I’m watching Ant-Man. It was last on my list to get me updated on the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I’m enjoying it. Lovable hero, hateable villain and a slew of action scenes that are fun and innovative. I even laughed out loud when the dude who played Avon Barksdale in The Wire sees a giant ant and says “Whoa, that’s one messed up looking dog”.
After watching the obligatory mid-credits teaser, I’m ready to enjoy even more of this multi-billion dollar superhero steamroller that now includes fantastic TV shows and obscure heroes from both Marvel and DC Comics. I knew nothing about Peggy Carter or Star-Lord before jumping into these stories but I came away very entertained. I’m looking forward to the Black Panther movie, Season 2 of Daredevil and Suicide Squad. Boy oh boy, if you had told me fifteen years ago that comic book movies would be the dominant global power in cinema, I would have thought you were as crazy as Lex Luthor. I mean, the first X-Men movie was good but now there’s a TV show with Hawkgirl in it. Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch is starring in a Doctor Strange movie. In a couple of years, even your nana will know who Thanos is. What a time to be alive.
Sure, there’s been a few dips in the road. Not everybody liked Green Lantern, The Hulk is still having trouble finding his footing in his own movies and despite my own personal taste, Man Of Steel was downright hated by some people. So, while we can’t all be Tony Stark, there’s been something for everybody when it comes to superheroes. With all that in mind, I think most of us can agree there was one point in these last sixteen glorious years (if you count X-Men as the starting point) where this shining armour of successful and critically-acclaimed comic book movies received its first dent. It was a dent by the name of Ultron.
While not a below average film, the second Avengers adventure seemed like the first moment a lot of fans started to unconsciously shift as they sat in the cinema. There was something about it that was…dulled. Like a trusty old knife that we’ve used just one too many times. It was great to see our favourite icons of Marvel back together but after it was all over, the impact wasn’t the same as when Loki tried to destroy New York. To be honest, I can’t quite remember the whole middle section of Age Of Ultron. Andy Serkis was in there I think, doing something. Didn’t we spend like twenty eight minutes with Hawkeye’s family?
It makes no difference, of course. With at least thirty movies and TV shows ready to explode over the next five years, our money is already laid down. We will lap up every new trailer like someone who just crawled out of the desert into an oasis. Our unstoppable thirst knows no limits at this stage. Captain America: Civil War looks awesome and it would be wonderful if that Wonder Woman movie turns out to be good. And yet, in a place we can’t really put our finger on, that twinge of Ultron remains.
When we look back into the twentieth century, comic book movies were almost permanently ruined by Batman & Robin. Before Heath Ledger’s Joker was deemed Oscar-worthy, the Dark Knight had a bat-credit card with an expiry date of FOREVER and every word out of Mr Freeze’s mouth made you want to go home and burn your comics. Marvel movies weren’t even on the horizon while DC Comics were thinking the idea of Shaquille O’Neal in a low-rent Robocop suit was cinematic gold. Things weren’t good. There was a stench around superhero movies and it wouldn’t come off for a few years yet.
Running parallel alongside comic book films were video game movies. A lemon that Hollywood studios had been desperately trying to squeeze money from for years. Perhaps as a result of this money-hungry process, a template was created that most, if not all, of these movies would adhere to. A rushed, haphazard production resulting in a mess of a film that bears little resemblance to the source material. Astonishingly, in the years that followed, nobody was able crack this nut. While comic book movies found their feet in 2000 and became a tsunami of global success, movies based on video games would merely reach the heights of being mediocre at best. Despite a callback character here or a cool action scene there, there has never been a soup-to-nuts, three-act, completely solid video game movie. Certainly none that has approached the level of a Dark Knight or Captain America: Winter Soldier.
Let’s take a moment to study just how bad things have gotten. The highest rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes is, believe it or not, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It sits at a rating of 44%. Not even halfway to a critically acclaimed movie. It’s followed closely by Prince Of Persia and Mortal Kombat, both with 33%. And despite generating over $950 million in box office sales, the Resident Evil series first entry is its best reviewed movie. Rated slightly below the adaptation of Dead Or Alive.
Then there’s the case of Uwe Boll. When you think of video game movies, his name immediately comes to mind. A auteur of awful, his string of catastrophically bad video game adaptations placed an almost immovable stain on these types of movies. Alone In The Dark, House Of The Dead, Postal, Bloodrayne and Far Cry are never mentioned at any lunch table in Hollywood that matters. Boll is still out there though. In 2014, he made a third In The Name Of The King movie (which is still apparently based on Dungeon Siege) starring one of the main actors from Prison Break. He also had a failed Kickstarter movie campaign in 2015 which ended in a Youtube video of him telling anyone who didn’t fund his project to “go fuck yourself”.
