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Assorted Video Game Movies in Development
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Filmforce has a solid round-up of video game movies currently in development. From Alone In The Dark to Doom to Dead or Alive (yes, it includes an Extreme Beach Volleyball scene), some interesting reading on the current progress, or lack thereof, of current video game flicks."
Mario Bros. - The Movie- Sucked
Street Fighter The Movie - Sucked
Pokemon Movies- Mostly suck, but one of the movies is a Monoke rip-off, which makes it cool...
I will say that The Wizard was cool, but it was not so much a movie based on a video game as it was a movie about kids growing up in an age when video games were starting to be taken seriosly as an entertainment medium. I'd like to see more movies about gamer culture and less bad Van Dam as Guile pieces of crap...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I see no difference between these games and gangster movies since the silend black-and-white movie. Hell, I could name movies with Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris or Clint Eastwood that would fit any of these games. All the producers have to do is to re-release these old movies, slap a new name on them and they are done.
Did anybody consider that games are influenced by movies, and thus making a movie based on a game that was inspired by a movie is a little redundant?
Yeah, it would have made a great movie, but only because it has zombies in it, I mean it's not like a movie was going to be based on any other plot line the game had. Which is my problem with setting games on movies, its just a background to have actors run around in, not even a landscape.
I can only really think of Final Fantasy where you could even vaguely base a movie on its plot, and even then it will be a pretty damn thin plotline. Game based movies have to be of the action variety at the moment, there is no character development, no intrigue, no qualities to make a decent script from. Games are only approaching the levels of cheap, cliched comic book story telling, and until they reach Watchman status, the only thing I want to see in game based movies are explosions, zombies and hot chicks.
So I guess I'm getting what I want.
I agree that it was probably trying to celebrate and parody the genre, but I really don't think it pulled it off, for a few reasons:
A. It was parodying the wrong genre. The game was obviously a 'John Woo rip-off'. But hell, most of John Woo's stuff is already parody. Witness how much even a lesser Woo film like Mission Impossible 2 is parody. It mocks Tom Cruise (the hero) the whole time - it cinematically undermines him throughout the film. It is constantly deconstruction the masculinity of the protagonist. But Max Payne's stupid writing was a parody of Western hard-boiled detective noir, which is a very different genre. It didn't fit together cohesively, IMO.
B. The writing was inconsistent. Some of the lines were extremely over-the-top in their poor writing ("ice pitchforks") - by themselves they are parody. But a lot of the lines (I am thinking of that "lit up like a Christmas tree" one for example) just sound like bad writing. Then you have other lines which I seriously think were intended to sound cool ("personal apocalypses," which actually is a cool line, just not in a game like this). The mixture of ridiculously bad writing, just plain bad writing, and attempts to be cool still makes me question sometimes how much of the 'parody' was intentional.
C. None of the rest of the game supports the parody. Maybe some of the areas referencing other games/movies, but those were usually secret. The rest of the game is ridiculously serious, from the photorealistic textures to the actual plot (graphic murder of wife). It doesn't even seem to me like they are trying to make humor out of the dichotomy - it just feels like two different games.
D. It was just annoying; it pushed things too far. A little of that humor can be funny, but the game practically assaults you with it. It has one joke ("man, this writing is ridiculous!"), and it tells it again and AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND... Being stuck with an idiot can work in a film, for example (something like Zoolander, maybe). But for a ten or so hour game?
Of course humor is highly subjective. I just know Max Payne drove me, as well as the people in my vicinity unfortunate enough to have to listen to me going through it, absolutely nuts.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon