Why Game Movies Stink 264
Via Cathode Tan (who has some commentary of his own on the subject), a Guardian article attempting to ascertain who is at fault for crappy game movies. From the article: "Because, unlike cinema, computer gaming is a medium which requires the player to make things up for themselves. An individual game may be laden with 'plot points' but its narrative is always up for grabs. It is a format of scenarios rather than stories, elements which can be bolted together in differing orders with varying outcomes. Cinema, on the other hand, is designed for people who like to watch and listen, and who expect the film-maker to get their story straight before the movie reaches the theatres. Viewing a film based on a computer game is like hanging around in an amusement arcade, peering over the shoulders of other people playing video games. It has less to do with story-telling than conceptual shelf-stacking. And it is symptomatic of the painful death of the art of narrative cinema."
Uh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
most games stink
most movies stink
It's basic algebra/logic/common sense...
Poppycock! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is still possible to write a good movie based on the plot points of a game. "Tomb Raider" comes to mind, as does "Mortal Kombat". Neither is all-time great cinema, but they are both perfectly good movies. They took the plot points of the video games and built a good story around them.
If you can't make a good movie from a video game that's a failing of the writers you are using, not of the concept itself. Given the quality of plots coming out of Hollywood in general, it should be obvious that good writing is in seriously short supply.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, walking into a movie theatre, sitting down on the couch with a DVD, or even catching a game at the bar, we all experience Television or Movies in the same way. We can't control anything. People who go to a movie go there to see a story unfold. They don't go there to make things happen. When people go to see a movie based on a video game, they expect the same level of excitment the videogame delivers. This can never happen.
Silent Hill was probably one of the best videogame movies I've seen. The game doesn't concentrate on combat, but on storey and making you piss your pants. The movie keeps your heart unsure whether or not it's worth each heart beat. Just like the game. The movie has very little combat. The game does not focus on combat. The game has a deep story that takes forever to discover and understand. The movie uses the time you're in the theatre to deliver enough story to understand what's going on. The only problem is that if you haven't played Silent Hill 1,2, and 3, you may not understand the movie's symbolism, and thereby, believe that it's just wonton violence.
Silent Hill was good. Not the best, but good. Compare it to any other video game movie, and we're darn near a 10, at least a 9. TFA goes on to campare it to Street Fighter and Mario Bros (THE worst video game movie EVER). Not really a fair analysis. Street Fighter the game doesn't really have a plot. And Mario Bros the movie didn't have a plot. Not really a fair comparison there.
Game movies may be bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a problem with the videogames NOT the movies (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the problem isn't the "painful death of the art of narrative cinema" its the "painful dearth of art in popular video games."
Let's face it, most video games have a very simple storyline (if any storyline at all). Most of that storyline concerns itself, not with introducing interesting and complex characters and plot points, but in setting up cheap excuses to get you into some predictible gaming sequence. The focus of "Doom 3" isn't charcter and plot, that's all just there to set up a fairly predictable FPS.
Decent movies; on the other hand; rely on good writing, plot, and character development pretty much EXCLUSIVELY. That often means that a video game adaptation movie either has to reduce itself to being just as mindless as the video game, without even the benefit of any interaction (what the article complains about) or make HUGE alterations and additions to the original videogame storyline just to "flesh out" some interesting characters and plot developments (something which makes the studio and fans howl).
I mean, ask yourself, how exactly would YOU make an interesting movie out of Halo, whose "star" is a faceless, anonymous, killing machine with virtually no backstory (and working under the studio requirement that he has to occupy most of the screen time, with a large number of pure mindless action scenes)?
-Eric
My theory... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) They are the same plot as the game. You already played the game, why do you want to watch the same thing in cinematic form?
2) They are too far away from the plot. The fans already know the plot line and you've thrown something completely different at them and they cry about how it's not true to the game.
I prefer the latter personally.
Oh wait...
3) Uwe Boll
Re:1st person movie? for a 1st person shooter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Fans don't write scripts! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Silent Hill (Score:1, Insightful)
I think you misspelled "utter rubbish that made me want to rip out my eyeballs and stuff them in my ears".
