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John Rhys-Davies Notes The Pitfalls of Game Movies
Veteran actor John Rhys-Davies sat down with GameDaily Biz to talk about his role in Uwe Boll's latest failure of a movie, 'Dungeon Siege: In the Name of the King'. Davies is surprisingly candid about his interest in the role, and pretty much nails the numerous problems of making film adaptations of games. "One or two may succeed, and I hope this is one of them, but the structure of a game is completely unlike the structure of a film. And it shows the despair of the studios and producers that these movies even get a look at. If we had good writing, it would not happen. I think that right at the moment, the film industry in Hollywood is in a crisis because we have successfully excluded young and able talent for so long that now there is nothing left."
Watch it John! He'll challenge you to a boxing match!
Speaking of John Rhys Davies and games, he was the narrator for Sierra's Quest for Glory 4, one of the best adventure games ever. His deep, slightly creepy voice really added to the murky atmosphere of Mordavia. Too bad no one cares to make a movie out of QFG.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...really nailed this one: comic.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
How does this guy get anyone to take him seriously?
I saw trailers for Dungeon Siege and wondered how something like that could get a greenlight, and then I find out its Uwe Boll's project, and for a while it makes an eerie kind of sense.
But now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense. How does he still get a studio to pay him anything?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Huzzah for John Rhys-Davies!
I honestly thought that Dungeon Siege was a dead project. I'm very suprised to learn that they've had their heads down the whole time and got something done.
Who else didn't think that the DS movie was still in progress?
I dunno. I can't quite see John Rhys-Davies playing Pitfall Harry. I just can't imagine him swinging from those vines over alligator pits...
This guy's the limit!
Just because the structure of a game and the structure of a movie doesn't mean all video game movies are crap. There have been some successful ones, after all.
No, the reason a lot of video game movies flop is because a lot of them are made by Uwe Boll, who is a complete and utter retard.
They keep hiring directors like Uwe Boll.
Dear John,
Your talent dwarfs your competition. You were the bomb in "Sliders", so I'll kindly look the other way whilst you make some bankage.
Keep on truckin'!
Sincerely,
Jesterboy
Movies that suck generally do poorly at the box office.
Film at 11!
I had to do a double-take at the headline; just glancing out of the corner of my eye, it looked like John Rhys-Davies was going to do Pitfall: The Movie.
And 7 million Dungeon Seige roleplayers rejoiced.
I don't agree with issues translating games to movie scripts, other than his suggestion that young fresh talent is excluded in Hollywood (I guess that's true... he's the expert not me).
I think the real problem with me seeing that is I'm a gamer. So when Silent Hill released, I rushed out to see it having played and enjoyed the game. The story in Silent Hill the game was entertaining... why wouldn't it be entertaining in a movie theater?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
I loved him as Paladin in Wing Commander III and IV. Of course I am biased because I LOVED Wing Commander III and IV. So for such a prolific actor/voice actor I will absolutely listen to his opinions. Aside from his most famous roles, I respect him as a prolific actor. Like Christopher Walken, he takes many many roles, and executes all of them so incredibly brilliantly.
But for this movie, you don't even use the title of the videogame for the title of the movie, you just put it in the subtitle. So the movie isn't even called "Dungeon Seige" it's called "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale." I mean, partly I think he's hoping that someone's Mom, on hearing her son wants "Return of the King" for Christmas, will accidentally buy "In the Name of the King" instead. In that case, though, why bother with paying for a Dungeon Seige license?
It's a puzzle that must be solved!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Ignoring that they tend to use terrible writers, I can't help but wonder if they are just choosing the wrong games.
Mario doesn't really have a story, so it's not that surprising that it was hard to make a good movie out of that. Games like the Final Fantasy games or Mass Effect have good stories, but they would lose too much if you cut it down to even the length of a long film (2.5 hours).
What you need to do is set it in the universe. The Resident Evil movies got that part right. There is no reason those couldn't have been made into good movies. Get good writers, it could have worked.
