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Why Are Video Game Movies So Awful?
An article at CNN discusses why big screen interpretations of video games, even successful ones, often fail to succeed at the box office. Quoting:
"The problem with successfully adapting video games into hit Hollywood spin-offs may lie in the way in which stories for both mediums are designed and implemented. Game makers chasing the dream of playing George Lucas or Steven Spielberg will always strive to coax human emotion and convincing drama from increasingly photorealistic virtual elements. The Hollywood machine, in its endless chase for big bucks, can't help but exploit the latest hit interactive outing, often failing to realize it's often a specific gameplay mechanic, psychological meme or technical feature that makes the title so compelling. Both sides may very well continue to look down in disdain on the work that the opposite is doing, which can doom any collaborative efforts. But where the two roads truly diverge is in the way stories are fundamentally told. Films offer a single, linear tale that's open to individual interpretation, whereas games are meant to be experienced differently and in a multitude of ways by every player."
On a related note, reader OrangeMonkey11 points out that an 8-minute short has showed up online that appears part of a pitch for a potential Mortal Kombat reboot movie. Hit the link below to take a look.
The plots are too detailed, the script-writer's a newb and there aren't enough people jumping around like the Enegizer bunny on speed. Oh, and no jumping puzzles you have to try multiple times.
Uwe Boll.
"...which can doom any collaborative efforts." I see what you did there.
Most video games have stories that straight-to-DVD movies would be ashamed of*.
Other than that it is because Uwe Boll makes 90% of game movies.
*The games with good stories general can not compress a 20-40 hour experience into an hour thirty.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Two words:
UWE BOLL
it's simple, really - spin-offs are, by definition, lame and derivative.
books based on tv shows, books based on movies, tv shows based on movies, movies based on movies (aka sequels), video games based on movies, and movies based on video games - all are driven by profit over artistry. these products don't start with the question "wouldn't this be a neat idea?", they start with "can we extract more profit from this franchise?" because people already have a positive relationship with the brand, there is less incentive to work on quality, because there are large numbers of people who will consume the product regardless of its quality. since the product's quality does not dictate its profitability, the quality tends to suck.
...Uwe Boll.
So no one bothers to actually try making a story of it. Well, more than a Boll-esque story, that is
Licensing fees.
I love the story behind it. I love the character ideas. I love the whole thing! I would love to go see this movie if it does ever come it! As long as the fight scenes don't suck as bad as the ones on DoA. I will be happy.
In society, video game stories just have a short half-life.
More seriously, it's because the directors try to emulate the experience of playing a video game instead of telling a story using film as a medium. They forget that nobody likes watching somebody else play a video game. Unless they're drunk.
Now, that many games didn't get big because they have such a great story but rather because they offer a new twist or gadget that people liked has its analogy in movies that live off their effects rather than a compelling script. The cynic in me would say that similarity should actually lead to a GOOD movie adaption. The writers sure know how to write show over substance movies today.
The problem is that you are dealing with two completely different kinds of entertainment. You can't even say it's like sports where you can actively participate or be the spectator, it's a completely different kind of entertainment. Movies have to tell a story. Their challenge is to convince the spectator that he cares about the hero and that he wants to know how it ends. And that ending has to be logical enough to not smell like a cheap deus ex machina hodgepodge but also unpredictable enough to keep the watcher from snoozing off after 15 minutes because he already knows how it's going to end.
Games necessarily do not have this "depth" of a script, not because game makers don't invest as much time into developing the characters and story, but because it would distract from or even outright disrupt or even destroy the experience. If you are playing an adventure game and simply CANNOT guess what to do next because you would have to have knowledge the character has but you cannot have because it has never been told during the story (Agatha Christie, anyone?), it's not a surprising twist, it's just plainly annoying.
If you are playing a beat 'em up, jump'n run or any game that relies more on twitch skill than thinking, the story is often pretty straightforward and "simple". Be honest, who didn't figure out the story of Mortal Kombat right from the start? But would you want a more complex story? Would you enjoy it if you beef up your character, spend hours training him and improving his stats only to find out that he's actually the bad guy and that he will be taken from your control, replaced by a new character and you have to compete against the character you pumped up? Frustrating. Not interesting.
Take a shooter. Call of Duty for example. They now have some sort of story, you follow the "life" of a soldier during his missions. But what kind of story is it? We go from battle to battle and fight. End of story. What do we learn about the soldier we control? Nothing, basically. Is there a family? Kids? A love affair? Why did he join the forces? We don't know. And frankly, we don't care. We want to play this soldier and guide his actions, we want to aim his gun and shoot the enemy. And those cutscenes that deal with his life off battle can be skipped, I hope!
How about RTS? Command and Comquer actually has some kind of story built around Cain. Maybe even enough to make a movie out of it. Now. After, how many? Ten? Games. Yes, we could by now have enough "meat" to actually puzzle together about an hour of story. Add a few filler FX and we can make a movie. And that's one franchize, with nearly a dozen games. Usually the story is also pretty straightforward and, and here's the problem why this doesn't lend itself well to movies, tailored to the missions the player would have to play. The focus of a RTS story has to be the game the player should play. Not driving that story forwards. And that requires that he'll first play a few introduction maps where he gets to learn the interface and the units, then maps where more and more units are introduced (and the matching story why that unit becomes available to him now), he has to combat the various other factions that exist so he gets a taste for all of them (as adversaries, and possibly allies) and so on. The progress of the game dictates the story. Not the other way around. Doing something like that in a movie would end in a desaster. People would, rightfully, wonder why alliances switch faster than you can adjust to your new ally.
You have two very different kinds of entertainment here, with very different requirements to make them "fun". Just because both are visual and because both rely heavily on computer generated FX doesn't mean they somehow have to be compatible.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey I dunno why everyone's hating, the original Mortal Kombat movie was awesome.
that's teh shizzle bizzle
Box Office failure != Bad Movie. Doom wasn't much of a movie compared to the best, but it was OK compared to the output of Hollywood et al. Mortal Kombat was an OK beat-em-up Movie and compare it to a Steven Segal movie, then it's not so bad.
They aren't *great* movies and the game link has made people invest much more money into the movie than the idea deserved, but that makes them less profitable rather than bad. It's just that the investors expected a block buster and got an OK movie. Compared to expectations, a flop.
"It often comes down to money, as movie studios frequently choose to make films based on the franchises that sell the best, not those with the most cinematic potential," said Corey May, co-founder of Sekretagent Productions.
Yeah this, I think, is the heart of the issue. What's more is that they pick the most popular games and shell out the most money for licensing and royalties those franchises. Then you pile on that they rarely spend money on good actors (although some do and that's a sink for money). And that these these are video games so the required special effects are almost always through the roof costing more money. And it seems like when they're done spending on any of those things they'll stick Uwe Boll as director and phone in the rest of it. I mean, I would almost say that they think something stupid like "Man, if we could only license rights to make World of Warcraft into a movie, then we'd have a base viewership of twelve million world wide already!" Then it turns out that Blizzard knows they could milk that for tons of money and there goes all your funding. And after all is said and done it seems like the director has no freedom to deviate from anything. Why is that Mortal Kombat eight minute pitch bad? Because it's absolutely unrealistic. What is the motive to hold the tournament? Doesn't matter. Why are all these people fighting each other? Doesn't matter. We probably don't have time to develop any sort of meaningful relationship with the characters and as such every single character in Mortal Kombat will forever be laughable to a viewer. Mortal Kombat was known for being a great two player fighting game with just round after round. The thing that made it interesting was the moves and counter moves and inventiveness of special moves that players got a kick out of exploring. To take that away (inherent to movies) and to try to focus on the plot does not work. The plot's really kind of insane.
... but of course they gave it to run of the mill action director Keven Misher and written by run of the mill action movie writer Justin Marks. Why? For what possible reason? You need to give a game like this to Darren Aronofsky or -- if you must go with an action film -- at least Quentin Tarantino. What's more you have to give them freedom to adapt the game into a movie. Not rely on what the game already has. I think that these games have other great things to offer like the artwork, feel and atmosphere but a stupid action director strips all that away down to stupid action.
This, of course, is some weird Hollywood money magic that perpetuates the problem--because the movies are still seen as successes in the eyes of producers. But there is hope that someone could get this right. For example, Shadow of the Colossus was optioned for a movie
My work here is dung.
Even though hollywood has been losing the popularity war for years they still consider themselves a "higher" artform and don't take videogames at all seriously. I guess it's similar to how theatre regards hollywood, or classical music regards popular music. I would imagine this will change over time as the baby boomers retire and people who have real experience with video games take over.
Because selling crap is easy while real artistic creation is hard and demanding and does not guarantee quick money.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I liked Max Payne, and for the most part Hitman. I found Resident Evil hard to follow, and a little shallow, but it wasn't all bad. Silent Hill was good for a horror movie.
One plays a game, one views a movie: We want different experiences and we expect different experiences: active vs. passive
Oh and the plural of medium is MEDIA NOT mediums!
Happy hunting
Two words:
Uwe Boll
...that videos games based on movies are equally awful. Because you're trying to take something that was designed for one format, and jam it into another incompatible format -- interactive versus noninteractive, immersive versus nonimmersive, etc. I learned my lesson years ago. I simply don't waste the time trying out a video game based on a movie, and nor do I waste the time watching a movie based on a video game. Even if free, I'd turn them down. They're nothing more than attempts to cash in with minimal effort, and they always disappoint.
I was going to make a snarky comment about how most games have really lame stories, but then I remembered that that also goes for most movies.
Watching somebody eat cake. Not so much.
But what about porn movies then? Ah, exactly. If you are one of the few slashdotters to have a partner, film yourself. And I mean with the camera just on a tripod filming your regular style. Not exactly movie magic is it? Every single celeb that does a playboy shoot remarks on how much work is involved in setting up a shot. There is a reason for this, reality is not all that attractive.
Playing a game is one thing, watching somebody else play a game is another, trying to turn the tension/emotion from active playing into a passive experience. Impossible.
Take Doom. It seems simple enough, lets forget about the required process of raping the story (and the doom makers must have been pedophiles for raping such an underdeveloped story) but what is Doom? It is running around in a FIRST person view and shooting baddies. You could make a movie out of that. But why? We already seen that, it is the game. So the movie has to add things. Story... but story requires people in movies (well with bad writers anyway) and Doom is about being alone.
In the end the movie had all kinds of stuff added on to it that make it into "Not Doom". The more you make it into a standard movie, the more you get away from the game.