Putting Boll’s hilarious train wreck of a career aside, there wasn’t much to cling onto for anyone who wanted video game movies to stand up and be counted. The most vehement defense I’ve always heard from people when trying to claim that one of these movies had any merit was “parts of it were pretty good”. Not ‘amazing’ or ’masterpiece’, just that certain scenes were better than others.
The other main problem is the widespread acceptance that plots of video games can’t be translated to the medium of film. Hence the need to change so much of the source material in almost every adaptation. Characters, settings, story points and pretty much everything else is consistently skewed to fit a director’s vision rather than an already established universe. This theme seems ludicrous in 2016 when placed next to the slavish adherence that comic book movies have for their heroes. Iron Man is inherently Tony Stark but Paul W.S. Anderson decided on the newly-created character of ‘Alice’ rather than Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine in Resident Evil. You couldn’t imagine Batman not fighting the Joker in Gotham City and yet M.Bison is a white American man who wants to consolidate real estate in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li. And since when does Max Payne see flying demons or have a boss that looks like Ludacris?
The argument that you couldn’t directly take the story of a video game and make it into an interesting movie has never held true to me. While the length of the plot would obviously require trimming, how is it that a story of a team of special forces police trapped in a spooky mansion is considered unfilmable? There’s a secret laboratory underneath the house, a zombie conspiracy threatening the nearby town and one of the team is a traitor. Sounds like a summer blockbuster to me. So why introduce an evil computer hologram girl? Were evil computer hologram girls testing well with audiences that week? I don’t understand and I don’t think I ever will.
After the stink of Hitman: Agent 47 has faded (7% on Rotten Tomatoes, by the way), there may be some light at the end of this rancid sewer tunnel for the first time ever. This year, there’s two video game adaptations on the horizon being made by directors who already have commercially successful and critically-acclaimed films on their resume. While this isn’t new (Prince Of Persia was directed by Mike Newell, after all), there seems to be some rejuvenated life that has been injected into these adaptations that could prove to break the spell. Duncan Jones’ Warcraft and Justin Kurzel’s Assassin’s Creed are the best chance video game movies have ever had to crawl out of the hole of eternal contempt. Jones directed the cerebral thrillers Moon and Source Code and Kurzel’s resume includes Snowtown and Macbeth. Obviously, if you’ve seen the brutal true-crime saga Snowtown then an Assassin’s Creed movie made by the same person would at least raise an eyebrow. If not drop your jaw.
But the key to bring it all together is Ultron. That first hint of shaky ground presented by the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a perfect opportunity for video game movies to strike a decisive blow in the realm of no longer being crap. An open door for people who have had just about enough of superhero movies to step through. Starting to think all these Marvel movies are cut from the same factory cloth? There might be a new kid in town.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Video game movies have a LONG way to go if they ever want to even have a chance to play in the big leagues. They are still considered laughable trash any way you cut it. On top of that, the amount of games that have been optioned by movie studios only to lay in the squalor of development hell is substantial. Currently, there’s tentative plans to make movies based on Asteroids, Gears Of War, Watch Dogs, Five Nights At Freddy’s, Joust, Dead Space, Myst, Tetris, Space Invaders, Dante’s Inferno, Rampage, Mass Effect, Dead Island, Mega Man, The Last Of Us, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Minecraft, Temple Run, Sonic The Hedgehog, Uncharted, Sly Cooper and Dragon’s Lair. There are no doubt a lot more sitting around gathering dust but that’s plenty to be going on with. Will any of these be made? Will they be any good? I guess we’ll know more after Jones and Kurzel deliver their work to our movie screens later this year. Maybe then the ridiculous notion of a Myst movie might seem viable.
It’s a strange thing to imagine. Comic book movies drying up and being replaced by video game adaptations. Can you picture an award winning actor as JC Denton? Or a live-action version of Wrex walking around the Normandy? These ideas seem insane right now but just keep in mind that Kenneth Branagh directed a Thor movie. A concept so mad that it could only be matched by…Michael Fassbender starring in an Assassin’s Creed movie. Which is a real thing that is actually happening.