Portal would be interesting. It has a great character, interesting special effects, but it's too short. You might be able to make an interesting mini-movie out of it (say a half-hour TV show?). I don't think you'd be able to make a decent length film (1.5 hours) out of what's there.
You could expand it. Start with a little of the back story of Aperture Science (maybe show the introduction as a new employee comes in?) As things go on you could see the guy work on GlaDOS a little and her development and as the tests on previous subjects. You move on to GlaDOS doing what she did and then finally Chell and her attempt to escape. Basically GlaDOS is the main character of the movie. I could see it working, but keeping that great dark humor balance as well as the creepiness balance through the whole movie would be an incredible challenge. I don't know how you'd fit in the description of the portal device ("man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain") without breaking any sense of reality. Since part of the mood of Portal comes from having no idea what is going on, the script would be a real departure in some ways which would make it even more challenging. I think we all know that GlaDOS could be the next HAL easily. HAL didn't have cake.
Set a movie in the world of Ivalice (from FF: Tactics/XII). Maybe something set in the Ratchet & Clank universe. Heck, make one of the Phoenix Wright cases into a comedy/drama. There are options.
Instead, producers find the biggest game they can (let's take GTA), then conceive a movie that fits in (a gangster plot!), then make it fit in more (we'll have him not own a car, he'll just take them when he needs one), then beat it with a bad script stick ("You can't tell me what to do, I've already committed Grand Theft Auto..."), then add some flashy effects (everything blows up, lots of blood) and there is nothing to differentiate the movie from any other bad formulaic summer movie except there is a video game's name on it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
(Your Pick) A. Hollywood screws everything up B. Duke Nukem is in a Cryogenic freezer next to Walt Disney C. Hollywood screws everything up D. Cash rules everything around me, get those dolla bills y'all!
I personally think that games are too complex to be turned into films without losing a lot of their values.
Converting a game to a movie is as bad an idea as converting a movie into a book. Maybe sometimes it can work, but certainly not always.
And honestly, for brainless mind numbing I was bored and there was nothing to do movie, that I went into with 0 expectations, it was not half bad. Granted there were a good dozen of so movies I could have gone to see, but going alone while wife is at work.. would result in a serious drop in my life expectancy.. okay maybe not that bad.. but plenty of nagging.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
In the case of many game movies, the game often does have a good plot, but the movie simply doesn't follow it. If you're lucky, it might occur in the same world. If no, well, perhaps a few of the characters have the same names.
Take for instance Doom. OK... well... it had a BFG (which incidentally wasn't even *that* like the game BFG). The plot, sucked. However, when I played through the actual game (Doom 3, that is), I remember being quite interested in the plot: alien race opens portal to nether dimension, dies off. Humans investigate and find cool ruins. People investigating ruins start coming back crazy ranting about demos etc. Crazy scientist releases demons. etc. It was actually decent if you played through and followed the neat little subitems in your data-pad.
Doom movie: loose copy of Resident Evil. Aliens with a virus. No hell portal. Lame.
Other movies were similarly murdered: Wing Commander comes to mind.
So perhaps I'm bitter, but I don't think that setting a movie in a given "universe" is going to help, simply because the movies go with meager plots and a few added special effects in an attempt to make a buck off the franchise.
A movie is interesting because the protagonist screws up at some point.
... but Ewe Boll has made a bundle from our deeply-ingrained erroneous expectation that if something is fun to do then it _must_ be fun to watch.
A game is interesting because the protagonist (you) must never screw up.
"Romeo and Juliet" the play/movie is interesting because the characters make tragic mistakes and suffer horribly.
"Romeo and Juliet" the game would suck precisely because they would all live happily ever after.
"Doom" the game was cool because you ran around killing monsters, and tried repeatedly in difficult scenarios until you overcame the scenario.
"Doom" the movie sucked because watching someone else playing a game perfectly for 2 hours is enormously dull so the scriptwriter threw in unrelated "and the protagonist screwed up" material.
