Video Game Movies: What do you think?

[Kassidy]

Recently a lot of game adaptations have been announced to be made into movies; Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex, Shadow of the Colossus, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, grand-theft-auto, with all these announcement comes a great fear of more horrible abomination like Prince of Persia. Looking around and reading what the people in charge of these movies are saying is not easing my mind, for instance:

Exclusive: Director Scott Derrickson To Give Us an Emotional 'Deus Ex'

Deus Ex is progressive cyberpunk rooted in big ideas. Most video games don’t have much sophistication or true innovation, but this one does. I think the video game failures of the past have often been the result of thinking that putting a game that people love on screen is the goal. That’s not the goal. The goal is to remain loyal to the mythology and visual roots of the game but also deepen the characters and heighten the emotional impact of the narrative.

And now that games are becoming more philosophically and emotionally complex, we are going to start seeing game-to-film adaptations that are faithful to the source material while providing emotionally compelling experiences that goes beyond just fresh visuals.

full story: Exclusive: Director Scott Derrickson To Give Us an Emotional 'Deus Ex' | Moviepilot

I highly disagree with the statement bolded because No one has really taken a game and straight turned it into a movie because if they did, it might have actually had some success. I agree you need to alter the games to fit film so their is less of the stuff that was put in for user interaction but the story should be the same otherwise its already fundamentally broken.

How can you take the source, change it, and then call it by the same title? you have changed it, that would already piss me off, to the point of not wanting to watch it, Yes we have the game but what if I want to experience the story without playing the game? or share the Original story with a friend who isn't a gamer and doesn't want to watch me play the game?

In a lot of cases, these stories should be straight adapted, at least their core plot lines. Otherwise you should title them differently and make a movie in that games universe but acknowledge it is as a new story, use new characters and make a side timeline in where this is happening compared to the time line of the game. Thee perfect example of a god awful game adaptation would be Prince of Persia, wait I mean that shitty live action Aladdin that was called Prince of Persia. If they actually took the source and did right by it, it would have been great, take out a few puzzles and just tell the story because it is a great one.

Instead we got a decent movie if it was not called prince of persia but because it was called that, to me it is the biggest piece of theatrical garbage on the face of the planet.

Look at Star wars video games for a prime example, those older games based eps 1, 2 and 3 were good. I remember playing the Ep 1 game on my playstation with with my uncle or cousin, it at its core was the movie that I could play with a few changes. Then they made games like the forced unleashed, new stories within the timeline of the movies. This is the perfect reverse example of what people should be doing if they don't want to actually convert the game's story into a movie.

So again if you are going to adapt a game into a movie and actually say its "this" game, then stay true to the fucking story, otherwise you are failing out of the gate and you might as well stop.

In my opinion, adapting a game is no different then adapting a book; If you make to many changes or completely alter the story than the fans of said book are going to be pissed off and have the right to be. Do they get told, "if they want the same story go continue to read your book", No.

If you want to gain praise from the original audience and have them positively spreading word about your movie, and bringing non-gamer friends to see their favorite video game stories then you need to do the source some damn justice.

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[We Are Legion]

Video games movies have always been bad simply because you simply don't have enough time in 2 hours to tell the same story adequately that you have in a video game. The one and ONLY exception I will note is the first Resident Evil movie which was honestly not that bad. It was actually good, but not spectacular. I was pretty worried actually when they announced Mass Effect's movie because anyone that knows me knows that I am the biggest Mass Effect fan on earth and I would be gutted if somehow they managed to fuck that movie up and ruin the franchise. But it would still be nice to see those characters in an actual movie.

This is the first time I've heard of the Deus Ex movie, honestly. One of the things I thought was so good about the last Deus Ex game was the old school cyber-punk world that we saw in old 90's films like "The Fifth Element" and "Judge Dredd", but I don't know how well it will translate to film. It will likely just seem outdated and do poorly and box offices considering it was never a revolutionary game series. But we'll see.

 

[Mick Donalds]

Most video game movies would be fine if the Hollywood studios would allow the movie to stick to the video game roots. But no, it's always the investors that hire some fucking schlock who's never played the game and doesn't give a shit to direct and produce. If you want a video game franchise done correctly, you have to "Peter Jackson" the franchise (basically, give it to the biggest fanboy of the series, write him blank checks and have faith that he will do the right thing, which in most cases, he will).

Metal Gear Solid can only be done correctly by one man.
That man is Hideo Kojima. The only other director I can see even coming close to that kind of storytelling depth would be Chris Nolan or possibly James Cameron.

And no, we don't need fucking A-listers like Brad Pitt being Snake. Or Kristin Bell being Meryl.