The first Silent Hill movie is where any faith I had in video game movies being made with any sort of success finally disappeared. While the movie looked like Silent Hill, the characters were different, the story was different and it was clear nobody involved really wanted to make this movie into something memorable. Pyramid Head showed up a couple of times and he looked great but the constant vibe of apathy throughout the film was far too strong. Since then, any announcement of a video game movie is immediately met with disdain. Why bother? No good will come of it. Which is bizarre when you sit down to think about it. No matter what, when this particular source material is mined for a movie, it never turns out the way anybody wanted. And certainly not to a point where it’s poking its nose into awards season. An entire genre of films that are, for the most part, artistically worthless. It’s a really strange sensation and one that is so generally accepted that even when “serious” directors or actors get involved, our initial thought is they might be either crazy or simply completing some awful contractual obligation.
Will this circus of perpetual mediocrity turn it around and become worthwhile? It’s too early to tell but 2016 has the first glint on the horizon of a better future for this particular brand of entertainment. But then again, why does anybody want this? The games we play and cherish are right there anytime we want. What purpose does a live-action version serve? Is it really that important that we should keep bashing our heads against this wall in the hope that quality will finally fall out?
I bet Jessica Jones fans asked themselves the same questions.
Comments
54 responses to “For Video Game Movies, The Time Is Now”
The problem with most video game adaptations is that they mess with the game backstory to make it ‘mainstream’ (yes I know some superhero films do the same as well). Doom, nothing to do with demons from hell. Mario Bros, nothing to do with…plumbers jumping on turtles. Resident Evil was about as horror as Thomas the Tank Engine.
A very good point. It took getting people involved with comicbook movies who *understood* comicbook movies. People like Feige got involved who had an outright passion for comics, guiding them correctly, bringing people into the fold of a similair mind and creating what we see now, which are incredibly faithful adaptations which shine with their quality. As average as one or two Marvel adaptations have been, I can’t say there’s been a *bad* adaptation yet and to be frank, they’re generally of an exceedingly high quality bordering on excellent each time. DC looks like they’re going to get there now they’re finally bringing in good writers such as Chris Terrio and got rid of Goyer. But you’re right, respecting the lore is a front and center issue. Mario NEEDS that insane world, Resident Evil NEEDS the horror. Without it, they’re just not ‘them’.
Marvel. Great production value. Good movies. Not so great films.
Exactly. Not great, but fun.
They’re very easy to spend $30 on for a couple of hours of entertainment. They’re not going to change the world, or win any major awards, but they keep us coming back.
And next week – Deadpool!
I wouldn’t call them fun. Certainly, if you want a couple of hours of fun, there are a multitude of options that cost $30 that don’t involve sitting in a dark room full of middle-age infant men.
Don’t get me started on the proposed Uncharted film about antique dealers…
Hahahaha I remember that… dear god
Yeah, it’s like with the (mercifully aborted) Mark Wahlberg Uncharted movie that sounded like it basically had nothing in common with (and therefore, most likely no respect for) its source material.
I remember when I went to see the original Resident Evil movie. I was sitting there in the cinema wondering why the hell they bothered buying the rights to the game when their movie had nothing to do with the game. Then I realized that the only reason I was sitting in that theatre was because the movie was called “Resident Evil”, and there was no way on earth that I would have paid for a ticket to a steaming turd like that if it had had any other name on it.
And that’s the key step that I think needs to be taken – studios need to start buying the rights to games with the genuine intention of adapting them, not just so they can buy a recognizable brand name to slap on an otherwise shit movie that could just as easily exist with a completely different name. And not just with the intention of adapting them, but of doing it with some respect for the source material and the audience, which means giving it a decent budget in order to be able to get a decent writer, director and cast on board.
Marvel, and now through the purchase, Disney, IS running what amounts to a pyramid scheme with their films.
“Hey, you want a Black Panther movie? Get you and all your mates over to Ant-Man now, and we’ll see what we can do about that. ”
I don’t want to have to go see the Warcraft movie to get my Legend of Zelda TV series.
Speaking of which, Nintendo has been talking until it is blue in the face about how it plans to ‘leverage’ its stable of IP into other mediums.
Nintendo, unlike DC, aren’t tethered to and controlled by a larger entity.
The other model Marvel has applied since Iron Man 1 has been one of overall creative control (Feige?), throughout all the luminaries they’ve got involved, there was always that over-riding factor of studio control.
While I’d appreciate movies and tv shows full of Nintendo characters, I’m wondering how the same balance would be achieved. If you can call it a balance.
