Hollywood's Rising Fascination With Videogames

Thanks to the New York Times for its article (free. reg. req.) discussing the growing interaction of Hollywood directors with videogame products. The piece notes that Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson has "worked out a deal with the game maker Ubisoft and Universal Pictures, the studio that plans to release 'King Kong' next year, that will give Mr. Jackson substantial creative control over the future game", and also mentions John Woo (" now developing for Sega a video game, an idea he will own outright, about an elaborate heist", as well as his proposed Metroid movie), and Ridley Scott ("seeking a video game maker to form a partnership with him and his brother Tony") as other Hollywood creatives seeking input into games.

Comments

The more games, the better

[Mupp252]

Hopefully we'll get some decent titles out of this. I mean if you think about it Woo, Jackson, and Ridley have more to lose then your average game publisher (Credibility, fanbase, etc.). I can't help but feel the Wacowski brothers lost some of that from their hardly mediocre endeavor.

This would put more of a face on the games we play. Possibly make games a little more glamorous and appealing.

Every time Hollywood gets near games

[DaveCBio]

I shudder. It's not that there aren't savvy people in Hollywood because there are. It's just that they aren't the people making these deals for the most part. I think cross-pollination could be a good idea, but I have yet to see it actually work.

Let us remember now the one movie game that worked

[MilenCent]

Arguably better than the movie, of course, was the Nintendo 64 game Goldeneye.

What did it do right? Well, it was a great game in its own right -- I enjoyed it, even though shooters usually leave me cold.

But what I think Goldeneye did right more than anything else was be a generic James Bond game. Everything about the game just screamed "James Bond!" Other developers have since tried to do the same thing, with varying results.

Basing a game on a specific movie is bad -- since movies are usually less than two hours long, and a successful game has to hold the player's attention for much longer, it's very difficult to stay true to the movie without adding a bunch of extra material. Too much, and you're unfaithful. Too little, and people leave. Better to base your game off a franchise, as then you can draw in elements throughout the series.

Also, let's face it, most games are based on action movies, and action movies are particularly known for verisimilitude. (Not that most games are abounding in that quality.) I guess what I'm trying to say here is: most action movies suck. Most games suck. And remember, suckiness grows not linearly, but exponentially.

... Great

[lvdrproject]

Fantastic. Because game-based movies are always top-notch. Have you seen the Alone in the Dark trailer? The last AITD i played was for DOS or something, so i may've missed any pre-butchering done by the latter episodes of the series, but i distinctly remember that there was a guy who was alone in the fucking dark. Maybe i didn't get far enough, but i don't recall any armies or face-huggers or intestinal surgeries or car crashes or virtual-reality simulators or clichéd military lingo at all in that game.

At least Mortal Kombat, while still a horrible movie, stuck roughly close to the plot line. You could even consider the Final Fantasy movie to be worthy of the name (although it did have too much military lingo and not enough fantasy). But i'm so tired of Hollywood putting out 'horror' movies based on games. Every time someone says they should make a Silent Hill movie, i just want to scream. There is absolutely no chance you could do that game justice. They will RUIN it. They will turn it into a machine-guns-and-zombies-let's-lock-and-load-boys gut-fest, like 80% of every other video-game movie Hollywood has put out.

Seriously, i want no part of any games in Hollywood. The quality of games is already decreasing at an alarming rate (ever since 2000 or so, it's been to the point where there are maybe one or two decent games a year) -- we don't need Hollywood milking things even more than they already are (if that's possible). We don't need to start any more Pokémon crazes. You remember what happened there -- the market became ridiculously over-saturated, and it absolutely RUINED the entire franchise. Final Fantasy is pretty close to that, and so are 'survival-horror' (actually just third-person zombie-shooter) games.

Also, once again i have to express my disdain for military lingo in movies. I swear to God, one of those stupid phrases ('back-up'/'lock and load'/'we're surrounded'/'we've lost contact') will ruin the credibility of the entire movie.

Hollywood has made me such a bitter person. :(