A video game movie that doesn't suck

[Inyarear]

What would it look like?

Sure, all video game movies to date suck. Sure, Uwe Boll is the suck-meister of suckiness. We all know what we don't want. The question here is, what do we want?

If someone wants to make a movie from a video game, how should he make it? We all know what he shouldn't do. What should he do?

How do you make a video game movie that doesn't suck?

[ulthar]

The big complaint I hear about game based movies is deviation from the basic story.  Interestingly, that's the same complaint about movies made from short stories or novels.

Soooo, I'd say: stick to the basic story.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I agree with Ulthar. Take Resident Evil for example. The basic premise for the first game was a zombie virus outbreak in a Mansion in the woods. A team of speical police are sent in and are cut off and stuck in the mansion with a traitor on the team. They fight all sorts of werid creatures and the story unfolds more and more. Its a B-movie video game. Great stuff really.

The second game has the outbreak reach the city were various people are stuck.

Now I don't know how the hell you screw that up but apperently from the first two movies did with all these cheesy "Matrix" like scenes and a super powered chick. Everyone in the game were just normal people stuck in a bad sitution like any other zombie movie.

[Fearless Freep]

Iwould say you can't make a good 'video game movie' because the plots of video games are pretty simplistic by neccesity (and usually fairly well established as plot lines from other genres) and what make a video game good is how much it captures your attention with the activity of playing it.  So any movie based on a video game, to be good, would have to deviate a lot from the premise of the video game to keep it engaging when going from an active medium to a passive one....stick too closely to the premise of the video game and you just have another b-movie ripoff of a much better movie frm somewhere

[dean]

Llike Freep said, it's a bit of a conundrum trying to adapt a game due to the fact that the key factor in creating a good game is one with good gameplay, simplistic or not.

That being said though, many games of late are very cinematic.  In fact, I probably spent just as much time watching what was happening in Metal Gear Solid 3 as playing it, as just one of many examples, so I guess it depends on what game you adapt really.

Though even the most basic games sometimes have absolute gems of a storyline which often are only explained in the notes on the manual and not even in the game itself, and half the time they're probably more interesting than some of the crap people come up with anyway for 'normal' movies, so what's the harm in adapting a game, really?

So I guess, choosing the right game and the right approach is the way to go: adapting Dead Or Alive because apparently people like the big busts on the game characters rather than story, well that means that you'll get a crappy [though perhaps entertaining] movie adaptation.  Adapt a game like, say, Half Life 1/2, where there's alot of story and good characters and is very cinematic itself, could work as a great movie, but could also fail miserably by the fact that it was so cinematic in the first place [and therefore lacklustre.]

So in a sort of pathetic conclusion I'll leave you folks with a couple of funny comics dealing with this sort of thing:

Pac-man: The Movie

Pac-man: The Movie 2

Pong The Movie

[Shadowphile]

You need to start with a true RPG, rather than a glorified shooter.  Parasite Eve has an interesting storyline.  It might work well.  Then again, it might turn into another Resident Evil.

You need input from somebody who knows/loves the game.  The fans know what the fans like and want.

You need a director with at least some familiarity with the game, who does not have the obligation to use an island or a mine shaft.  John Woo, I think would do a serious kick ass job of a video game movie.

[Inyarear]

So--from the things I've heard so far, these may be some rules for making a video game movie that doesn't suck:

1. As Ulthar says, "stick to the basic story." Or, as I like to say, "play it straight."

Running afoul of this rule may have been what killed the Doom movie, certainly: as many of the gamers complained, the game's premise--that experimentation with hyperspace gates accidentally opened a portal to Hell, leaving a space marine to fight his way through an army of the damned to get back home--was far more interesting than the movie's crummy pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about some genetic mutation turning everyone into monsters and zombies. While I haven't seen Resident Evil as a game or movie myself, rich andrini's explanation suggests that the Resident Evil movie also broke this rule, and hence was rendered into crap.