Books have the same problem. How do you do Hobbits? It is very easy for some pratt writer to come up with short people but does he ever think about how hard it is to cast for them? Noooo, not those fancy smancy writers. Story/setting elements that work in one medium can't always be transferred to another. The solo, silent experience of Doom doesn't translate into a "10 little indians movie".
Super Mario is even worse. The entire game is surreal with not a shred of real world realism. How the hell do you translate any of the game elements? Actually the movie made a good attempt but the references ended up closer to in-jokes then part of a coherent world.
Uwe Boll is perhaps the cleanest attempt, he takes the title of the game, some of the most basic elements and then tries to cash in on the connection. And it barely works.
The gamer is always going to be disappointed because it is not the game, the casual fan doesn't see the point and the non-gamer doesn't get the references.
Who is left as your audience? The sucker. Now there is one born every minute but they tend to be short of cash because everyone else is tapping them as well.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The fundamental difference here that I think a lot of people miss is length.
Just as movies differ from books in length, games do. A game story's got to be sustained over 5-100 hours. It's a longer format, and that can be good or bad. The pacing's also totally different: things we do in games are often the things a movie will skip over (travel in particular).
If a film's story comes directly from a game's, there will be cutting for time reasons. If instead it's just "based in the universe" it might fall into the trap of trying to explain too much. Then if it's too scant on detail it might upset some fans.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and nine other kinds of people.
Movies invoke compasion or anger, they invoke emotions. Games can do the same, but their main aim is to provide expierence, interactivity. So it takes to be both excelent gamer and excelent scripthead to hit the nail. For example, it is quite clear to me that movie in Half-Life universe would rock - but it would have to be very different from the game. And that's the problem - writing something unique yet comming from same universe is huge risk, and requires true talent. Unfortunately, so far we have seen Uwe Boll likes who takes a risk.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Cause most video games turned into movies are primarily motivated by greed rather than someone having a story to tell.
It's the same reason I think alot of hollywood movies are crap, particularly sequels and best selling novel conversions.
I'm a huge game head, a fanstasy/sci fi freak since childhood, but give me an interesting premise, a good story/script, interesting characters and plot development and im fine without 1 explosion, car chase or token hot chick
Not only do the movies fail to succeed at the box office! They succeed at failing there too!
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...the fact that most games are heavily influenced by movies has something to do with it. Movies based on games based on movies simply leave very little to work with besides tired cliches and hackneyed genre conventions. Imitating the imitation leads to crap, see Max Payne, Resident Evil, Prince of Persia, etc etc.
Also it must be noted that most gamers are somewhat delusional about their favorite hobby. No, your favorite game/genre will not make a good movie, not because it "can't be translated to the screen" but because it's on the sub-comic book level in terms of themes, motivations, and honest character depth. You don't ask for quality in there areas, you don't get quality in these areas. Hollywood film interpretations are just the mirror reflecting back.
There's a wonderful creative team behind most games. How many of them are taken seriously in film at all?
If we look at good book-to-movie movies, it's clear that the artist -- whether Stephen King (Shawshank Redemption), Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's), or even the G.B. Shaw's My Fair Lady (shot for shot based on the writer's adaption Pygmalion) has input and if not, the screenwriter is intimately familiar with the material.
With games, the writer/director/etc are just trying to make a buck -- has anyone heard of an independent video game movie -- and the original expression is lost. It feels like taking the Declaration of Indpendence, and using Babelfish to translate to Japanese and back.
To be sure, it's a much harder transition, but it could be done. If only, you had the original creative team -- or at least someone who's logged 60+ hours in the game -- doing it.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Maybe it's because most videogames are mindless violence extravaganzas with very little plot to them. Hm. Maybe.
They're adapting the wrong games. They're adapting the best sellers, which of course sells on name.
I can only think of a few game franchises I would actually like to see as movies:
The Gabriel Knight series.
The Tex Murphy Series - maybe
The Broken Sword series
These games of course have a common element, they're basically movies to begin with. The Oddworld series was designed to be a video game and movie series to begin with, nobody has actually taken the plunge to make the movies. I think they could work out, but I'm not sure. I still think the Alice game could have made an awesome movie with the right director at the helm, however I fear the crap fest that was the recent Disney Alice in Wonderland ruined any chance of American McGee's movie getting an interest boost on name recognition.
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I think there are two main factors at work here.
I think the biggest problem for movie adaptations of video-games in the mainstream is that such movies are basically marked from the start as "video game movies". Like it or not, video games remain something of a culturally divisive issue. Those who play them (who are a growing segment of the population, but still nothing like as large as "those who watch movies" or "those who watch sports") are usually prepared to accept that they can have decent stories and characters and that, in a few rare cases they can become art (Shadow of the Colossus, Portal, Eternal Sonata, I'm looking at you). To those who don't play them, they remain "kids' stuff".
I suspect that what this means is that when you attach a "video game adaptation" tag to a movie, you instantly guarantee that a large proportion of the population isn't even going to give it a chance. The people behind the movie feel relieved of the need to actually try to produce something worthy, and go for what they see as the safe option of putting out something pretty-but-braindead. If you look at the games which receive mainstream movie adaptations, they're all action titles, which themselves borrow themes and styles from Hollywood action films.
Sorry, I think I'm not being particularly clear here. But I think what I'm trying to say is that even if some Hollywood studio decided to pick up the kind of game that really doesn't fit the classic video-game stereotype; let's say Heavy Rain, which is inspired by crime thrillers rather than action fare - they would still end up doing it as a big-guns-no-brains action adaptation. After all, once fans of crime thrillers found out it was based on a video game, the assumptions would kick in and they'd lose interest. The studio, knowing full well that this would happen, would pitch the movie towards what they see as the classic video game demographic and turn it into an action movie.
However, I think this is only half of the problem. To see the other half, it's best to look away from Hollywood and towards the other main producers of video-game adaptations (albeit for TV rather than cinemas); anime studios. There are different social factors at work here; with the exception of a small number of franchises, almost all non-kids anime is pitched at nerds (look at the Japanese TV schedules if you don't believe me; prime-time anime is close to non-existent). With many of the games that are adapted also pitched at nerds (in the Japanese market, it tends to be RPGs that get adaptations), there's no clear mis-match between the market for the source material and the market for the adaptation.
And yet... leaving aside visual-novel adaptations like Higurashi for the moment (where the source material doesn't really count as a game to begin with), anime adaptations of games tend to such at least as hard as, if not harder than, Hollywood movie adaptations. Time after time, studios take games which should be dead-cert hits as anime adaptations (given how anime-like the games often are) and produce something awful. Take Disgaea; quirky tactical role-playing game with strong characters, a wickedly subsersive sense of humour and a deliberately anime-like structure (right down to next-episode previews every couple of missions). The anime adaptation is a boring, badly thought out mess, which bears little enough resemblance to the game to annoy the hell out of game fans, but requires enough knowledge of the characters and universe that it's going to put off people who come to it fresh. Or take Persona: Trinity Soul, which appeared between the (wildly successful) 3rd and 4th installments of the game series. The third game had all of the ingredients needed for a decent adaptation, but instead we got something incomprehensible, which again was off-putting to both game-fans and any fresh audience who might have given the anime a go. Valkyria Chronicles I'll be slightly kinder to; they turn an awesome game into a fair-to-middling anime; but they do lose a lot of the game's charm in th
Then again, if you write based on the world instead of the game itself, are you really writing based on the game? Likewise, there are good Star Wars movies and good Star wars games (and granted, bad examples of both too), but in the end, most of them aren't about each other.
I think the biggest issue is pacing: most games are paced slower than movies and reuse set-pieces (and for good reason: so that material can be reused, both to "train" the player, and to provide sequential challenges). This however doesn't translate well into the non-interactive medium, with the exception of pure action sequences and/or quicktime events.
And for notes: games which I think would translate well into movies:
Mirror's Edge: The starting sequence is similar to the Matrix (original), and the plot essence is also somewhat similar.
Portal: Mainly because of the mood evoked, but interestingly, the movie would likely be placed into a survival-horror genre.
Heavy Rain: For obvious reasons: it is the evolution of the Interactive Movie genre of videogames, though some trickery may need to be involved to not duplicate the game and stand as a creative original. (possibly by showing a different point of view given in the game)
The only game with a chance to make a brilliant movie is ...
Monkey Island
Judging by the trailer I think the particular movie should be great.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Games traditionally have only simple characters, so the player can "fill" the games narrative easily with his own persona. This way, the 4th wall is broken more easily and the player gets the feeling of experiencing the story. Movies are about characterization and the story is just a vessel for the characters to act out their motives. The rare games that actually have characterization actually as a built in game play mechanism provide better material for the move adaption, as there are not so many blanks to fill in.... Also it depends on the movie viewer perspective: as a fan of the game, you look at different qualities as the normal movie watcher. Silent Hill, while being a terrible flick from a movie standpoint, is a very good adaption that the gamers of the series can relate to. Tombraider was good pop-corn cinema with some nasty mistakes but really failed to convey what the game was really about...
You may say I'm a ill-taste reviewer, but I do think there are good videogame movies:
Biohazard (at least the first one is great)
Silent Hill (how I wish there's a 3D version...)
Prince of Persia (well it deviated far far away from original video game, but still, the story is complete on its own)
Don't just look at the lousy ones. ^^
Just watch that 8 minute mortal kombat thing. I mean its absolutely horrible. Now take that and stretch it out with what should be 50-60 minutes of fighting (the only good parts) but instead due to budget it will only have 15-20 minutes of fighting at best, that leaves another hour of absolute retarded crap that was never intended to be a 5 minute 'intro' let alone a movie. Now also add in they are trying to make the characters 'real' you know the ones that were never supposed to be real in the first place. Granted all the recent mortal kombat games have all sucked as well. (When they tried to add plots or whatever rather than make good gameplay).
Hey good idea lets mix the worst parts togethar!!!
I think some games have been pretty good once made into movies. Prins of persia was something i really liked and enjoyed. Postal the movie is also a gem and really something that made me change my perception of UWe Boll. Somehow he did succeed in capturing the athmosphere and general feeling of the game. The feeling is very important since the story in games is just for setting the mood. Mostly the story is just slapped on afterwards and not really what makes the game good.
That said, most games that hit the screen turns into crap. The biggest problem i see is the established movie industry that takes any script and molds it into a specific pattern no matter what. Their fear of failure prevents them from success. Making a movie out of a game demands going out on a limb if you want to capture the feel and gameplay onto the screen, using totally new and untested angles of moviemaking.