Re:simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, walking into a movie theatre, sitting down on the couch with a DVD, or even catching a game at the bar, we all experience Television or Movies in the same way. We can't control anything. People who go to a movie go there to see a story unfold.
That's an interesting quote from TFA. The thing about "the luxury of a joystick" is that a joystick is a damn primitive interface. Books and to a lesser extent Movies are able to delve ino the various layers and nuance of the human experiences in a way that games just can't now, and for the foreseeable future.
I don't 100% agree with him but I see where Ebert was coming from. Run, jump, shoot, throw, duck is just a very limited subset of what it means to be human. And w/o full blown AI, a "choose your own adventure" style game will tend to have less depth and meaning than a director-selected plotline. When we do get AI, gaming might end up looking more like LARP, live action roleplay.
Lacking proper perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any interesting video game works in the horizon save for Halo: Fall of Reach which at least has been rumored to be attached to pretty good directors (Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro). Just give it time. It may take another two or three years for a good video game movie to be made, or longer, but it will eventually happen.
Now, if they could only get licensed games to be good...
Re:Poppycock! (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent is absolutely correct. Most game-movies fail because they aren't like the games at all. For example...
Super Mario Bros. should have been a pipe-and-koopa-filled Mario and Luigi adventure to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. Instead, we got some bizarre sci-fi thing involving parallel universes and evolved dinosaurs(?)
Doom should have been like the games - an intense survival-horror flick where the main character blasts his way through demons (and even Hell itself) to save the world. But, nope.
Street Fighter... don't even get me started. How they adapted a fighting game into this piece of motion-picture crap, I'll never guess.
Either way, the success of movies like Advent Children proves that people want movies based off of the actual games themselves, rather than some contrived movie plot written by someone who has obviously never played the original games in question.
Cop-out (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason videogame movies blow isn't because of the source material (usually). It's because the writers/directors/studio bigwigs/what-have-you take too many damn liberties with the mythos.
Okay, let's take Silent Hill for a start.
DISCLAIMER: I am a Silent Hill fanatic.
The makers of this film had an interesting, unique mythos to work with. They had interesting characters, bizarre environments, crazy monsters, excellent music, etc. So instead of using that as it was presented, they decided to pick and choose what they wanted and slapped it all together. Granted, they nailed the visual aspect of the game, but nothing else.
For a start, let's talk about Pyramid Head (er, sorry - the Red Pyramid). He shouldn't have been in this movie at all because he's totally pointless outside his original context. Pyramid Head was only relevant to Silent Hill 2 because he a manifestation of both James Sunderland's sexual frustrations and his guilt. Including him in the movie just smacked of "hey, this guy's a cool villain, let's use him!"
And don't even get me started on the whole plot/character deviation from the first game. You know, things like the lead character being Harry Mason and not this Rose person, his daughter being Cheryl and not Sharon, etc. Harry Mason's presence in the original Silent Hill game is very important, as it plays a rather significant part in Silent Hill 3, where it wraps up some of the first games loose ends.
I could go on and on, but I won't. The fact of the matter is that they take too many liberties with the games. Don't change things that don't need changing. For the parts that can only be experienced with a controller, use your head and try and think of a way to convey that experience to the audience. Play the game through and take note of your emotions/feelings as you play a particular part, then use that to transfer it to the big screen.
I think bad game movies are more a lack of effort and adherence to canon as opposed to having nothing to work with.
Re:Poppycock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, finally it all makes sense! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I read, they are only a symptom?
No, the real problem is, quite simply, Hollywood can NOT make a movie where the story is already written for them and the market for that story is pre-built-in. They can't HELP but change it based on market testing, on director's "creative" whims and seniour executive's cocaine fueled brain farts... Only to discover after the fact that the original story that sold so well as a game was, in fact, quite good and was the primary reason why the franchise was so popular in the first place, and that changing it to make it more saleable actually made it less appealing to everyone.
Re:My theory... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because the inspiration for the movie was a videogame instead of a book, doesn't mean that these movies have to be treated with special care.
GAME MOVIES are a subset of MOVIES (Score:3, Insightful)
So, take the same vapid cadre of writers who produce the piles of drek and schlock out there and sick them on material that's already (in general) not good (game plots), and why is anybody shocked that they make crappy movies out of it?
