Games, Movies, Comics Collide

Three unrelated pieces of news floating around today all point to the ongoing collision of older medias and gaming. Most Exciting: Joystiq reports that the rights to make a Sin City game have been picked up by Red Mile entertainment. Despite their role as the creators of the Jackass game, that seems like good news. Less Exciting: The two Lego Star Wars games sold really, really well, and so it's not terribly surprising that Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has been announced by the folks at LucasArts. Next Generation has the details, saying the game will be released on the PS3, 360, DS, and Wii. The Wii/DS games will be redesigned for their unique control schemes, and the high-end consoles will feature online co-op play. Truly Confusing: Fox has picked up the movie rights for a The Sims movie. Given the way many people play The Sims, I can only assume it will be rated NC-17 and released straight to DVD.

Comments

collision indeed

[superchob]

Almost without fail (I said almost), any game based on a movie, or movie based on a game has been crap. I suppose the developers are hoping that the popularity of the title from the original medium will generate enough interest that they don't have to invest money in the actual gameplay. I don't see this as a good trend

Re:collision indeed

[Vexor]

The respective Halo and Half Life movies will undoubtedly burn your retinas. I'd certainly agree that movies to games (or vise-versa)are all bad. Comics to either medium seem to do relatively well if done right.

Re:collision indeed

[RsG]

It's worth remembering that not all adaptations have been like that. Hell, the various AvP games are way better than the AvP movie.

I think the trend is for game adaptations that try to recreate the original movie/comic/whatever to suck. This covers most of the direct movie tie-ins, which as you say are lacking in actual gameplay. Games that simply use the fictional universe established by their parent sources have the potential to be much better.

See for example the long list of Star Wars games - the best ones (KOTOR, Tie Fighter, the Dark Forces/JK series) don't simply take the movies and try to make a game out of them, but instead use the setting without recycling the plot.

Re:collision indeed

[flyingsquid]

Almost without fail (I said almost), any game based on a movie, or movie based on a game has been crap.

I propose a national task force to deal with this.

SCENE: Office of a big-shot Hollywood MOVIE PRODUCER. He is sitting back in his big leather chair, smoking a fat cigar, thinking out loud.

MOVIE PRODUCER: Hey, I know what we could do. It'd be a shitty movie but if we do it cheap enough, we'll still make a profit! We could base a movie on 'Daikatana'!

Murmurs of assent come from around the room. But suddenly, the door to the MOVIE PRODUCER's office bursts open. We see a FEDERAL AGENT, dressed in a dark suit and dark glasses, burst in, flanked by two members of an elite team wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns. The MOVIE PRODUCER gets up, backs away. The FEDERAL AGENT walks right up to him, stares him directly in the eye, unblinking. Then punches him in the nuts.

MOVIE PRODUCER: Argh!!! What did you do that for???

The FEDERAL AGENT pulls out a badge and shows it to the MOVIE PRODUCER.

FEDERAL AGENT: Sorry, sir. My name is Agent Rex Hightower, and I'm a member of the FBI's Movie Adaptation Task Force. Any time a member of America's movie industry decides to adapt an old TV sitcom, cartoon, or videogame into a movie, I'm required by federal law to intervene and stop them. The American people finally decided that they had taken enough of your crappy movies and that direct action was required. And that's where we come in.

MOVIE PRODUCER: It'll take more than a tap in the cojones to keep me from making that movie! You don't understand the money involved! That movie will make millions!

FEDERAL AGENT: No sir. You don't understand. We're very serious about what we do. You see, that was just a warning. Next time, the gloves comes off. [quiet for a moment] You don't even want to know about what happened to that poor bastard who was trying to turn 'Mister Ed' into a feature film...

So that's my idea for how things would work. Actually, it probably wouldn't work as a law. But it would be a clever premise for a movie... hm. Have your people call my people.

Re:collision indeed

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"Comics to either medium seem to do relatively well if done right."

I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you sir. Prior to Spider-Man on the PS1, there really, in my opinion, had never been a good video game based on a comic book. Looking back there were games like Maximum Carnage on the SNES that, first of all, was really just a generic beat 'em up with Spider-Man skinned on and, even ignoring that, was a poor beat 'em up at that. You, of course, have all the Superman games which I think most can agree have been terrible. I remember a Superman game on the Genesis that was just awful. Again, generic side-scrolling. [Of course, Superman presents special challenges in making a game but I'm not going to get into that.] So I think that the rule on comics to video games has been that the video game was poor. I heard that the X-Men Rise of Apocalypse game was fairly good but missed it so I can't comment. Really, I think the only good comic-to-vg has been those Spider-Man games, with the one for PS2 being a really enjoyable game.

Now, as far as comics to movies go - again, I think that there have been problems. For every Batman Begins and Sin City, you've got a Batman and Robin, Superman IV, Batman Forever, Captain America, The Punisher [either one]. Although maybe there's just a limited sample to really comment on but I feel like there are more stinkers than good films. At the end of the day, X-Men 3 was a huge slap in the face to readers of the comic and I am still mad about it so perhaps all of the above is just nonsense that was leading up to me being snide.

The trick is that the changing medium means you're not usually going to have a direct translation of content. You still have to retain the spirit of the characters and their motivations. X-Men 3 took the idea, flushed it down the toilet, and spit in my face over and over again.

Re:collision indeed

[spun]

Sounds great, but our focus groups tell us the movie producer character is not sympathetic enough. Could he be played by Brad Pitt? Also, we need a love interest, is Selma Hayek available? Oh, and the FBI agent should be a talking dog. Or a baby, it really doesn't matter.

Re:This should be interisting.

[antiaktiv]

I'm calling it right now, the sims movie will be about a guy who realizes his life and all his actions are being controlled by someone playing sims, and in the end he finally manages to break free.

Re:This should be interisting.

[Vexor]

I wonder if the sims in the movie will speak Spanglish like the sims in the game. Will there be softcore pr0n in the hottub as well?

I only hope Uwe Boll is involved.

[Control Group]

Boy, can I not wait to see a movie where people run around peeing on the floor, sob into their hands, fly into fits of rage over crappy wall art, and wave their arms in the air like a monkey as their house burns down around them.

Or maybe a movie about a crazy but urbane gentleman in a storm trooper outfit who slaughters people in his back yard by removing the ladder just after they get in the pool?

FFS, half the time actually playing the game was boring (and let me tell you, there's nothing like playing the Sims at 4:00 in the morning, yelling at your sim, "will you get off the fucking computer and go to bed").

The Sims?!

[pragma_x]

What the hell is the script for this going to look like?

Girl: blah, blah blah, blah! Blah blah blah!! ::waves arms in a display of frustration::
Boy: blah. ::sets carpet on fire::
(continues on page 113)

This will be the most heavily subtitled movie in history, a complete throwback to silent film, or just highly experimental (no understandable dialog, 100% based on body language and pantomime).

Re:This should be interisting.

[flyingsquid]

I can't wait until The Sims Movie: The Game comes out. I bet it'll be such a runaway success, they'll make it into a movie!

The Sims Colon The Movie

[ghostsixsix]

I think the only way to make this work is to have a gamer sucked into the world of The Sims like Jeff Bridges in Tron. Hilarity ensues. But we all know it will probably end up getting directed by Uwe Boll. Either way, I'll wait until it's free on cable (and if their's nothing else on).