2. As Fearless Freep suggests, just don't make video game movies.

While I disagree for my own reasons, Fearless Freep may have a point. Certainly, all the inductive evidence so far is in his favor: there's nary a good video game movie to be seen out of all the offerings we've had yet. On the other hand, anyone who has seen the early comic book adaptations to live action can testify that all of the early comic book movies were crap, too: even the DC movies that sold well, such as Superman and its sequels, have not aged very well. Most of Marvel's flicks from that time, of course, don't even merit discussion. For all that, DC did manage some better work in the 1990s, and Marvel's X-men and Spider-man seem to be doing well now that the company's big enough to afford decent script-writers and special effects worth seeing.

Still, can we agree that some video games just are not adaptable? I'd say these hopeless cases are mostly the earliest games, because they had no plot at all and were strictly about scoring points. The Mario Brothers movie could certainly have failed for this reason: as anyone knows who's played those games, they had plenty of engagingly surreal scenery but none of the games ever really seemed to have much plot. (Actually, given all the focus on mushrooms and fungi and such, I can't help wondering whether someone at Nintendo was eating psilocybin, and decided to base the whole game on his hallucinations.)

More contemporary games such as Silent Hill might not make for good movies for a slightly different reason: if the game already is an interactive movie, isn't making a movie from it rather redundant? Then, too: if the maker of the movie is a hack director such as Uwe Boll, doesn't that mean he'll actually do a worse job than the people who made the game? That certainly seems to have happened to Wing Commander. (When Mark Hamill refuses to be in the movie, you KNOW it's bad!)

3. As Dean says, mostly as a corollary to #2, choose the right game and the right approach.

The trouble with this rule is, it begs the question. Still, Dean does provide an interesting example: making a film from Dead or Alive because people like busty girls would (possibly) make for a cheesy but enjoyable flick. To this I say, isn't that what happened with Tomb Raider? That "dick flick" might conceivably be watchable if, for some reason (such as being drunk and horny), you cared more about Jolie's breasts than about the so-called plot. The original video game Pong, I've heard, was targeted at this very crowd: drunks in a bar. Unfortunately, that's not as broad a demographic as some would like to believe.

The rest of his explanation reiterates what I said for #2: if the game's already a movie, who needs a movie based on it? Mortal Kombat was loosely based on cheesy old kung fu movies. Not surprisingly, it made for one heck of a cheesy kung fu movie. Half Life probably isn't a good choice for a movie adaptation simply because it's already a cinematic piece. Doom might be adaptable, but only because so much theologically interesting imagery was left unexplained; I know that there were some novels based on these games (possibly better than the movie!) in which the main characters speculated a lot about the possible motives Hell's minions might have had for setting up such unholy symbols everywhere. In other first-person shooters, the setting is usually pretty well explained in advance, and there's not much for a movie adaptation to do with it.

4. According to Shadowphile, use "real RPGs" instead of first-person shooters.

If by "real" Shadowphile means the game really is about role-playing, the point is well-taken. Doom actually had more potential for a plot simply because, for all the action and mayhem, there was a mystery worth solving, too: what could Hell possibly want with Martian moon bases? Then too, the character of the "first person" in the first-person shooter could be developed in reaction to these mysteries: how does a space marine manage to keep himself going in the face of such relentless evil and a seemingly never-ending gallery of horrors? Other first-person shooters tend to be ripped straight from old James Bond flicks and other settings in which character development is essentially irrelevant. They might make for a respectable if rather mindless action flick, but Hollywood is already cranking those out constanty without any help from the video game industry.

The games actually known as RPGs, on the other hand, may or may not work as a film. People do tend to get attached to various characters from RPGs, but would these characters have enough to do on a big screen? Think of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Part of the problem with it (aside from its being not really adapted from any of the games) is that it's friggin' hard to care about the heroine's quest for the eight elements or crystals or whatever the heck they were supposed to be. Questing for eight specific elements or objects IS very standard in RPGs, in fact, but so what? Who wants to see a movie about that? You also have the problem of RPGs being non-linear: whichever quest you try following in the movie, chances are you're leaving out something that a fair portion of the gamers would rather see left in. On the other hand, if you try to leave everything in, your movie gets to be way too long. You really can't please everybody.