Good article. Bear in mind, Roger Corman directed a Fantastic Four movie 20+ years back that was utterly dire (it never saw official release), Thor was in made for TV movies, Captain America rode a motorbike with a shield made from transparent plastic and the hulk was merely green paint. Batman was Michael Keaton and Superman was reduced to awful reused greenscreen shots for Superman IV. 25 years ago, people said Superhero movies were *dead* and gone.
Now here we sit, stars are vying for these roles as they provide almost permanent security, constant decade long paychecks, guaranteed multi picture starring roles. You get a superhero role with Marvel or now, the upcoming DC universe? You’re set for a long time.
I firmly believe the same WILL happen for videogames. It may not be for another 5 years but we’ve seen Uwe Boll pioneer the ‘bad times’ just as Roger Corman, Tim Burton and others pioneered the bad times for Comicbook movies, where there were some dire ones (Corman) and a few gems (Burton). We’ve had dire videogame movies (Boll) and some great fun ones (Andersons Mortal Kombat).
I think a similair approach to comicbook movies needs to happen, taking the already existing storyline, expanding and rewriting it logically but keeping its heart and characters familiar and logical without losing its meaning and soul. Look at the MCU, none of the stories are directly taken from the comics, yet all are recognisable. Civil War does not resemble the comic storyline greatly, yet it has all the familiar plotbeats, neither did Winter Soldier, Ultron or Ironman 3 with its Extremis based storyline for instance.
So yeah, bring on game based movies with more confidence. Let’s get a much better Tombraider movie, let’s get a far more scifi horror based RESIDENT EVIL going, done by James Wan, lets get a Paul Greengrass directed Splinter Cell movie, a Ben Affleck directed, Chris Terrio scripted UNCHARTED (if you have to question why, you need to check out his movies), and a Catherine Hardwick directed Dark Souls movie. That’d be awesome…
Solid post, but you’re dead wrong about the Tim Burton batman films!
They were both brilliant. Michelle pfeiffer is still the best catwoman ever, Danny devito is the best penguin. They had incredible depth to their portrayals, with genuine motivation which elicited sympathy. They rightly weren’t unjustifiably “evil”.
And I’m pretty sure Christopher Walken thought he was doing a remake of nosferatu, which was just great. I bet he owned that cape.
I said Burtons ones were brilliant, or ‘gems’ as it were 😉 I was pointing out that even in the dire times, there were shining examples of how to do it right 🙂
lol as a 14 year old boy I had a poster of Michelle Pfeiffer with ripped mask, hair mussed up, holding a whip…. damn I loved that poster LOL
Honestly I wish, I REALLY wish we had of gotten Tim Burtons Superman. Because like Batman it may not have resembled the comics much in its initial form, but it would’ve changed the comics, like Batman the movie did. Burtons Batman had a permanently lasting effect, changing how we saw the Dark Knight, evolving him. The documentary on Burtons Superman was enthralling, it was amazing. I wish we had of gotten that movie because Cage looked outstanding! Brainiac looked interesting and the designs were stunning!
Oh, I see! He was sandwiched in there with some unsavoury company and got caught up. :p
I also want to take offence at the dismissal of Schwarzenegger’s perfect portrayal of Mr freeze in the original article. Sure, the rest of the movie was pants, but his lines are some of his most quotable. I still use them regularly.
I did the Overland hike in Tassie with the missus and some friends a few years back, and I knew it would be cold so I learnt all the Mr. Freeze lines before I left and quoted them non-stop for the whole 5 days every time it was even remotely cold.
I am honestly surprised I still have the same girlfriend.
Honestly I can’t get into Batman Returns at all. De Vito is ok (much prefer the Gotham Penguin though) and Walken was brilliant, but he fully gets into any character he plays. Compared to Batman though I felt it got bogged down too much and Keaton didn’t put in a good stint at all. But Batman was awesome, but that’s because of the tone of the film. It did take a massive nosedive after that though with the next 2 films but I think Carrey & Jones did a decent enough job as Riddler & Two Face. Just a shame about the rest of the film
I thought Val Kilmer did a great job as Batman. The leads in Forever weren’t the issue, just the direction and script.
And the nipples! THE NIPPLES!
