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Why Game Movies Stink
Via Cathode Tan (who has some commentary of his own on the subject), a Guardian article attempting to ascertain who is at fault for crappy game movies. From the article: "Because, unlike cinema, computer gaming is a medium which requires the player to make things up for themselves. An individual game may be laden with 'plot points' but its narrative is always up for grabs. It is a format of scenarios rather than stories, elements which can be bolted together in differing orders with varying outcomes. Cinema, on the other hand, is designed for people who like to watch and listen, and who expect the film-maker to get their story straight before the movie reaches the theatres. Viewing a film based on a computer game is like hanging around in an amusement arcade, peering over the shoulders of other people playing video games. It has less to do with story-telling than conceptual shelf-stacking. And it is symptomatic of the painful death of the art of narrative cinema."
If they have Angelina Jolie or Milla Jovovich.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a 1st person movie (similar to a 1st person shooter)? Meaning, for like Resident Evil, Doom, etc. all we see is the gun in hand, the shots fired, and the blood splattering? That would make a great movie!
Because:
most games stink
most movies stink
It's basic algebra/logic/common sense...
So, the movie will never be the same experince as playing the game. That's obvious.
It is still possible to write a good movie based on the plot points of a game. "Tomb Raider" comes to mind, as does "Mortal Kombat". Neither is all-time great cinema, but they are both perfectly good movies. They took the plot points of the video games and built a good story around them.
If you can't make a good movie from a video game that's a failing of the writers you are using, not of the concept itself. Given the quality of plots coming out of Hollywood in general, it should be obvious that good writing is in seriously short supply.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Because most games have very simplistic plots. Sure, they seem fairly intricate when you spend 20-40 hours running around performing tasks to get the next part of the story to be revealed. But when you sit back and look at it again afterwards, you can usually distill the story down to a one or two paragraph summary that still contains the more intricate plot points.
This guy's the limit!
The Wizard was a piece of theatrical mastery in every sense of the word.
Okay, walking into a movie theatre, sitting down on the couch with a DVD, or even catching a game at the bar, we all experience Television or Movies in the same way. We can't control anything. People who go to a movie go there to see a story unfold. They don't go there to make things happen. When people go to see a movie based on a video game, they expect the same level of excitment the videogame delivers. This can never happen.
Silent Hill was probably one of the best videogame movies I've seen. The game doesn't concentrate on combat, but on storey and making you piss your pants. The movie keeps your heart unsure whether or not it's worth each heart beat. Just like the game. The movie has very little combat. The game does not focus on combat. The game has a deep story that takes forever to discover and understand. The movie uses the time you're in the theatre to deliver enough story to understand what's going on. The only problem is that if you haven't played Silent Hill 1,2, and 3, you may not understand the movie's symbolism, and thereby, believe that it's just wonton violence.
Silent Hill was good. Not the best, but good. Compare it to any other video game movie, and we're darn near a 10, at least a 9. TFA goes on to campare it to Street Fighter and Mario Bros (THE worst video game movie EVER). Not really a fair analysis. Street Fighter the game doesn't really have a plot. And Mario Bros the movie didn't have a plot. Not really a fair comparison there.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
...but movie games are far worse.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
No, the problem isn't the "painful death of the art of narrative cinema" its the "painful dearth of art in popular video games."
Let's face it, most video games have a very simple storyline (if any storyline at all). Most of that storyline concerns itself, not with introducing interesting and complex characters and plot points, but in setting up cheap excuses to get you into some predictible gaming sequence. The focus of "Doom 3" isn't charcter and plot, that's all just there to set up a fairly predictable FPS.
Decent movies; on the other hand; rely on good writing, plot, and character development pretty much EXCLUSIVELY. That often means that a video game adaptation movie either has to reduce itself to being just as mindless as the video game, without even the benefit of any interaction (what the article complains about) or make HUGE alterations and additions to the original videogame storyline just to "flesh out" some interesting characters and plot developments (something which makes the studio and fans howl).
I mean, ask yourself, how exactly would YOU make an interesting movie out of Halo, whose "star" is a faceless, anonymous, killing machine with virtually no backstory (and working under the studio requirement that he has to occupy most of the screen time, with a large number of pure mindless action scenes)?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I've always though game movies stunk because they either fall into two areas:
1) They are the same plot as the game. You already played the game, why do you want to watch the same thing in cinematic form?
2) They are too far away from the plot. The fans already know the plot line and you've thrown something completely different at them and they cry about how it's not true to the game.
I prefer the latter personally.
Oh wait...
3) Uwe Boll
No doubt about it, there is no other possible explanation, it just HAS to be piracy!