Some may counter by tweaking game rules so that "correct" behavior includes "screwups"; no, "screwing up" means failing to exercise "correct" behavior (whatever the system defines that as).
Some may counter by inserting "and then something horrible happens" moments in a game; no, the tragedy comes from the protagonist messing up, not by Demonos Ex Machina events being thrust upon him.
People want to hear stories about how someone else screwed up (regardless of whether they overcame the screwup in the end).
People want to do things correctly and successfully.
Implementing these to cross-purposes is not interesting
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I think the only stinker that he actually did a "decent" job on (Though it lost money for
differing reasons...) would be his movie version of Postal. Everything else, heh...
He's trying to out "Ed Wood" Ed himself because he makes a HELL of a lot more money that way.
In the end, I know why this batch of people went for the lame thing- I'll bet each and every
one of the actors made decent cash on this title and it was something to do, even if it was
one of his atrocious movies.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
At first I thought the headline was about a Pitfall movie. I could see it now, Michael Jackson to star as white stick man. :(
Similes are like metaphors
Depends on the genre, or course, but CRPG genre games have a tendency to have ridiculously predictable plots stretched out over about 40 hours of play. They have no real surprises, and theatrically weak characters.
Your garden variety film is NOT really about *what* happens and the universe, it's about the persona of the characters and how seeing them move in a 2 hour scenario takes you on a trip. For a lot of folks, as John suggests, yeah, that's about the sex appeal and escapism, and simply "I wish I was that guy/gal". Your typical actor/director/producer isn't going to grok the feel that *you* got from a game character because *they don't play games*. Besides, the joy of getting your ass kicked into the dirt in a video game isn't terribly compatible with the "hero always wins" formula for a garden variety film.
And also, there is a need to "explain" the game world to "those who don't get it". That's a bunch of crap. Plop right in. The gamers will already know the backstory and don't want to have their hand held, and the rest of the folks aren't interested in the back story other than the feel for it that they pick up as the film develops, so they won't notice if you don't hold their hand.
The main thing that keeps *you* interested in the weak story of these games is that you are distracted by controlling the game and advancing your avatar. Making this worse, the majority of games these days have gotten away from focusing on character, story, and feel and instead pour most of the energy into the engine, specifically around cranking up the visual effects.
Your typical "game movie" is more about milking franchise icons than trying to write a good, satisfying story in the game universe. The way to go with gaming films is with small vigniettes in the universes. Tell a story in the universe, maybe about the "main characters", maybe not, but stay away from depicting the same exact events as implemented in the games.
Personally, I think the studios ought to look in to pen and paper role playing materials. Take a typical Shadowrun game (a cyberpunk pen and paper rpg). The game basically forces you to play interesting, shady characters with dirty backgrounds. The typical gameplay goes something like this: Meet up with the shady Johnson and take a run (a crimnal job for money); the players then spend an hour planning how to pull off the job; Then the action starts. Of course things never go according to plan, and it always goes south. That's where the fun is. Of course, the actual action is always short, intense, and would make for incredible cinematics. I've *never* played a shadowrun game session where I didn't leave thinking that it would have been awesome on screen. Then again, maybe my Shadowrun GM rocks =).
While the realtime gameplay for this usually takes about 6 hours, it typically simulates about ten minutes of "game time". Some decent writing to introduce and develop the characters, and a string of related runs would make a rather compelling film or series. And it can be about the characters and the choices they make rather than trying to explain the whole of some fantasy world in 2 hours while the generic "hot hero" type bumbles through.
Here's a thought experiment game I like to play with my friends. Let's say you're locked in a room for days and forced to keep the DVD player running. The only movies you have to watch are "Super Mario Bros", "Street Fighter", and "Doom". The question, then, is: what's the best way to break a DVD in half so there's a sharp enough edge that you can kill yourself with it?
is idiots allowing Uwe Boll to keep being involved with them. Why does this clown keep getting movies? WHY?!