 

[Defiant]

Videogame to film adaptations in particular are inherently dumb because things can only be removed. Comics to film work because storytelling through still panels needs to be quick and digestible while the action is presented visually, with little the reader/viewer can do to participate in the experience. The movie fills in the blanks of the comic, storytelling elements can only be added to the experience and the result is a story "brought to life."

Videogames adapted to novels, however, offer loads of potential. Books allow for a longer storytelling format that popular game franchises relish, the reader can craft the characters, environments and action in their minds which demonstrates audience participation, and while the gameplay aspect has obviously been removed, the story and mythos can only be expanded. Look at the success of the Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, The Witcher and Assassin's Creed expanded novels.

I mean, how the hell could you make a film out of fucking Metal Gear Solid? How could you even condense the first game enough to squeeze into a film? You'd need 20 minutes alone to explain the relevance of Big Boss, let alone the number of critical plot twists next to slow, stealthy action.

 

[Defiant]

Actually, a second post to look at the exceptions to this: Fighting games.

I said before that videogames (which my laptop keeps insisting isn't even a real word) adapted to movies often don't work because there's too much trimming, removing and overall tampering of the source material to produce a film that is compact, deep and faithful enough for fans to accept and for new audiences to find compelling. The chosen medium needs to be serving the original, in same the way movies bring comics to life while novels will fill in the story that the game's engine couldn't allow for.

But series' like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter may be compatible for film adaptations, because there isn't room to tell much of the story in the first place. Despite this, each entry into above's series' tend to have a firm premise, adequately present each fighter's origin and motivations, end with a fair level of closure in the main plotline, and even convey character's strengths and traits within the combat itself.

Fighting game plots are compact and just deep enough for a two hour movie, meaning the director has plenty of room for interpretation, they can easily stick to the source material and the stylish fight scenes remain the focus of the movie. I reckon it would work pretty well. And while MK and SF each have a few film adaptations already, fan reception seems to indicate that none of them really do their respective games justice. Sadly, we'll probably see big budget versions of some of the more "cinematic" games like Halo and Uncharted before we get a serious try at a Tekken or Mortal Kombat film.

If you haven't seen the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, uploaded by Machinima a couple of years ago, you should go check it out because it's a great example of what I mean. Each episode is well shot, well acted and well choreographed, seemingly by a director who is familiar with the Mortal Kombat mythos and characters.

[video=youtube;6s6UiEuCYXA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s6UiEuCYXA[/video]

Mortal Kombat: Legacy brings to life the complex and rich history of the gaming world of MORTAL KOMBAT. Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung are obsessed with reigning over various realms (parallel universes) and the winners of Mortal Kombat competitions are granted supreme control over these worlds. The Earthrealm (Earth) is an unconscious participant in this competition and only a few select humans understand the consequences of losing Mortal Kombat and what it will mean to Earth. In a universe with powerful evil sorcerers, cyborgs, Gods and movie stars, this Mortal Kombat digital media series drives a cohesive understanding of what this Universe is all about.

 

[ThatGuyFromNukemHigh]

Postal & Mortal Kombat are the only 2 worth watching.

 

[Twist of Fate]

I think it's also partly to do with how times have changed. IMO a lot of movies in general just kind of suck because there's so much emphasis placed on visuals (once upon a time they had to work with what they had and the story had to make up for it) and trying to make characters and story relevant to a particular crowd (e.g. while not a video game movie, Dragon Ball Evolution did this with Goku's character being a bullied high school kid whinging about girls and parties).

Personally I think it's that attempt to awkwardly make things "culturally relevant" that annoys me the most. Compare the Street Fighter live action film with the (IMO awesome) animated movie. One went so far as to throw Guile/Jean-Claude Van Dam into the spotlight (relegating Ryu & Ken into a ridiculously written side role as well as placing other characters into silly roles), while the other managed to feature many of the characters into actually believable and far more appropriate roles in the film, visit all kinds of locations around the world and it being a far better watch. Mortal Kombat also did a pretty good job of that also IMO (Liu Kang was a respectable character with his own interesting backstory - imagine if they'd simplified him into a character "we're supposed to relate to" or a bland 2 dimensional cliched action hero.

If we're to have good game movie adaptions, it's important that hollywood directors actually go that extra ambitious mile to take advantage of what makes game characters and story actually good - rather than literally adapting it into the same old mold (what's likely percieved to be the "safer" logical option) or changing it into something entirely different with an entirely different vision all together that winds up bearing the name of the game but bearing little resemblence and still containing many typical cliches nonetheless.

 

[ThatGuyFromNukemHigh]

Comic book movies suffer just as much from this same argument. Catwoman, Elektra, Daredevil, Batman & Robin, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Green Lantern, Spider-Man 3, Superman 3, 4, & Returns, Supergirl, X-Men 3, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spawn, Howard The Duck, & Punisher all would have benefited from using a story that had already sold millions of copies world-wide then adapting a new story and alienating the CORE AUDIENCE.