Disagree 100%. I get the feeling that after watching these things that the scriptwriters and director(s) simply read the summary on the back of the box, maybe read the manual and pulled the rest from their nether regions. Thus, they don't understand the *feel* of the game. I firmly believe many games made into movies had something going for them, other than German tax breaks. Doom? Oddly, yes. Alien worked. Course, that deveated so far from the original it barely deserves the name. Tomb Raider? Indiana Jones worked. What'd they do wrong? Hmm, oh yea, made it NOT like IJ and more like one of the last two Bond films...(gag). They would manage to screw up Half-Life, and that one practically gives you the script as you play it. Still seems to me the best one made so far is Mortal Kombat. It didn't take itself seriously, at all. Decent action, music, enough of a plot to move along... and it was short.
Twenty years ago, no one thought comic book movies were going to be any good. Then Batman came out. If any project is paired with a director who has a specific artistic vision and is familiar and passionate about the work, more often than not a good movie will result. My favorite movie of this year so far happens to be based on a graphic novel.
I don't see any interesting video game works in the horizon save for Halo: Fall of Reach which at least has been rumored to be attached to pretty good directors (Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro). Just give it time. It may take another two or three years for a good video game movie to be made, or longer, but it will eventually happen.
Now, if they could only get licensed games to be good...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I'm sorry, but this whole thing gets on my nerves.
The reason videogame movies blow isn't because of the source material (usually). It's because the writers/directors/studio bigwigs/what-have-you take too many damn liberties with the mythos.
Okay, let's take Silent Hill for a start.
DISCLAIMER: I am a Silent Hill fanatic.
The makers of this film had an interesting, unique mythos to work with. They had interesting characters, bizarre environments, crazy monsters, excellent music, etc. So instead of using that as it was presented, they decided to pick and choose what they wanted and slapped it all together. Granted, they nailed the visual aspect of the game, but nothing else.
For a start, let's talk about Pyramid Head (er, sorry - the Red Pyramid). He shouldn't have been in this movie at all because he's totally pointless outside his original context. Pyramid Head was only relevant to Silent Hill 2 because he a manifestation of both James Sunderland's sexual frustrations and his guilt. Including him in the movie just smacked of "hey, this guy's a cool villain, let's use him!"
And don't even get me started on the whole plot/character deviation from the first game. You know, things like the lead character being Harry Mason and not this Rose person, his daughter being Cheryl and not Sharon, etc. Harry Mason's presence in the original Silent Hill game is very important, as it plays a rather significant part in Silent Hill 3, where it wraps up some of the first games loose ends.
I could go on and on, but I won't. The fact of the matter is that they take too many liberties with the games. Don't change things that don't need changing. For the parts that can only be experienced with a controller, use your head and try and think of a way to convey that experience to the audience. Play the game through and take note of your emotions/feelings as you play a particular part, then use that to transfer it to the big screen.
I think bad game movies are more a lack of effort and adherence to canon as opposed to having nothing to work with.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
I always just assumed that the lazy, talentless hacks who spend all of 15 minutes throwing together a script full of plot holes, boring dialog, nonsensical character motivations, no character development whatsoever and cliched plot elements that have to be grafted over the originally interesting game-storyline (to make the movie "marketable", of course), while blowing the entire budget on dime-a-dozen pure-CGI special effects that were only really believable ten years ago while ironically being less visually interesting than those in the actual game itself were the source of the problem...
Now I read, they are only a symptom?
No, the real problem is, quite simply, Hollywood can NOT make a movie where the story is already written for them and the market for that story is pre-built-in. They can't HELP but change it based on market testing, on director's "creative" whims and seniour executive's cocaine fueled brain farts... Only to discover after the fact that the original story that sold so well as a game was, in fact, quite good and was the primary reason why the franchise was so popular in the first place, and that changing it to make it more saleable actually made it less appealing to everyone.
These guys thinks too much. We've read it before, we've seen that before.... movies based on games are, more often than not, crappy.
:)
Not because the producer fails to grasp the concept of game or because it lacks the player involvement or any sense of reality.
Let me break the hard truth on you : budget.
There are 2 scenarios :
1. A small producer trying to get some movies under his name because it fits nice on a resume. Its like acculumating hours of flights for a pilot. He'll take a quick project, small budget movie just to get experience
2. Big producer accepting the project for a big budget movie, but he'll use only a fraction of that budget because people tend to except low quality anyway. He'll use the remaining budget to fund a big movie that will catter to a much bigger audience, rewarding him with more money.
Its all about the money really.
Well, anyway, that's my 2c
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen