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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.
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.
What is sad is even when it should be a simple matter to make a slam dunk they STILL manage to fuck them up! great example: DOOM. hell you take Aliens, throw in equal amounts of Event Horizon, and voila! Instant dark and scary shit. I think it is because they get a bunch of guys that have never touched ANY game, much less the game they are making, to write and direct the things.
That is why one of the first thoughts as I played Bioshock is "Please don't let anyone make a movie, PLEASE don't let anyone make a movie of this!". I mean can you imagine some hack script writer that had never played the game, and what they would do to it? Instead of Ayn Rand's theories pushed to the point of madness you would probably get some hackney Robocop 3 style "comment on consumerism" along with the little sisters being nothing but freakish ghouls and Big Daddies Frankenstein monsters.
To do the stories in most games right you would need writers and a director that had actually played the game and cared about telling the story, not just cashing a check. Sadly I just haven't seen that kind of care and love put into a game based movie yet. The closest I've seen so far IMHO is RE1, and even that they fucked up, just not as bad as...say a Uwe Boll "production". IMHO the story should have been about what a SWAT style team would do when faced with a "gates of hell just opened up" kind of situation, but instead by the end of the movie it became Supergirl VS Frankenstein.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
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.