HTTP/1.1 400
It's very true that games and movies are different mediums, and tell stories very differently.
But I think the bigger portion is that the stories in video games seem more heavily Hollywoodized and made generic and just poorly done in comparison to movies based on, say, books. Look at the Super Mario Bros. movie. Can you even REALLY say that that is based on the games? Most video games movies suffer because they're nothing like the stories in the games...! We see great movies based on books and comic books, and books are furthest from movies of them all in story telling, since a lot of details are left up to the reader to fill in, certain details things can be ignored or selectively provided by the author, and books also can reveal what a character is thinking more easily than other media.
Personally, I think it's because video games, as an art form, have been treated with only derisiveness and skepticism (see Ebert's substance-lacking dismissal of them) and thus quality writers or directors shy away from basing movies on games. Most games that are turned into movies are corrupted monstrosities of what the game's story actually was.
When you look at it, it turns out he does make most of the video game movies out there. His movies tend to suck because there's no incentive for them not to. When you look at it, they generally do abysmal at the box office. However he can afford to do so because of an oddity with German tax law. It basically allows businesses to write everything off if the movie doesn't make money. So his investors are fine with his movies losing money, because all the writeoffs allows them to have a net gain from the government. So even though his movies do bad even by mad movie standards (even crap movies often make back what they cost), he can keep making them.
That accounts for a lot of it right there. Also from something like that you get a secondary effect. Because of those movies being bad, it casts a bad light on the whole genre and does not encourage quality competition. Some of the best and brightest aren't interested in working in the area, and studios aren't interested in funding it. You get a feed back cycle of: Well it sucks so we don't want to be involved in that. Since good people aren't involved in it, it sucks.
While Uwe Boll going away wouldn't fix the problem, it'd really help. Without his crap continuing to come out, it would help improve the image of videogame movies.
However, there may be some changes coming. Currently a Warcraft and a Mass Effect movie are in planning. In both cases, you have a world with a lot of back story associated with it, and some good writing for the game (particularly in Mass Effect's case). So there is a much more solid foundation to start on (many video game movies can use the game as a setting/style only, as the plot and writing are very minimal). Also in both cases they are being done by people and studios with some experience making movies that are quite good. None of that means they'll be great, of course, but it means they have a chance. If we start to have some really quality game movies come out, it may start to gain standing as a legit kind of cinema.
I'd really like to see them do a Mechassault movie. The 'mechs in Avatar showed they can do the CGI just fine; several movies have been mostly CGI already; so all they really need is a sorta-kinda plot. Not for me, you understand, but for other people. Who worry about that stuff. Throw a love story in there, buncha cleavage... I'm good with that. Even if it steals some time from blowing things up. I'll have to blink sometime, right?
I would truly welcome a couple hours of "blasting the shit out of everything." Especially if compelling Mad Cats, Thors, Ragnaroks, Atlases, and so forth were doing the blasting. Dropships. Squishies. Fusion reactor cores going critical, etc. Mines. Jumpjets. Red-hot heat sinks setting stuff the 'mechs step on, on fire. Teamwork and solo craziness. Stealth gear. Oh, yeah. Bangity-bang-bang BANG! Gimme the blue-ray right now. I got a couple kilowatts of multi-channel audio gear ready to make 'mech footsteps shake the building. :)
Sometimes I run the intro to Chromehounds on the XBox 360 just to get a 1080p mech fix.
Then I go all the way back and run Mechwarrior II's intro... low res and pixelated as it is... because it's just so awesome. Sigh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Compared to how bad games adapted from movies are they are all Oscar/Cannes material.
I actually somehow ended up reading the novelisation of Alien 3. It was fantastic, with much more depth and back story than the movie itself, and having read it made the movie less of a muddle (though I actually think it's a decent movie... unlike Alien 4).
I think it's mostly to do with the emphasis on characters between movies and games. In movies, the main tension is usually between two or more actors, whether romantic, action or whatever. In games, it's mostly the protagonist (who is mute and often faceless) against the environment. If characters do feature, they are mostly accessories rather than antagonists.
A great example is the Doom game/movie - for the most part of the game, it is simply the main guy exploring, fighting, and cool things and monsters going on. If you were to make a movie of just that, it could be pretty good, however there would be little to no dialogue, it's essentially the story of one guy exploring the base and fighting things. However, Hollywood does not know how to make a movie like that.
So, a sub-plot with characters is shoe-horned into the environment. This is generally done by people who haven't played the game, or more specifically, they don't understand what games and gaming is like. Of course this is a pig's breakfast, just as a movie made by games developers would be (Final Fantasy comes to mind - looks like a great game, absolutely terrible acting and one-dimensional characterisation)
Things are converging, however - the more recent game movies are better than the old ones (Mario & Luigi? Streetfighter?), and games are become more movie-like with stronger characters and interaction. However, ultimately they are different mediums, and just as translating a book into a movie (or vice versa) takes experience in both fields, moving between games and movies is a non-trivial task and the work should be adapted to fit the medium. A good example is LotR - the books were amended to fit a screenplay/what works in a movie better, and the movies were probably better for it. Not 100% faithful, but they made what was (imho at least) the best possible movie version of that story.
Also, Uwe Boll can die in a fire.
There's so many reasons:
- Mostly, games are bad material. No games compare to what a book can supply in terms of universe, character background, plot, psychological elements...
- those films are kinda low-budget anyway. The gamers market is not as big as the general market
- the target audience are not very discerning. Adolescents are mainly in a herd phase were they do stuff because their peers do it, so the film will get some audience regardless of quality.
- no upside for a good film. There little chance of the film actually reaching over to non-gamers, so why bother ?
- the settings, special effects, and license cost a lot.. no money left for actors, director, scriptwriter
- games have little staying power, so the whole thing is rushed, and has to come out before the game becomes last year's buzz.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
because it's a money grab.
Why is reporting news so easy?
All I can say is that after the butchering which was called the Prince of Persia, I have yet another reason to hate disney with a passion.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I saw the Doom movie (not the Bollywood version) by accident, one night. It even stars Dwayne Johnson so I was expecting pretty much nothing.
Yet, it was pretty decent for a random horror/splatter flick. The end was a bit strained, but the overall movie was far from awful. Solid, but not excellent, movie.
Hollywood isn't interested in making "good movies", they're only interested in "making money".
It's a simple formula: profit = earnings-costs
To make money the costs have to be less than earnings.
They have a pretty good idea what the earnings will be because they know their target audience will watch it based on the name/poster not the reviews, ie. profit = X million acne-ridden geeks multiplied by ticket price.
All they need to do to pay for their next round of coke+hookers is to make sure the costs are less than that. "Quality" isn't anywhere in the equation.
No sig today...
When was the last time you saw a 'big' movie that did not suck? Avatar? Shrek movie number 7? I mean, really, I can't name one... (Well, the Matrix, obviously. How long a go is that?) I saw 'Prince of Persia Sands of time' last week. Nice images, beautifull princess, sure. Story? What story? I mean, i could not follow the end. I'm not stupid, mind you. If I cannot follow what the F is happening, more people cannot, rest assured about that. Did not make /any/ sense.
Movies suck for reasons that are well understood - but apparently impossible to turn around, at the moment.
TV seems to get it right, maybe Hollywood should study TV. The annual TV series based off the Madden games seems to be pretty good, even though they don't include effects like "QB Vision". It seems to simulate the gameplay well, it's seems to be network agnostic AND they play more than one episode a week during the season.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Because video games are YOUR experience, unique to you. You get to be the hero in your own story, which is different (if not artificially or illusionary) from the guy next to you that played the game. Video game movies are somebody else's experience, through there eyes and decisions. Not only that, but the story is forced into a plot-map with dialogue because, well, it's a story and not a game. But of course it's going to be disappointing - somebody took your gaming experience and changed everything about it. It's like taking your biography and changing all the events in it.
Don't know why, but I really liked and enjoyed watching this movie... but that's only me I believe
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov
Like Tim Etchells' The Broken World
It is because most (if not all) movies based on games only share the name with the game they claim to follow.
For example, on Doom, a Marine faces DEMONS ALONE. Absolutely nothing to do with "human infected by a virus that makes them into monsters". Remember the movie "Catwoman"? Just share the name with the comic character.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
It's still relatively recently that video games became an "adult" pastime.
I remember "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" being pretty badass... when I was 10.
Actually, I think "Crank" was pretty awesome, which was vaguely Grand Theft Auto -like.
I think the major similarity between those two examples was that they were mostly stylistically based on the video games.
You must be new here.
Have you actually had the misfortune of seeing one of his movies?
If so, I don't think you would have made that comment.
The original Mortal Kombat movie was directed with a lot of energy and style. The music was sufficiently rawking and there was some pretty innovative cinematography and the sound was very well done.
It wasn't all that bad. It wasn't Oscar material, but it wasn't an embarrassment to the people who made it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think it's largely the typical Hollywood contempt for the source material. Most of the time, when someone buys the movie rights to something, they don't want to make a film version of the source material. All they want is to buy a brand that they can use to bolster support for their pet project.
Admittedly when it comes to genre films in general we've been a bit spoilt lately. But for every LotR, Sin City or Watchmen there are dozens of I, Robots.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I went to tag this uweboll, and it already was.
The basic problem is the same with all successful franchises.
Once you've got a product which is successful enough that you're guaranteed to make money by making more products under the same name, it becomes less and less relevant how good your actual product is.
Which means that as soon as a product is successful enough to be called a franchise, it basically becomes a cash cow, where quality no longer matters.
It isn't just game-movie tie-ins; it's everything that's ever been called a franchise, from movie sequels (look at what happened to the Alien series. Or worse, the Police Academy series ...shudder) to fast food (you know, KFC used to actually taste good; they wouldn't have got beyond five outlets otherwise. But now it's just low quality chicken with half-cooked breadcrumbs and MSG to keep you addicted).
In short, if you have to *ask* why game spin-off movie is awful, you need to wake up and look at around at reality.
As further evidence of stylistic adaptations, here's the only movie adaptation of the 8-bit video game genre that is any good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhYJBVFOX58
I don't know, guys. I thought Goldeneye was a very competent movie.
Then they could have had a 10 minute section where Ryo runs around town looking for sailors.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Conversely, some games have too much plot to be made into movies. With the announcement of a (direct to DVD, anime style) Dragon Age movie, the fan community I belong to when crazy. In a negative fashion. Why? We knew they would never make the choices we made. Heck, it's a mainly female community and we started with the cynical observation that they would surely pick a male hero.
So: you need a game that has a recognizable plot line to it, but not one that allows much impactful choices by the player.
And retitle this summary as "Why are Movies so awful" ?
I mean really. 99% of what comes out of Hollywoodland is utter garbage.
I see better from 1st year film students. There's more creativity on Youtube.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The biggest reason why such movies are so awful is simply because the whole idea of doing that is just fucking retarded.
I have never played the Dead or Alive games, but caught part of the movie last weekend on basic cable. The movie-makers' approach to that one was actually pretty good. They at least tried to wrap a coherent plot around the silly video game fights. But I think what most impressed me was that it was clear the people who made the movie were at least casually familiar with the games, and targeted the movie toward the same audience--straight teenage boys. (By which I mean there was plenty of T&A, and even a beach volleyball scene, ripped right out of that spin-off game.)
From watching that movie, I learned a lot about the games. All the usual silly VG character drama was there, along with what I'm guessing was the various fight venues.
Obviously it's not going to win any Canadian Oscars, but that's the point. They didn't take it any more seriously than it deserved. In that way, I think they at least partially succeeded.
Not one mention of Tomb Raider? Best Game -> Movie adaptation evar!
Here's an idea: World of Goo in the Gulf spill. Can you imagine how that could be fucked up?
Democracy: Crowdsourcing a country near you
Mods? Really? This shouldn't even be showing up at this point. If it's not trolling and flamebait, I don't know what is.
They are taking a rich, interactive experience which can last for hours, days, or weeks and chopped down it into a 1.5 hour passive experience designed to appeal to the widest, lowest common denominator segment of a, possibly mis-identified, audience.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
A rewrite by a real sci-fi writer and some decent casting (NO! NOT VIN DIESEL!) It could have worked well.
My thought was that Doom3 had a very usable basic plot; there was no need to turn the Doom movie, into Resident Evil in Space.
I'm thinking along the lines of having the lead show up, actually start his duties, start to get to know the people. Many are nice, cooperative, etc... Some are arseholes, most are indifferent.
Then the teleporter system one of the group is working on goes *BLAM*, the demons show up, and you get a hectic scramble as the lead and a few others try to save the facility and failing, then to get the surviving staff evacuated(relatively unsuccessfully), then finally just to close the damn portal before enough demons make it through that even Earth will be screwed.
I'm thinking take a younger Quaritch, maybe tone him down a notch or so on the bastard scale, turn him up a notch on 'badass'. The point being, he's a quiet badass until the action starts.
I don't read AC A human right
Did anyone else think that MK trailer above was pretty damn cool? Those few short minutes of film made many game to movie adaptations look ridiculous. It was the way an MK movie SHOULD be. I'll never understand why Hollywood has to take something that's pure gold already and change it beyond recognition. Why screw up something that is already popular and done well? Stick to the source material and you literally couldn't fail, but for some reason they never do this.
That being said, I think many games already have good stories in them, including Doom. The problem is most movie studios never seem to want to stick with the source. Directors want to put their own spin on it in the name of "art" or whatever, or writers are completely out of touch with the material, or they try to appeal to a larger audience for more box office which is nothing but total greed. The very reason some of these games are so popular is because of what they already are on their own. And, many games have more originality in their stories than some of the crap Hollywood churns out and calls "original".
It boggles the mind that there is nearly no good director out there who feels he shouldn't change something that is already great and in some cases, iconic. Some games are popular for a reason, and would be excellent if directly translated. Hollywood is completely out of original ideas considering how many reboots and remakes there are, so I don't get why they have to take something truly original and turn it into utter crap. Stick with what made the property huge in the first place!! This extends to books and comics as well.
Doom always had a great back story and was about a lone solider's fight for survival. It should've been dark, bloody, and scary just like the game but they couldn't pull that off even with an R rating. Instead they murdered the concept and dissapointed fans. If they'd taken it for what it was and based it on that it would've totally kicked ass. There must be something in the water out in Cali that makes movie makers retarded....
I've always said that video game movies are terrible, and I am glad that someone's finally wrote an article on this.
Just thinking back... Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Doom, etc. So bad
I've also noticed that Video Games based on movies tend to be equally bad.
Throw in some Yeenoghu while you're at it.
A game like Lego-Star Wars is good because the mechanic (the gameplay) is good, not because the tale the story behind, is that good. Videogames are first mechanic based. You see stuff like Call of Duty 1, Call of Duty 2, etc.. because brand recognition sells.. but Call of Duty 3 can be *really* the children of a Turret Defense 1, and Another Game 2 be the children of Call of Duty 1. The spiritual successor of a game is not the one with the same name + (number++), is the one that follow the same mechanics and built on it. Movies made out of videogames can't translate this. Wen you make a movie about a videogame, re-using the characters and theme, you are using one of the less important parts of what make that game THAT GAME. Maybe a game like Battlefield 1942 is great because the teamwork, and the feeling you are inside a battle, part of the battle machine, or part of a wolfpack. The *real* movie based on Battlefield 1942, don't have to show the WW2, but must have this wolfpack, battle machine, teamwork feel. ... if the game is somewhat inspired on the game, and is worth watching, is worth my money. And since is imposible to really make a movie about a game, don't even try, just focus on make the better movie possible.