~Sun
imdb says he was the voice of Gimli, and looking at his picture in the article, it looks like he was also the basis for his looks...
That's where most games-to-film belong. Mini-series can pander to a much smaller audience and still be financially viable because there is no need for super-expensive actors or special effects and they are advertiser supported. Competent actors and writers can carry the story across and have an essentially arbitrary time in which to do it. Mini-series can easily be 3, 4, 5, 8 or 10 episodes long, with each episode being 30, 60, or 180 minutes.
For comparison look at Lynch's movie version of Dune. From the point of view of telling the Dune story as told by Frank Herbert, it is a steaming pile even if you view the 4-hour long version. Now look at SciFi's mini-series version of Dune. Yes, the worms suck and sometimes it is obvious the people are standing in a set, but from the point of view of the actual Dune story, they pulled it off much better than the movie and did it in less time and/or with fewer deletions depending on which movie version you compare it with.
Books aren't movies. Songs aren't TV shows. Dance performances are not paintings. It's amazing that people don't get these fairly simple rules, but they don't. If you're going to do a treatment of a source in a particular medium, you have to be writing for that medium, informed by that source, not writing for that source informed by that medium. Making movie copies of games - even something like KOTOR or Mass Effect - is simply not at all the same experience, emotionally, intellectually, or physically. Writers and producers seem to have had a really hard time with that. Look at Singer's X-Men - the movies were movies, they weren't comic books. There were a couple of in-jokes, but that's about it.
I don't get the plural form of "reason" in this context. To me there is exactly one reason why making a game into a movie is difficult:
Games are interactive, movies are to be watched.
The rules for both kinds of entertainment are very different. What makes one great simply doesn't work on the other. Games suck whenever you don't control what happens (one reason why too many or too long cutscenes make games suck), whereas in a movie you never have control. Movies can generate tension by giving you (the viewer) information that the protagonist does not have - games can't, because you are the protagonist. And so on and so forth.
In sum, you can't make a game into a movie. You can make a movie with the same background story as some game, but you can't turn the game into a movie if you want it to be any good.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There's no reason whatsoever why a game can't be made into a movie. The problem isn't the medium at all it's the writing and directing. Uwe Boll's movies are crap for the simple reason that he's inept. Chances are that any movie he'd make would be bad regardless of the source material.
That aside, let's take any story-driven game. Regardless of how a player is allowed to complete the game a fairly linear story is told. Mass Effect, Halo 3, Bioshock, Half Life 2 all provide straight-forward stories. How the story is told may differ from a movie, but otherwise there's a progression to the plot that is essentially the same as most movies and novels. A setting is established, a conflict is presented, there's a gradual buildup, a climax and resolution.
Really, the only games that are difficult to base a game on are those with randomly generated content and perhaps MMOs. However, even with MMOs there's generally a rich enough setting and back story that a creative writer has plenty to work with.
If anything I'd argue it's easier to base a movie on a game than a novel. Remove the gameplay and enough story is provided to easily fit a standard-length movie. I'd argue it's far more difficult to effectively condense a 300+ page novel into a two hour film.
The challenge in basing a movie on a game is the often weak and generic source material. Also, often just enough content is provided to meet the needs of the game essentially forcing a movie writer to expand on it. But again, it goes back to creativity and skill. A great writer and director could make a movie based on anything with compelling results. Of course, once a movie studio gets involved all that goes out the window. But again, the problem isn't the medium.
Now why did I suddenly think of Tomb Raider? Should be able to get nearly a litre out of those icons.
In one of the early wingcommanders you lost a wingman. BAD, reload, retry, samething happened. I tried over and over, killing the kilrathi faster and faster until finally it dawned on me that this wingman was scripted to die. It really was one of the first times in a game for me that such a thing had happened, most games when something bad happen consider it the end. This game never gave you an option, your wingman dies regardless of how good you are.
