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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!
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.
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.
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
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.
Because he honestly thinks he makes good movies.
He doesn't think:
1) Buy movie writes to game
2) Make a movie and attach name.
3) ?????
4) profit.
5) Repeat.
It really is:
1) Buy movie writes to game.
2) Make good movie that is based on best selling game.
3) ponder why every one hates my movie.
4) Challenge and threaten any one who insults my movie.
5) Repeat.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
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?