5. Shadowphile sez: "You need input from somebody who knows/loves the game. The fans know what the fans like and want."

Fair enough, but again, you can't please everybody. Still, isn't that what I'm seeking for here? Maybe we should take this rule one step further and say: hire some of those players as consultants already! Other movie makers screen their stuff before test audiences, so why don't these video game movie directors?

6. Shadowphile also sez: "You need a director with at least some familiarity with the game, who does not have the obligation to use an island or a mine shaft." Or, as I would say, "Play the friggin' game yourself; and beg, borrow, or steal a real budget, dingbats!"

Budgets aren't everything, of course, but even if the movie is necessarily low-budget schlock, there is such a thing as GOOD low-budget schlock. The first Terminator film was a low-budget flick, you know: James Cameron thought the Dune movie was going to be the big thing that year, so he figured he'd make a fun little flick about an unstoppable robot, make a tidy little profit, and move on to something else for his next paycheck. Instead, Dune turned out to be $50 million disaster while Terminator turned out to be a blockbuster that justified a big-budget sequel. That very successful sequel demonstrates in turn that the budget is something, though not everything.

The part about directors playing the game for themselves is about as sensible as #5: is it any wonder that the movies suck if the directors don't even care enough about the source material to try it out for themselves? For that matter, ever noticed that they don't much seem to listen to the gamers? Gosh, how could a film ever go wrong with the director ignoring his target audience and not even bothering to play the game he's supposedly adapting?

Let's try summarizing those rules:

1. Play the story straight.
2. Don't make just any game into a movie.
3. Pick the right game (as per #2)
4. Give us characters we can actually role-play.
5. Pay attention to what the gamers want from you.
6. Play the game yourself, director. And cough up a budget, cheapskate.

Now, here's another challenge: which games could you actually adapt, following these rules? And which director might actually try such a thing?

[Inyarear]

I recently ran across this interesting article on the subject, too:

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3145588&did=1

[Ash]

I actually liked Doom the movie so much I bought it on DVD.

Sure, I admit that they f**ked with the original premise and changed it all around but I still like the film for some odd reason.
While the human genome thing ruined the film for many people...I simply brushed it aside and loved the action and tension.
It's dark and atmospheric and I like that.

It also has The Rock who happens to be one of my favorite actors.
Yeah...I know you all hate him but I don't care.
The guy kicks ass in pretty much every film he's been in.

[Shadowphile]

Having seen Final Fantasy: Advent's Children on both versions, I'd say they hit the nail on the head.  Yes, it helps to be familiar with the game but it isn't necessary.  You miss some of the 'in jokes' (like the cell phone ring tone) but it is still an enjoyable movie.

Other games that would make decent movies?

Star Ocean, Suikoden, Xenosaga.  I'd add in my personal favourites but they're all giant fighting robot games and they generally don't hav much of a plot.  An Armoured Core movies isn't too likely.

With the cinema scenes that crop up in most video games now, they practically are movies, so the age of the VGM is likely coming to an end.

Directors?  Definitely Woo.  Maybe Cameron or Spielberg as well.  I'd also like to see what Ron Howaerd or M Night whateverthehell would do witha video game script....

[AndyC]

I thought the Doom movie did one thing right. It played with our expectations by making the Rock into the bad guy. I especially liked his line "I'm not supposed to die!" as he's being killed.

Video game movies tend to suck because the makers have no respect for the source material or the target audience. They're see themselves as making movies for brain-dead teenagers who can't follow a plot, have no attention span and only want to see things blow up. That might actually be true of a good deal of the audience, which is why these movies make money.

Remember how Uwe Boll reacted when somebody actually tried to write him a good movie? Too much story and not enough of the standard things he felt every movie needed (ie superpowers, mindless action, an island, etc.) He has no respect for his audience, and he adapts games because they have name recognition and a built-in audience -- and real filmmakers stay away from them. It's the path of least resistance.

