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Does A Good Game Make A Good Movie Idea?
Brakz0rz writes "Here's a BBCi article by Daniel Etherington with an overview on how videogames translate onto the big screen. I can't say I've been impressed by any such effort so far. The article touches on John Woo's upcoming Metroid adaptation. Etherington writes, "One of these days, someone has just got to make a decent video game movie. How about Peter Jackson doing Zelda? Now that would be promising." I would enjoy that more than the games franchised from the LOTR trilogy."
How about a metal gear solid movie. Imagine if that came out in the movie format instead of the game format... Wait it did come out in the movie format! What sucks though is that lots of these game-movie adaptions stray away from the main story of the series which is what makes the series so unique to begin with. Case in point, Final Fantasy Spirits Within.
The same way a movie makes a bad game idea.
Something suffers because the time to market seems to influence the outcome of the product,
Games and movies have different life cycles.
A decent game often gets better in its second abnd third versions as technology improves and the story lines get more mature.
Films sequels are rarely better than the original and often dramatically worse.
Today, games make more money than films. A successful game franchise - that has many years of life left - can be ruined by one poor film tie-in.
So the ideal model is to take a good film and turn it into a series of games, and to resist at all costs the temptation to make film sequels. (Yes, I'm thinking of the Matrix).
LoTR does not really count as a film + sequels since it is based on an existing story and was shot in one go.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Clue was pretty good and it's "based" on a game.
How about Peter Jackson doing Zelda?
I can't wait to see what the original zelda theme sounds like when a full symphony plays it.
And don't get me started on Solitaire!
how long until
Seriously, that chick was getting kidnapped or shanghaighed so many times that she probably has to have 911 preprogrammed on speeddial in her cellphone just to keep up.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
> Lest we end up watching pong for 90 minutes.
Too late!
Well - at we'll get to see Kirsten Dunst jumping and running in a very short skirt.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
There are a couple of basic problems with translating a video game to a movie:
(1) Most video games have thin, unelaborated setup plots. Nobody cares when it's the game, as long as the play/action is good. When it comes time to move things to the silver screen, though, it's much more important.
(2) A good video game movie could be based on a character's adventure in the world set up by the game -- but in addition to simply treating it as a sequence of scenes where the character accomplishes the same goals as the video game (or even some new goals you make up), and throwing in cool effects and kick-butt action, you'd have to make the character emotionally and intellectually three-dimensional. Why do they do what they do? Where are they vulnerable and strong? How do they grow/change over the course of the movie? However, most video game movies don't try to do this at all -- just walk through the levels, kids! -- and so you get bored out of your skull.
Tweet, tweet.
What's wrong with Resident Evil? A bunch of people run around, kill zombies, and eventually everyone dies (except Milla ... man, I love that red dress).
How is that bad, when you consider the general action/horror genre as a whole?
It wasn't all that bad. It was an okay action movie. I mean, it had Christopher Lambert.
Mortal Kombat 2, on the other hand, was such an incredibly disgusting piece of shit it almost makes Tomb Raider look like Indiana Jones.