Look at what they are doing to boardgames, Battleship which was always about naval combat, is apparently about stopping alien invasions?

Hollywood alienates novels on almost a monthly basis.

Things have to be changed when converting to the movie format, to make more money it must appeal to a wider audience, a deep thought provoking story has to be dumbed down so American audiences can understand it(its why only select animes make it stateside), and in the case of videogames, a lot of the story has to be filtered out to fit an 8+ hour game into a 90 minute film, things get lost in the translations.

 

[Twist of Fate]

Things have to be changed when converting to the movie format, to make more money it must appeal to a wider audience, a deep thought provoking story has to be dumbed down so American audiences can understand it(its why only select animes make it stateside), and in the case of videogames, a lot of the story has to be filtered out to fit an 8+ hour game into a 90 minute film, things get lost in the translations.

Where do you draw the line with those changes though? Granted you have to tell the story in a complete enough way so that people unfamiliar with a franchise can grasp it, tell it within a certain limited amount of time and some how create this "epic" self-contained story and atmosphere that's going to draw the audience in - but (IMO) a lot of these movies are unnecessarily dumbed down and seemingly almost even spoon-fed to the audience. I mean do many movies really have to dumbed down to the point of having awkward angsty teenagers voicing their problems? Dragon Ball Evolution was outright hated despite it's simplistic approach - yet it's not like kids had too much of an issue more or less being brought up to speed with the wacky DBZ series for the most part (and in many ways this is even with many people having never seen the Dragon Ball portion of the series - but Dragon Ball Z as a whole seems widely popular and accepted regardless).

Even if a movie is a tad complicated (and movies like The Dark Knight Rises can still go over a lot of peoples heads believe it or not), it can still feature enough other elements to appeal to others and maybe even entice people to want to think more than they normally would. I think Hollywood as a whole tends to really underestimate the audience at times like that and it's a shame. Granted there are movies that are just so needlessly complicated that it's kinda stupid or overly ambitious (generally non-video game/comic movies) and fall flat, but it's not like many of the games (or even comic books thus far) are all THAT complex.

The other thing to consider is that there's a reason why a game would likely be made in the first place. If it's popular enough to warrant a movie being made then really you'd have to consider "what makes it worthy" and try to capture/retain at least some of those points. In reality a lot of that can be outright thrown out the window with some "re-imaginings" (ugh the heavily disappointing Doom movie for instance - how hard is it to make a movie on a game about demonic invaders from hell?).

While difficult I wouldn't think it impossible (and if it is why bother?) to condense and try to retain as much of important aspects of a story as possible though. I know with stories like X-Men, that's going to basically NEED to be retold due to (AFAIK) how complicated and drawn out the overall story is, but there's a more thoughtful way to do that (which takes strong consideration into the whole point of a series) and then there's the lame attempt surgically remove or forget whole aspects and replace them with shameless cliches and stereotypes in an attempt to pander to a (supposedly) simplistic crowd.

 

[ThatGuyFromNukemHigh]

I will point this out before I get too far into debates, I am a Troma fan, so I do enjoy movies others claim to be horribly bad. In this genre I do enjoy Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., and even Doom(but then again I do like Carl Urban). They are not cinematic masterpieces, but they are enjoyable for their own reasons.

I am also going to ignore every Uwe Bohl movie in this, as they are all done to be these over the top, tounge & cheek stabs, rather than being true adaptations sets his movies apart.

In some cases, like Doom & Super Mario Bros., they needed to create more for the story to be taken as a movie, and became more complicated than needed. Games that were before the huge stories started to appear all suffer from this.

In other cases, such as Prince of Persia the story is overly simplified, retelling the story from Sands of Time would have given enough script for about 70% of the movie. Giving enough time to flesh out a few minor threads in the game, and some great choreography for fight scenes.

I don't want to bring comics back into the discussion, but I kinda have to in order to find the right way to go about it. Watchmen & Sin City, while not 100% true to the comics, keeps enough of the core storyline to keep the fans happy, while being interesting enough to draw in new viewers at the box offices.

 

[Twist of Fate]

Let me just point out that i'm not overly fussed with the need for logical changes. What i'm saying is that there are some films that just go too far, alienating both immediate fans and never winning over anyone unfamilar with the game/comic it's based off. It's fine that you liked Doom. But from memory it was universally panned by both core fans and critics alike. My own personal problem with it is that had almost nothing to do with Doom:

The whole point of Doom as a whole is that a portal/gateway is opened (through experimentation with teleportation technology) that enables demons to invade a UAC installation on Phobos and abduct Deimos and its moon base (just Mars itself for Doom 3). Simple concept but with a LOT of potential.