This is indeed acceptable in a movie, bigs becoming a comet is an excellent piece of drama in Star Wars: A new hope, if only Lucas had the guts to add the openening scenes that were recorded but never made it into the movie. (Luke meets with his childhood friend Biggs who tells him he is going to join the rebellion and urges luke to talk to his uncle. For George Lucas the two events together are quality writing and really deepen the Luke Skywalker character, which is why he never included it but did make Han shoot first, which lessened that character).
Another moment happened for me in System Shock, excellent game but it made me realise a simple flaw. I am alone. All the messages and hints that you could rescue other people are for naught, the game can't handle friendly AI so you will never ever find any. Cue Unreal which used a similar trick of messages being left behind by someone in front of you and as much as you might want to care, you know that person is dead because the game can't give you an ally.
Some games really push this to the limit, one of the later unreals for no apparent reason killed of your entire support crew. So you have been singlehandely wiping out entire armies, but HEY, you still suck because your crew is killed.
One of the comments about the second Dungeon and Dragon movies was that the group sucked because they didn't follow the first rule, always protect the healer. I would NEVER have made that mistake. It for me is the typical writing that doesn't belong in a game.
Don't get me wrong, you could have the player fail, but then it must be a truly epic fail, a fail that can't be helped. The wing-commander scene COULD have worked if you and your wingman had run into a massive wave of kilrathi with you having the vital mission of bringing home a report and your wingman sacrificing herself to ensure you manage to deliver that report. If you want to the player to accept failure you must make that failure inescapable. Sadly all to often the hero in games and movies just screws up in a truly stupid way and we are told, that is for drama.
Another classic case is that of action interruptus, Max Payne, you are clearing an area where someone is held hostage, you are about to kill the baddy and bam, game takes over and you don't shoot fast enough and the hostage is killed. Don't matter how good or bad you did, that is what the script writer decided and that is what is going to happen.
It is the fundemental difference between games and movies. Games can have personal drama, your character might receive a letter that a loved one has died, and you can have epic drama, the opening scene of the battlestar galactica movie where two brothers are ambushed by a huge wave of cyclon, but the medium drama, of the hero screwing up is almost impossible. Especially since so few writers are capable of making the scew up believable.
Take Romeo & Juliet, just how stupid can you get? Surely in real life these two would deserve a darwin award. It works as a passive story because at no time do we have to believe it is real.
God this is turning into a long rant, but one final point. If I watch columbo I can just sit back and take some of the crap science that comes across because, well I don't have to solve the crime. In Gabriel Knight: Sins of the father I found a german poem and got horribly stuck. Why? Because I speak german, so I never thought of looking for a way to translate the poem in game.
Slightly related to this was an expansion of Operation Flashpoint where the hero was constantly moaning about not wanting to be in a war and kill people. Problem? I was the hero, I bought a war game, HELLO SCRIPTWRITER WHAT DO YOU THINK MY FEELINGS ARE ABOUT WAR AND KILLING PEOPLE? That is right, BRING IT ON!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you mean in terms of reviews and reception, practically no video game movie (or their sequels) have been well recieved. (I think the "best" recieved was the first Resident Evil movie and thats not saying much seeing how far it strayed from/ditched the original game(s)/series).
"In sum, you can't make a game into a movie. You can make a movie with the same background story as some game, but you can't turn the game into a movie if you want it to be any good."
Oh I don't know. Machinima is making progress and the nature of the medium means that one can be far more interactive than any movie.
Actually, I love Boll's movies. Both his and Ed Wood's are perfect for an evening with a bunch of beers and a bunch of pals. I hope somebody makes MST3K-style versions of Boll's movies.
They're working on a movie adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time. Jerry Bruckheimer is producing, Mike Newell is rumoured to be directing. Jordan Mechner wrote the original script (which is a good thing) and someone else has done subsequent drafts.
The Sands Of Time is probably my favourite game ever, so I'd love to see a great film get made off the back of it... I'm not holding my breath though. I'll probably see it anyway, as I love the game, but I'll be gutted if it's crap and ends up souring the memory of the game.