Although the documentary Quadruple Gods (now available on Max) features the first esports team comprised entirely of quadriplegics. Don’t expect the usual inspirational documentary clichés. Director Jess Jacklin takes a more nuanced and immersive approach as she follows three members of the Quad Gods around New York City, gaining insight into the lives they lead, their aspirations, and the limitations they face, and shows us how adaptive gaming is therapeutic for these men, and more than just a means of escape or entertainment.
SQUARE GODSSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: This documentary sets up its themes in a simple scene: The Quad Gods build their gaming avatars. They are men who have survived traumatic events and adapted to lives with significantly limited physical movement. They had to reinvent themselves. Creating a digital version of yourself that is a fantasy warrior is fun if you’re not disabled, but for these people, it feels like a necessity. We meet Dr. David Putrino, known as “the Quadfather”—not because that’s his gaming nickname, but because he’s an advocate of gaming as therapy for quadriplegics. His work at the Mount Sinai Abilities Research Center claims that equipping quadriplegics with adaptive equipment (modified controllers range from mouth-controlled ones to pads with large buttons) and encouraging them to play video games helps them rebuild their often-shattered mind-body connection. It’s also an ongoing therapeutic outlet that is increasingly valuable in a medical system that too often adheres to a “so long, good luck” methodology, pushing quadriplegics quickly through rehabilitation and then out into a not always particularly adaptable world, to fend for themselves for the rest of their lives.
Jacklin spends much of the film getting to know three of the Quad Gods, based in New York City: Richard Jacobs (username Breadwinner1007) is the Quad Gods’ highly competitive leader, a single father who was shot by the men who robbed him. Prentice Cox (aka Mongoslade) is a former football player who was in a terrible motorcycle accident and now stares at the assistive exoskeleton at Mount Sinai, hoping it will one day help him walk again. And Blake Hunt (aka Repnproof) is another former football player who broke his neck on the field when he missed a tackle and now cruises the streets in his wheelchair, delivering food for Uber Eats. We hang out with them as they navigate New York, working, dating, and meeting up for gaming sessions. They also share their struggles: how they lost friends, became addicted to painkillers, struggled with their self-esteem. For them, Quad Gods is not only a therapeutic practice, but an opportunity for camaraderie.
Jacklin doesn’t get carried away by a traditional narrative that follows the Quad Gods to a big gambling tournament. For lack of a better word, she integrates the documentary crew into the lives of the three men: Richard drives an adapted car on a track (the first time he’s gotten behind the wheel since his injury) and is moved to tears, having long believed he’d never drive again. Blake goes to dinner and a movie with a quadriplegic woman, and she (rather adorably, I might add) holds onto the back of his wheelchair as he speeds them through the city. Prentice visits a specialist for an exam to determine if he’s physically qualified to try to stand and walk in the exoskeleton, and gets some good news. We get a closer look at their lives as inpiduals and as Quad Gods, and beyond that, we get a sense of what “winning” means to them. It’s powerful stuff.
What movies will it remind you of? Excellent Netflix documentary Crip Camp: A Revolution for the Disabledon the origins of a vital human rights movement, is a good companion piece to Quadruple Gods.
Performance worth watching: I will use this space to remind you that showing vulnerability – as the protagonists of this documentary do – opens us up to love.
Memorable dialogue: Richard on the empowerment he felt when he learned the therapeutic attributes of gaming and formed an esports team: “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was almost an immediate feeling of belonging.”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: Quadruple Gods is the documentary as reunion film, Jacklin lets her most powerful scenes take shape through simple observation. The director sometimes employs interviews with her three main protagonists and others on their periphery (friends, family, doctors, experts), but they are complementary; she also uses Into the Spider-Verse-meets-videogame animation as a way to imagine a world where these men are virtual warriors, their avatars in motion. In reality, they’re just as robust: take the slightly harrowing scene where Blake and some friends wheel their wheelchairs through the streets of New Jersey at top speed with traffic—they’re not exactly handicap-friendly—on their way to a convention (“wheelchair-friendly comic con,” is how it’s described) and end up getting a police escort. Or the moment when Richard meets with a quadriplegic teenager to tell him all about the Quad Gods and adaptive gaming, the necessary first step in helping this kid get back on his feet.
The film thus proves inspiring in a less obvious, self-evident way. Jacklin presents the stories of his protagonists with the empathy and complexity they deserve, capturing vulnerable moments that reveal the joys and pains of their lives: After a tough gaming session in preparation for a tournament, the intensely competitive Richard faces off against Blake, who is content to accept defeats in stride rather than make winning everything. They visit the family of a quadriplegic friend who died suddenly after an infection. They discuss smoking marijuana as a means of easing chronic pain or taming uncontrollable spasms. They ride along New York sidewalks and pass a shady massage parlor and we hear one of them joke, “I’m thinking there’s a ladder between me and a happy ending.” Quadruple Gods It’s not about winning the big tournament, which implies a beginning and an end; it’s about the process of getting better, of getting through life despite its difficulties, and doing so with great empathy.
Our calling: PASS IT ON. Quadruple Gods It is a stylistically and thematically fascinating documentary, memorable for its emotional honesty.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