Another problem is that the videogame world is very, very big, the moviegoers are attacking the low hanging fruits. Even the people that have videogames has his favorite hobby, don't know much about videogames. There are people out here, that thinks Bioshock is a good game. Other people thinks KOTOR is superior to KOTOR2. Probably there are people out here that don't know Dune 2, Desktop Turret Defense or Tetris. The people that has grown with consoles like the Nintendo, don't know gems like X-Com: Enemy Unknowm, and the people that had PC's, don't know some console gems.
Is a world where your only expectation is make your own way and survive. Is too complex, even for the natives, and even the natives are limited to a part of it.
With 2 hours, you can get a good idea of a movie, maybe the whole thing. But there are games (say.. Outcast or EVE Online) where 2 hours is the tutorial. You can't pretend to understand the gaming world, because the reach to that, is beyond human hands, but you can make your own opinion, and try to produce one worthwhile.
Anyway, wen the no-natives get "Lost in translation" like misconceptions that story=videogame, I don't have the smaller faith on this. Making a good movie about a videogame is impossible. So.. What is the next good thing? make a good movie, just that,
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The same mechanics that make a game addictive would NOT work for a movie. In the game I might tolerate questing all day for a level, because I have a goal and little pittance rewards along the way. If I go to a movie, I will not be satisfied with little pittance rewards, I want some big bangs along the way. The approaches are mutually exclusive. We've all noticed the over-abundance of lame games pattered after great movies.
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As a mac-user and a game enthusiast, I find the "+2 Funny" mod it currently sports most excellent.
With the movies "The Road" and "The Book of Eli" out this year, I would love to see a movie made for "Fallout". I know I particularly liked the old timey theme and music. Ditto for Bioshock.
Games all have terrible stories and laughable characters. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. I know someone will come up with a list of games with supposedly good plots, but bear in mind that as a gamer you're biased towards games, and probably haven't read a lot of good stories so don't have a good perspective. I expect replies to this post telling me about all these JRPGs with amazingly 'deep' storylines and characterisation: save your breath.
First, they're *games*, whose minimal story line, in general, is to fight and beat your enemies, and gain the treasure. That's fine for a game, but doesn't exactly have anything to say beyond that.
Secondly, it's *Hollywood*. We like it, but we'll have our scriptwriters rewrite it (coming soon: a movie of the same name as the book, with no other relationship, other than possibly some characters' names), and besides, it's skiffy (they can't distinguish between sf & fantasy, and don't have a clue how the RW works, anyway), so we've got $$$PECIAL EFFECT$$$, and *maybe* a Star or two, we don't need story. I mean, who cares about that, anyway, since anyone going to see this will watch anything we give them, and pay us for the crap.
mark
I think game movies are bad for several (or more) reasons:
1) The directors/studios don't take the 'game' medium seriously, and don't bother to 'read' the source. They just buy franchise rights, throw a big name actor at it (who doesn't seem to take the role seriously) and hire a couple writers to make the script (regardless of the source material). Classic example(s): Max Payne and Tomb Raider. The source medium for Max Payne was incredible; for all intents and purposes, they could've taken the original dialog from the cutscenes and the in-game dialog, thrown in with action scenes - performed by an actor who understands the character of Max Payne. Tomb Raider suffers much the same problem: bad acting, and an apparent lack of give-a-damn about the quality thereof. Most TV shows have better acting than your typical 'game adaptation' movie, making the viewer interest in them somewhat lackluster, regardless of everything else in the film.
2) Wrong application of the game medium. Eg: the Street Fighter, Mario, etc. movies should never have been movies in the first place. Even as Saturday morning cartoons they've got limited demographic appeal, and casting a game like these into a movie is bound to fail due to the (intentionally) shallow depth of the game characters.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You got to look at the facts.
Games made about movies usually suck.
Movies made about games usually suck.
Yet, both get made.
Why?
Oh, because of dumb ass consumers.
Be seeing you...
It's the same reason women aren't funny... because they don't have to be. Videogame movies have an inbuilt audience of game nerds, that is all they are aimed at, they don't have to try to win an audience. Same reason book adaptation are shit also.
The reason is that you have a bunch of shit for brains Yes Men, that will say Yes to their friends. The financiers have no idea what goes into making a video game and want it out at the same time the movie releases.
I remember seeing The Matrix animation of the main guy. We all laughed our asses off at how horrible it was. In general, a piece of shit like that wouldn't even make it into Source Control let alone into the final release of the game.
Kane, not Cain. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I hear that the studios are working on a Duke Nukem Forever movie and have already started taking pre-orders on tickets.
nobody would buy a game that last 1-2 hours
Super Mario Bros. lasts six minutes. So does Tetris. A play-through of a fighting game can be done in less than a half hour. And a full play-through of a 32-track kart racing game can fit into two hours if each track averages three and a half minutes. The big reason why (for example) Monopoly takes longer is because people play with unofficial "Free Parking bonus" rules that keep money from leaving the game as intended.
Assassins Creed Lineage, I know it's only 30 minutes long but it's AWESOME! It's free too, you can even find a good quality official channel on youtube. Of course you might not like/understand it if you haven't played the game.
Supposedly the Professor Layton movie is pretty good and really captures what the games are about.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why are Movie Video Games so awful?