I’m not sure that the nipples were really any worse than Burton’s clear S&M fetish imagery, it’s just that we all actually wanted to see Pfieffer in a torn-up latex suit.
lol absolutely, I’m just taking the piss 😉
“a Ben Affleck directed, Chris Terrio scripted UNCHARTED (if you have to question why, you need to check out his movies), and a Catherine Hardwick directed Dark Souls movie. That’d be awesome…”
YES YES YES, these two would be amazing, just as you have written. I reckon they would do an excellent job with those movies an I’ve been thinking about movies for these games a lot recently.
I also hope that one day we might see a Battletech/Mechwarrior Movie and of course a Mass Effect movie!
I believe it’s possible to make a good video-game movie; they just need to be approached with the same care and respect that comic-book movies finally started receiving. A good starting point is to find games with actual stories in them; while Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter are fantastic games, there’s not much story wise for a film maker to work with. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for example, has the whole “man or machine” subtext to go with the “shadowy conspiracy thingy”, and could translate well to the big screen with the right director (Neill Blomkamp, maybe?)
At the other end of the spectrum, it shouldn’t be too hard to at least make a visually entertaining piece of mindless, action-filled escapism that’s actually good. Plenty of games are filled with exciting set pieces that could work on the big screen; No More Heroes would be amazing, if it were directed by someone like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez or even The Raid’s Gareth Evans.
How is it that with Hollywood pouring billions of dollars into films that no one seems to realise this!?
That’s a good question. Maybe they have realised it; but they just figure it’s cheaper to slap a known brand name on any pile of garbage than it is to spend the time and money to produce a quality film. They could make a Zelda film, and it could turn out great, or it could turn out terrible. Plenty of people would still go see it either way, just because it’s Zelda. I know I probably would.
When I first saw the trailer for Scott Pilgrim my reaction was “holy crap they’re making a No More Heroes movie!” 😛
So do the Pokemon movies not count as game-movies? Also, Halo: Foward Unto Dawn was pretty great – despite being originally released in episodes, it’s a full 75 min movie.
Personally, I’d like to see Spielberg direct a movie based on The Dig (get with me on this @shane). I mean, he basically wrote it, so there is literally no one better placed to make a movie adaptation.
THE DIG \o/
I’d actually, genuinely love to see that turned into a movie 😀
Considering the game is 90% Boston Low wandering around tinkering with ancient alien technology it might be tricky but if movies like Castaway and Gravity can succeed, there’s no reason an adaptation of The Dig can’t.
That’s a good question but I’d say no Pokemon doesn’t, simply because it actually came from a cartoon rather than from a game.
And where did the cartoon come from?
I think the point is no one tried to take Pokémon Red and Blue and make that a movie. They made a cartoon which now has hundreds of episodes, and made a movie which was a side-story to the main series using established characters and tropes – and they’ve made a whole bunch of these movies now.
The movies were a byproduct of the TV adaptation, only connected loosely with the games. You can’t compare it to attempts to adapt Hitman or Dead or Alive (which as game adaptations go I rather enjoyed). I’d barely even consider Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within a game movie, given that it gave us all new characters etc. Of course so does every new Final Fantasy game, but still.
The Angry Birds movie is also out this year, and I’m sure it’ll be a commercial success but a resounding meh from anyone over 10.
The world needs no more video game movies. It’s stupid and pointless.
Marvel comics movies are always the same self aware wink wink nudge plus a stan lee cameo. They are mediocre movies at best which trade in nothing but cynical fan service and nostalgia.
At least uwe boll films are fun to watch drunk.
Just has to be the right gaming property to be right.
Is no one else insanely optimistic for the Ratchet & Clank movie this April?
I’m looking forward to it. I’m not “insanely optimistic”, but it does seem promising.
It’s animated though, I don’t think it really counts. Even if it’s a success it only really paves the way for other kid-friendly franchises.
No studio is going to be like “Oh Rachet and Clank was well received. Let’s greenlight that The Last of Us adaptation!”
I’m still pretty cranky about the Max Payne movie, but at least they understood the property better than Rockstar.
I think that part of the problem is just that the people making the films have never really been part of the culture that the original material came from. Comic movies got good when they started being made by people who grew up with both comics and blockbusters. Games will get there too.
Batman & Robin didn’t really kill comic book movies though, it was only 3 years later we got X-men 1 and then Spiderman 2 years after that. Their sequels and Batman begins are all good movies before Dark Knight gets an Oscar and Iron man starts the MCU.
Even the worst MCU movies have been way above the best video game movies.
I don’t expect any of the video game movies coming out to be much better than tomb raider or prince of persia, and still worse than Iron Man 2 or the Hulk movies.