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:1, Insightful)
Result: Best videogame movie ever!
On a serious note, I would say this movie is responsible for SM3 being the best selling video game not packaged with a system.
Nope (Score:2, Insightful)
These guys think too much (Score:4, Insightful)
Not because the producer fails to grasp the concept of game or because it lacks the player involvement or any sense of reality.
Let me break the hard truth on you : budget.
There are 2 scenarios :
1. A small producer trying to get some movies under his name because it fits nice on a resume. Its like acculumating hours of flights for a pilot. He'll take a quick project, small budget movie just to get experience
2. Big producer accepting the project for a big budget movie, but he'll use only a fraction of that budget because people tend to except low quality anyway. He'll use the remaining budget to fund a big movie that will catter to a much bigger audience, rewarding him with more money.
Its all about the money really.
Well, anyway, that's my 2c
Re:simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but, I can distil the story of any major hollywood film down into two paragraphs but you try and convey the understanding one gets from reading two hundred or so snippets of chozo lore (metroid prime) or the ever increasing pain of finding the diaries of people who have killed themselves and left behind their last thoughts for you to find in a mansion full of terror (resident evil 1) in a two hour film. A game film that tries to express the 15 hours of emotion evoked from a massive involving plot most of which you have come to by thinking then re-told in a two hour third person form where everything gets handed to you on a plate, just seems like a waste of time.
I hear people say that you are more likley to say you enjoyed a book, over a film, because of the ammount of time you need to invest in it. I think its the same with games and films. You invest more time, it uses your brain more, you like them better. How can they compete.
Re:simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Game movies don't stink. The scripts do. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does it matter in the movie while it doesn't in the game?
Because the player of a game is more involved than the watcher of a movie. He's part of the experience, he is "in" the game, not "looking at it".
Quite the same reason why Game-TV isn't really getting off the ground. Play a few hours of a shooter and then watch others do it. You'll understand the difference.
If they want to make GOOD movies based on games, they should take the general idea and write a plot around it. Not try to copy the "feel" of the game. Can you imagine what Indiana Jones and the last Cruisade would've been like if the game had been out before the movie? Can you envision the movie? And how bad it would've been? Just imagine the movie would have been watching Indy do what you make him do in the game...
Re:Poppycock! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they don't take it seriously, and think that the IP can stand on it's own.
Take a look at Batman. The good movies were the ones where they took the time to craft a plot, work on character development, and generally respect the material. The bad ones were the ones where they assumed that because of the strength of the IP and the established characters, you didn't need to do any of the things that you normally need to do when building a movie script.
Writing a movie script is a process, one which I only scratched the surface of in my screenwriting class. But it was enough to show me that the bad movies are the ones that diverge from the standard process that people use to develop a screenplay. I'd say that has far more to do with it than the lack of interactivity.
Re:Poppycock! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They don't need a good plot... (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree with the article completely. I think the problem with game based movies is that they don't stick to the plot points that made the game interesting in the first place.
Take doom for example, They changed it from scientists finding an ancient civilization on mars, studying their culture, and religion, and accidentally opening a gateway to hell, to finding an ancient civilization on mars, back engineering their technology, and creating monsters via genetic engineering. A sort of a resident evil on mars, However they kept all the references to the gates of hell opening, they didn't ditch the pentagrams, or any of that stuff. etc.
The reason hollywood can't make a decent game movie is identical to the reason they can't really make any movies that are very good anymore. They have completely lost touch with what people want.
The main flaw with the article is that if people felt that watching game movies was like looking over someone's shoulder in the arcade, they wouldn't go to see them. There wouldn't have been enough people who have seen it, to come back with a "well that sucked verdict" in the first place. People want to see them. They want to see or perhaps eveng get deeper into the plot line of their favorite game.
The sad truth is that Hollywood is out of ideas, out of touch with society, and couldn't write a decent script even if they had ideas and were in touch. They check popularity ratings of games and books, and base movies off of them. Most of the time, wrecking what attracted people to the game or movie in the first place.
There are a few exceptions to the rule, but too few and far between. Gone are the days when guys would get an inspiration, pitch it, focus group it, get an awesome writing team on it, and give the people something that entertained them, and all that for a reasonable amount of money.