Doom the movie had some lame experimentation involving some chromosome (I think that was it) that reacts according to whether people are good or bad and them becoming either zombies or superhuman? That's not even remotely Doom. In fact while I'm not very knowledgeable of Resident Evil for the most part it sounds closer to THAT than Doom. It's ok that you enjoyed it and all, but IMO it's hardly resembles Doom and I don't see why that had to be. And for that matter the film itself was not well recieved - Doom fans or not. A change like that is unwarranted and just plain ridiculous - the only issue that needed to be addressed in the first place was characters NOT the overall concept (for the record I didn't mind Urban or Dwayne Johnson in the film but IMO the plot and movie itself sucked, even Dwayne Johnson himself admitted that much).

Same with Dragon Ball Evolution featuring high school and a typical teenager. The whole point of Goku is that he's extremely naive, kind hearted and doesn't think and act in the same way normal people do - he's an oddball. He grew up in the wild away from civilisation and never truly integrates properly into society. That's something IMO that's easy enough to capture or build off. Apparently the character is more than popular enough to be well liked by millions around the world, so why then is it necessary to make it about some random high school kid and his typical teenage woes?

I will point this out before I get too far into debates, I am a Troma fan, so I do enjoy movies others claim to be horribly bad. In this genre I do enjoy Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., and even Doom(but then again I do like Carl Urban). They are not cinematic masterpieces, but they are enjoyable for their own reasons.

In some cases, like Doom & Super Mario Bros., they needed to create more for the story to be taken as a movie, and became more complicated than needed. Games that were before the huge stories started to appear all suffer from this.

Very true in the case of Super Mario Bros (hell the only real way they could do it "proper" justice and keep fans happy by remaining close enough is to do some kind of 3d animated movie like many of those pixar films or something). But in the case of a movie like Doom, the concentration should have gone into making the original concept work (which really only required some more characters and a few plot points in between) not reworking the whole story into something it's not.

In other cases, such as Prince of Persia the story is overly simplified, retelling the story from Sands of Time would have given enough script for about 70% of the movie. Giving enough time to flesh out a few minor threads in the game, and some great choreography for fight scenes.

I don't want to bring comics back into the discussion, but I kinda have to in order to find the right way to go about it. Watchmen & Sin City, while not 100% true to the comics, keeps enough of the core storyline to keep the fans happy, while being interesting enough to draw in new viewers at the box offices.

I haven't seen any of those films (and while I know some of the Sands of Time storyline itself, I never actually played it), so I can't actually comment on those. I will say though that I rather liked the Dark Knight trilogy - that is an example of a bunch of movies that (AFAIK) balance some stories/plot points, recycles them into something new and worthy of featuring in a film and can be appreciated by Batman fans and even those that aren't. At the end of the day, it's still more or less Batman - Batman with a whole load of movie depth.

 

[Rated R Superstar]

I'm just holding out on a GTA movie than I'll be happy.

 

[ThatGuyFromNukemHigh]

I never said I was all for what they changed about Doom, but things like the FPS scene, and the guy whose ass was transported to another part of the galaxy, that were just ridiculous made for some entertainment.

RRS, I doubt a movie about GTA would ever be any good, the great thing about the game is the mass scale of everything. It could work as an ongoing tv show, but I think Rockstar's best chance at a movie would be Bully.

 

[Twist of Fate]

I never said I was all for what they changed about Doom, but things like the FPS scene, and the guy whose ass was transported to another part of the galaxy, that were just ridiculous made for some entertainment.

Sorry, I wasn't meaning to imply you actually were. You had said that you simply liked it and so I simply meant it as a possibility - not as some kind of fact or insult. Yes the FPS scene was an interesting idea. The film had the occasional little positive thing about it, but yeah no point reposting anything i've already said about the film overall though...

As for GTA - to me it'd kind of depend. If they go the route of many other films where they throw in a new character and story (given that each GTA game is apparently different anyway) then I'd always have my doubts. But from what I saw or played in GTA IV, I could KIND of see Niko Bellic and his story making for a good movie - though it'd be quite a challenge for them to try and capture that GTA spirit (perhaps they'd have to translate that to the car chase scenes and shoot outs) but to me it kind runs the risk of being too much like some kind of generic gang sort of film. I mean to many people GTA is about the open nature and interactivity of the game first and foremost isn't it?

 

[Rated R Superstar]

I'd go with GTA 3 as the first film if they did it. It's probably my favourite of the series to be honest. The main character is nice and quiet. I like that in main characters. The story is great. It probably would make a better TV show though, you're right. If they wanted to do a big block buster film, ballad of gay tony is the best route. Has the most action with crazy shit.