It’s also not accurate to descrine Uwe Boll’s career as a ‘trainwreck’ since it has never been good. M Night Shyamalan would be a trainwreck since he made a few good movies and then went off the rails.
Not to mention Men in Black and Blade, which came out the same year and the one after, respectively. I think B&R killed DC’s comic book movies for a while, but not the genre as a whole.
The Assassin’s Creed movie has potential.
Anyone know if the Movie features any of the outside the Animus stuff? It would be challenge to convey that to movie-goers. Gamers pretty much accepted it as it was an excuse to get all stabby at people.
Why wouldn’t it?
It worked in the matrix and people ate that shit *up*?
Still holding onto the hope that a full fledged Halo film of some kind will be made one day.
The marketing trailers, ads and short films always look amazing and have effort in them, I would love to see either an animated movie on par with the graphics of the cutscenes in Halo 5 or a live action version similar in style to the short film Landfall, which I highly suggest checking out.
Then of course is my love for Dead Space, I enjoyed 1 of the 2 animated films but it has so much potential to be a new horror film franchise, a man can dream.
What ever happened to the rumored MGS movie staring Christian Bale? DO IT DAMMIT!!
Bugger Bale, it should be Keifer Sutherland! /s
That list has some great choices on there if you ask me but…
Joust, Rampage, Space Invaders, Asteroids…..Fucking Tetris.
You have got to be kidding me? They literally have no plot. How could you even make a movie with that source material without adding in so much stuff that it wouldnt be an adaptation in anything but name?! And shit, so terribly shit. Do they think us gamers would go see a Rampage film because we have somewhat fond memories of playing it on the c64 ( sorry, getting old here)??
Please somebody explain it to me. Or better yet pitch a film to me from one of the above. Go on, put your stupid Hollywood exec hats on and really go nuts, maybe ive just come back from a focus group who wanted more splosions and less dialogue, or like no dialogue at all actually. Fuck me. This world is nuts.
*cough* Battleship *cough*
Thought that was a board game? Either way that movie was shit, and if it was based on the game im thinking, then it doesnt really fit the critera above surely. Cough cough splutter
– Based on source material with no plot? CHECK.
– Adaptation in name only? CHECK.
– Shit? SUPER CHECK
Sorry was talking about video games man. But Yeh pretty insane that got made into a movie. Cluedo did pretty well but! I loved that movie as a kid.
Thought that was a board game? Either way that movie was shit, and if it was based on the game im thinking, then it doesnt really fit the critera above surely. Cough cough splutter
What I don’t understand is why studios insist on making video game movies as big-budget tentpoles. Why can’t they start with something small, like an indie TLoU with a budget like the movie Monsters. Or Heavy Rain as a with a low-cost version of David Fincher at the helm. And I’m sure they could make a competent TV series out of Telltales Game of Thrones 😉
Others:
– Low budget post-apoc set in the Fallout universe
– OTT Mad Max-style Borderlands adaptation
– I know I dismissed animated above but how is Dreamwork’s Minecraft: The Movie not a thing?
– Scorcese’s LA Noire
All could be done with microbudgets (so bugger all risk) but have solid narratives or worlds that would work in film.
“But then again, why does anybody want this? The games we play and cherish are right there anytime we want. What purpose does a live-action version serve?”
My thoughts exactly! Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to love a good movie be it an original work or based on a book, comic or video game, the source material doesn’t matter. But shackling a video game to a movie format doesn’t excite me. It’s like saying: what if your favourite video game was 1.5 hours long, missing a majority of the story and you had no control over it? I don’t get the appeal. video games are best when played.
Yeh I totally agree there. Especially in this Era, where even lovely looking cut scenes are criticized for breaking pace and taking control off the player. Doesn’t make much sense
I don’t think we’ll see a video game movie that’s worth watching and recommending until the people who make them take them seriously. Up until now, pretty much every adaptation released was to make money, so whenever I’m watching one of those movies I assume at some point someone in the marketing department was looking at a bar graph and profits was higher than expenses. To a certain extent the comparison to films based on comic books isn’t that direct because they are considered a form of art and video games aren’t (though both games and comic books are extremely popular nowadays.) That said, I do think that a good video game movie could be made in this day and age, but those who make them need to be ready to give it their 100% instead of trying to make a quick buck. By the way, here are some of my reviews of some of the video game atrocities that are out there http://gamesretrospect.com/category/reviews/video-game-movies/