If a video game movie is made by an intelligent person who enjoys the game and doesn't feel compelled to pander to the lowest common denominator, it could be good.

[Fearless Freep]

Here's something to think of, if you would spend 1.5 to 2 hours watching someone else (preferably a complete stranger) play a video game, for the plot story and character arc, it might make a good movie. Not for the action, technologoy, special effects, etc...because movies can already do them much better than a video game so the 'gee whiz' factor of the 3d motion engine is not going to be very compelling translated to a screen.  If te plot of watching someone else play the game can hold you, it might be worth a translation to a different, more passive medium.

As was mentioned for Resident Evil.  RE has a good plot for a video game to get you immersed into what's going on.   As a movie, thought, that's the same general plot as a few hundred zombie movies..most of them bad.  So if someone wants to make a good RE movie, they have to be able to make a good zombie movie to begin with, whether or not is has proper names tacked onto it from RE.

Most VG adaptations are going to run into that, the plots may be enough for a video game for a 10-30 second cut scene, but that's just setup to the immersion and interaction of the game itself.  Take the interaction out and stretch the cut scenes to 1.5 hours and you run into the problem that the 'plot' is just a plot from another medium (probably a bad movie genre to begin with)  How do you then go and make a good movie out of a plot that's just "Aliens" or "Jaws" to begin with?  Well...you have to be able to make a good "Aliens" rip-off....and we've seen how well that usually turns out : )

In order for a videogame to work as a movie, you have to have a story that works on it's own as a story, that happens to be in a videogame.

Then you have to decide how to play it...I mean a lot of stuff in videogames is pretty stupid..or at least boring.   Pressing every wall panel to see where the secret room is?  Do you stay 'faithful' to the VG and have a scene where the character(s) do(es) that?  To remind os of the VG?  OK, that's a nod to the gamers but look s pretty silly to everyone else?  Or do you just throw that stuff out.. at the risk that what made the game cha;lllenging and interesting never really makes it to the movie.

I don't thinkit cam be done because the people with the talent to do it wouldn't bother  (If I can make a good zombie movie...why pay the rights to RE and have to deal with all the problems of how much to throw the gamers versus how much to tell the zombie story I want? Forget it, I'll just make a good zombie movie) and the people likely to want to capitalize on the crossover appeal of a videogame tend not to be the most talented people  (*book* adaptions are rarely successful and books at least have a lot more common elements with movies than do videogames)

[ulthar]

Fearless Freep Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In order for a videogame to work as a movie, you
> have to have a story that works on it's own as a
> story, that happens to be in a videogame.
>

I think part of the trick would be to have the basic story elements there and perhaps build on them in a "good way" (admittedly easier said than done).  I don't think you should try to make a passive clone of the game.  Start with the basic premise, run parallel for the first act or so and see where it goes from there.

> ...why pay the rights
> to RE and have to deal with all the problems of
> how much to throw the gamers versus how much to
> tell the zombie story I want?

Someone else mentioned this: instant name recognition.  Also, if the story elements were sufficiently parallel, you'd pretty much HAVE to pay the rights.  (But I do get your point: if you can make a good zombie or alien movie, just do that).

[ulthar]

I think there are some space shooters that could be adapted.  Think the old Defender, or one I have called Asteroids 3D.  They could work as a premise.

The Asteroids 3D game is based on the idea that there is a lot of hazardous waste in orbit around the Earth, along with some aliens hiding among it.  So, you basically are a garbage man with a laser (and some nukes!!) hired to destroy the junk, when lo and behold, YOU are getting shot at!!

It could be done.  I'm not sure something similar has not been done before.

I don't even want to think about story ideas for a movie based on PaperBoy.  Uh, that could go in some wierd directions......  ;)

[Just Plain Horse]

First, to not screw up the adaptation-

Don't follow cliches
Remember the fans of the game
Write a competant script.
No more goddamn cars exploding... it's waaaaay overdone!!
Make something better than the material that inspired it.