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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.
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.
In Short, the staff who make the creative decisions never actually played the fucking games.
Maybe there was one time they got it right: The first-person scene in Doom.
So no one bothers to actually try making a story of it. Well, more than a Boll-esque story, that is
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.
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.
Did they license the demo?
Why not, Uwe does.
The problem with Doom was that they tried to turn it into something it is not..
Doom is about 1 guy alone going rambo on some aliens.. and trying to get out alive... NOT about a group of people getting saved along tthe way by a heroic soldier.. which is what they tried to turn the movie into.
The funny thing is.. for as bad as game to movie conversions are (generally speaking), the movie to game conversions are far worse (perhaps its because there are so many more movies to game than the reverse?)
I disagree that the director/author need to play the game, the problem is often that hollywood wants to take a HUGE hit that has little to no story, and convert it into something it is not (such as doom) or worse, they don't add anything at all to it.. and leave it as a special effects set piece..
this is also prolly caused by the fact that most games have plots that are essentially ripped off from 1 scene in a movie from 20 years ago.. its kinda hard to stretch "that cool scene with the zombies and the dude with the chainsaw" into a game.. its even harder to then stretch that back into a 90 minute movie.
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.
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.
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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You guys must really hate Uwe Boll. This is the third identical post.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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...
OK here's the plot for Doom:
Scene - Mars, night time, gloomy lab.
Sciencey type bods - Hey lets experiment with teleporters, what could possibly go wrong
Other random bod - Oh noes you've open a gatewya to HELL!!
Monsters - GRRR ARRGH GURGLE
Our Hero - OMFG Monsterz, where am my bulletzes
BLAM, BLAM, ZAP, GURGLE, SQUELCH
And they couldn't even get that right!
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.
Compared to how bad games adapted from movies are they are all Oscar/Cannes material.
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
Personally I didn't mind Doom that much, but then I went into it expecting nothing but a run-of-the-mill shoot 'em up with some vague occult/horror undertones, which is more or less what we got. Not great by any means, but I don't feel robbed of the time I spent watching it.
I do agree about the first-person bit though.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I agree. Why are video game movies so awful? Because of Uwe Boll.
- Raynet --> .
It's the same reason video games made from movies suck: They don't think they need to spend as much effort on talent because the name of the thing they spent money on licensing will put people in seats.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
And there are 365472 others who feel the same way.
Someone created a Wing Commander movie by splicing together the game cut scenes. That was better than the actual Wing Commander movie.
I don't even think that's it.
But I think you're on the right track. There's a much much simpler explanation that doesn't have anything to do with different story telling media, and it is this: These projects are undertaken solely to make a quick and easy buck.
It's not that anyone objects to making a buck, or to having a buck handed to them on a silver platter, but I think any movie worth seeing is made by people who actually care about more than collecting a paycheck without embarrassing themselves. Look at the LotR movies. They aren't perfect, and the story wasn't a natural fit for the medium, but the movies were obviously a labor of love.
The same for "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Ed Wood was trying his damnedest to make a masterpiece, and it shows.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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 don't know, guys. I thought Goldeneye was a very competent movie.
There's a much much simpler explanation that doesn't have anything to do with different story telling media, and it is this:
I have a simpler explanation. Why wouldn't video game movies be awful?
It's like asking, why do kids who play video games commit violent crimes?
The answer has nothing to do with the video games, per se. The answer is, these days almost all kids play video games. Therefor the kids who end up committing crimes play video games. And the kids who commit no crimes play video games. You could just as easily (and truthfully) say most kids who get cancer have played video games. Does that suggest video games cause cancer?
Anyway, back to the movies.
Most movies made today are awful. Why should those based on video games be an exception? Why are most movies based on old TV shows awful? Why are most romantic comedies awful? Think of any genre of movie being made today by Hollywood.
Most are awful.
Why are comic book movies awful? Other than the remake of another movie (and most recent remakes are awful), the comic book or graphic novel format most lends it self to movie making. The source material is the farkin' story board.
Even so, I'd say the success rate of comic book movies is under 50%. Yes, the good ones can be really good. And even considering the /. audience, which is partial to comic books, most (as is more than 50%) comic book movies suck.
Why should video games be the exception?
Doom failed because they chose to use horrible Wrestlers that turned into really bad actors...
I don't usually go for spelling nitpicks, but why capitalise "wrestlers"? Is that some sort of high-fantasy reference? "And lo, it came to pass that Orcs marched against the combined might of Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Wrestlers..."
I hear that the studios are working on a Duke Nukem Forever movie and have already started taking pre-orders on tickets.