 interactive film in the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Set in 1984, the Netflix-produced film follows the young programmer Stefan Butler as he adapts a fantasy novel into a video game.

History

On October 1st, 2018, Bloomberg^[1] reported that Netflix was planning a "choose-your-own adventure 'Black Mirror'", an interactive special which would let viewers influence the storyline and ending.

On November 30th, a verified Netflix Twitter account briefly tweeted a release schedule for December 2018, containing a Black Mirror special titled "Bandersnatch", set to be released on December 28th^[2]. The screenshots of the since-deleted tweet were posted by various users^[3].

On December 27th, Netflix released a trailer for the film. Within 4 days, the trailer received over 3 million views. The following day, the Bandersnatch premiered on the platform.^[4]

[This video has been removed]

The word "bandersnatch" is a name of a fictional creature appearing in Lewis Carroll's 1870s poems "Jabberwocky" and "The Hunting of the Snark"^[5]. In the 1980s, the British video game developer Imagine Software was developing a so-called "megagame" Bandersnatch, which was never released as the company disbanded in 1984^[6]. The events of the film begin on July 9th, 1984, the same day Imagine Software was closed.

Film Structure

An interactive film, Bandersnatch contains 150 minutes of unique footage divided into 250 segments^[7]. Through the film progression, the viewer is presented with a series of decisions which affect the plot development and eventually lead to one out several endings. The viewer has 10 seconds to make a choice, or a default decision is made for them^[8]. Default playthrough of the film (without making any choices) is reported to last 90 minutes, while the quickest path lasts only 40 minutes^[9].

On December 28th, 2018, Redditor^[10] Alpine- posted the flowchart of the movie to /r/blackmirror subreddit.

Easter Eggs

During the presentation of the movie at Netflix's headquarters in Los Gatos, California, Bandersnatch director David Slade^[11] revealed that in addition to 10 to 12 "normal" endings the movie contains several difficult-to-reach "golden eggs".

There are scenes that some people just will never see and we had to make sure that we were OK with that. We actually shot a scene that we can’t access.

On December 28th, 2018, AVClub^[12] reported on a way to launch the Nohzdyve video game mentioned in the movie.

Reception

As of December 31, 2018, on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes^[13], the film maintained an 88% audience score with over 530 user ratings submitted. On IMDB^[4], the movie received an 8.0-star rating with 28,167 votes.

Public Reception

Online, the movie has been met with mostly positive reactions^[14]. After the release, numerous memes referencing the interactive movie and its unusual structure began appearing on Twitter and Reddit. Some of the posts made fun of the limited freedom of choice in the movie and being unable to tailor plot progression in a radically different way.