On March 25, 1996, on stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Will Smith announced the winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Babe. Four crew members accepted the award. The last to speak, Scott E. Anderson, spent his precious seconds at the mic saluting the film’s director. "To Chris Noonan," he said, holding the golden statuette aloft, "this is for you, your friends, and your friendship. Thanks a lot."
On May 9, 2021, in a share house in Sydney's inner west, Xavier Rubetzki Noonan was nearing their own Babe triumph. Not only were they completing the PlayStation 2 video game of the same name, but they were claiming the game’s first ever speedrun record in a Twitch livestream. Under Xavier’s careful guidance, Babe moved one last sheep into the pen, and the screen lit up with fireworks, a gold trophy, and the words "Champion Pig - Well Done" written in Comic Sans. "World record!" Xavier cheered, before cautiously adding: "Maybe!"
Xavier would be the first to admit this doesn’t quite match the globally televised spectacle of the Oscars. Nevertheless, it is the unique and charming way they have honoured their uncle Chris, whose name adorns the beloved story of a pig turned sheepherder that just marked its 30th anniversary.
With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97% and a further four Oscar nominations, Babe is a considerable artistic achievement in the Noonan family. It entered Xavier’s life at a very young age, when Chris sent them letters from the set in Robertson, Australia. Being too young to appreciate the magnitude of the George Miller-produced endeavour, Xavier enjoyed more innocuous details.
“This isn’t a movie that’s full of every kid’s favourite movie star,” they told Aftermath. “If I had heard that Danny DeVito was involved or something, that would have warmed me up a bit. But instead of getting any of that information, I was being told, ‘We did a big scene with ducks today. There were so many ducks.’ And that was what was getting me fired up as a kid. ‘Woah, my uncle met a horse?'"
Global audiences enjoyed the movie’s plentiful talking animals, but its pastoral charm and fierce championing of kindness have made it stand the test of time. For Xavier, the personal connection planted it firmly in the land of the real, even as it landed Uncle Chris on an Oscars broadcast with the likes of Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey – a “mind-boggling assortment of people,” as Xavier put it. And once the statuette came home and years rolled on, the whole affair played an important, though not all-encompassing, role in Xavier’s own love for the film. “I think part of what interested me about cinema in my early years of liking movies was ‘what is this thing that my uncle did?’ And rather than probably just talking to him about it or getting a better understanding through him, I was just trying to pull this apart for my own.”
Adulthood brought about several idiosyncratic pursuits in Xavier’s life, including musical performance with beloved Australian pop acts like Ben Lee and Dr Spaceman, a decade of podcasting on the reality TV recap series Bachelor of Hearts, and a prolific run of cinematic musings on Letterboxd. But when COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 drastically limited such endeavours, the porcine family legacy revealed itself again in a most unexpected way.
First to fill the void of interaction for Xavier was Twitch streaming, which was enjoying a wider audience in this unprecedented time. “There was a real concerted effort to make Twitch not just a place for gaming and gamers,” Xavier said, “despite the fact that I ended up just using it for gaming stuff anyway.” Xavier started their own streaming career with Clone Hero guitar sessions, then crossed over into playthroughs of games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil (2002). Later, Xavier found inspiration in speedrunning, the subculture that breaks beloved titles into small parts by finishing them as quickly as possible. Most inspiring of all to Xavier was the way it didn’t discriminate between good and bad games. Sometimes, the more scorned the game was, the more entertaining its run could be.
Xavier plays music during a stream
Xavier saw the chance to spotlight unloved games from their youth, and they didn’t come much more unloved than licensed movie tie-ins, games that turned successful blockbusters into insipid but profitable merchandise for children. Xavier vividly remembers one instance of this during a teenage birthday, when they asked for a copy of the unmistakable mega-hit Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. “My parents cottoned on to some of the stuff that was going on in there, and they were like, ‘that’s not gonna happen.’ So instead, they got me Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, the movie, the game, for the PlayStation 2. You could not imagine a more disappointing birthday!”
Out of this mildly traumatic memory came a desire to broaden the scope of speedrunning past its usual suspects and into the uninspiring brand products of yesteryear. Hence, Xavier’s speedrun.com profile boasts record-setting runs for a murderer’s row of licensed fare, including The Bachelor for Nintendo DS, two different Paddington Bear games (one of Xavier’s favourite series), and – most importantly – a 2006 PS2 game based on the same plucky pig that catapulted their uncle to the world stage.
Babe for PS2 is a punishing game. It was developed by Blast Entertainment, which in its relatively short existence from 2006 to 2009 put out several shovelware spin-offs like Garfield’s Lasagna World Tour, Mr Bean, and Little Britain: The Game, the latter of which boasts a 4.2 on Metacritic. The premise of its Babe reduction makes basic sense: play as Babe himself, herd sheep into their pens, and become the best sheep-pig in history. Where this goes awry is its isometric puzzle gameplay, which turns “baa ram ewe” into a maddening trial of Sokoban block-sliding. The player must use Babe to push sheep through labyrinthine paddocks, airports, and hotels, all built on an isometric grid, but since that grid’s boundaries are invisible, consistently determining where the sheep will wind up is a Herculean effort. Add doors, keys, and Kevin MacLeod music loops to the mix, and you have a concoction of despair that any sensible child would spit out like a bad taste.
“One thing that defines Babe,” Xavier said, “is the way that you fall in love with all of the characters, both human and non-human, and both villainous and heroic. It is a movie about getting to know the inner lives of these animals. And the game’s the complete opposite of that.”
But with a family name to uphold, Xavier could not be discouraged from setting the game’s first speedrun record… though not with too much effort. “Preparation was what someone did if they weren’t related to the director of the movie on which the cheap tie-in cash-grab game was partially related, you know?” Xavier joked. “For me, it was just like, ‘I’m gonna rock up and own this, because that’s my legacy. I’m part of my family, and so this will flow through me. I am the chosen one.’”
On a momentous Sunday afternoon in 2021, Xavier went live on Twitch and sought their destiny. They remember the two-plus hours as an amusing time full of jovial interactions with viewers. “A huge amount of positivity came from the chat, [and that was] a huge amount of what allowed me to stick through it, even as the many frustrations of the game begin to pile up. It really is just so exhausting.”
There were points in the run when Xavier lost their way and had to restart a level, during which they received frequent encouragement from their ebullient partner Evie, who also helped by organising dinner, drawing pigs, and answering chat requests for a guitar shred despite not being a musician. There was a palpable sense of relief, rather than pride, when they claimed the virtual gold trophy, and the whole thing would hardly have been out of place at GDQ.
Years later, despite Xavier’s extended absence from both streaming and speedrunning, the record remains uncontested. Xavier posited a simple reason why: “The game’s very bad, and I was visibly having a bad time playing it.”
But the internet’s appetite for strange gaming achievements is boundless. When asked how they might feel about this article summoning challengers for the top spot, Xavier said, “There’s a part of me that feels a little defensive, I won’t lie. This was a big moment for me, and obviously the family connection is there. But I think I applaud anybody who wants to subject themselves to this. I want there to be a community around these things. Come at me, please, if you’ve got roughly two hours and 40 minutes spare. Let’s do it!”
And does Uncle Chris, who delivered “that’ll do, pig” to the world and brought this about in the first place, have any notion of what’s happened?
“I mentioned that I was playing the game to him, and he said he was not aware that there was a game. And then he was happy for me, I think, in a vaguely brushing-off kind of way. I don’t think I ever told him I am the world record holder, which feels crazy.” Xavier laughed. “Maybe I should call him today, you know?”
