Badmovies.org Forum

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?

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.

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.

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

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 (http://www.myextralife.com/archive.php?date=2004-05-17)

Pac-man: The Movie 2 (http://www.myextralife.com/archive.php?date=2003-08-14)

Pong The Movie (http://www.myextralife.com/archive.php?date=2004-06-21)

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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....

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.

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)

Fearless Freep Wrote:
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> 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).

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......  ;)

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.

First, I would like to point to an actual novelization of Doom as an example of how one might conceivably make a story out of a video game:

http://lib.ru/INOFANT/DOOM/doom1_knee_deep_in_the_dead-engl.txt

It's not exactly Shakespeare, but you've got to give the author credit for one thing: it's definitely not Uwe Boll!

Concerning the complaint that a video game movie would be just like watching someone else play a video game, I probably should mention that movie critic Ebert had the very same complaint about the Doom movie; he said it was as if someone else had taken the controller away, and wouldn't let you play!

First-person shooters do indeed borrow liberally from horror movies someone has already done, especially zombie movies. That's part of why I suggested getting away from first-person shooters. Doom is potentially interesting only because it isn't strictly a story about zombies, even if it does have some, and it's not just another Alien rip-off, even if it does bear some similarities. The main possibilities that make it a potentially adaptable story are the theological mystery and suspense (as in "Why are they doing this to us?") and the character development that was necessarily absent from the game. Again, see the Doom novel: it gives the lonely space marine Fly a personality, a history, and an ambiguous relationship with a lady marine, played out in flashbacks whenever he finds time to rest from the grisly business of mowing down former comrades. A possible reason why so many video game movies fail is because they don't bother expanding on these things that games' storylines necessarily short-change in order to keep the action going.

Concerning little nods to the gamers such as the discovery of secret passages, the main trick there is to keep them short and sweet. Instead of having the characters (who probably wouldn't even be aware that there are secret passages to be found) go hunting for a secret panel, have a setup in which the lone shooter gets trapped at a dead end right near some famous secret panel, he's running out of ammo--and then suddenly he stumbles against the secret panel, and the wall slides back... The non-gamers in the audience, if you do this right, get to see a fellow in real trouble and feel the suspense of wondering how he's going to get out of this mess. The gamers, meanwhile, get the suspense of going "Come on, Fly, it's right there next to you! Just push that panel!"

Apart from that, occasional winking references to the source material are acceptable, as long as they're not overdone. Remember that scene in the first Spider-man movie where Peter Parker tries to figure out how to get his webs to shoot? "Go Web! Shazam!" That might have gotten pretty tiresome if they'd kept on doing it, but I think that worked in that scene. Likewise, in the X-men, "Well, what should we wear? Yellow spandex?" and "What do they call you? 'Wheels?'" worked pretty well. Referring alternatively to the "Bio-Force Gun" and the "Big F***ing Gun" in Doom is actually one of the things done right there.

Freeper's question about what talented person could be bothered to do such an adaptation is worth asking, but I do notice that Peter Jackson is mentioned as having signed on for making an adaptation of Halo. (I wouldn't try that one, but then I didn't expect his King Kong movie to do so well, so maybe he's got something there.) Furthermore, as mentioned before, comic book companies used to have trouble finding anyone with real talent to adapt their stories into movies too. Someone smarter than the current crop of hack directors is likely to turn up eventually.

Name recognition may sell the movie somewhat, but more than a few gamers are, quite justifiably, taking Freeper's attitude. Why should we continue to feed Uwe Boll and other hacks who give gaming a bad name? You want to win this crowd back, we've got to have a story that's good on its own in addition to being a good adaptation. Maybe adaptors should try working with games where the characters didn't have much personality, and try giving them some, along with a backstory that fills in a lot of gaps and gives us some reason to care about the characters. If you could honestly say things about a movie such as "Hey, I never thought of the sibling rivalry between Billy and Jimmy Lee that way before!" or "You know, that is a good question: what kind of romantic relationships would the robots in Megaman's world have, considering that they don't have any sexual organs?" wouldn't that be entertaining?

Inyarear Wrote:
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> "You know, that is
> a good question: what kind of romantic
> relationships would the robots in Megaman's world
> have, considering that they don't have any sexual
> organs?"

Obviously you haven't been reading my fanfiction.

All this talk of "nods" to the source material has reminded of a movie that never gets brought up when this subject rolls around.  CLUE.

Sure it's based on a board game, but it should serve as a good example of the adaptability of anything.  You've got the mansion, the characters, the secret passageways... They even included the interchangability of who killed Mr. Body with the alternate endings.

How about a TIME PILOT movie?  That sounds pretty cool.

I think the thing that annoys me the most out of some adaptations is that whole 'stick to the source material' thing.  I'm all for innovation and plot development, but if you miss what I feel is the key feature of a game in the movie adaptation then you've essentially failed.

I mean, I enjoyed both Doom and Resident Evil, but to me they are failures because they both fail to live up to my expectations on what should happen in the movie.  Eg. RE is a great trashy zombie film, but in my opinion it ain't what the game was about, that is, not mindless action and more suspense etc.

I guess the thing that really gets to me is the fact that I wouldn't be annoyed if they were made without the name recognition of the game.  But therein lies the problem: would they have been funded if they didn't have that name recognition.  Well probably not...

>Obviously you haven't been reading my fanfiction.

Well no, since you mention it, I don't read a lot of fanfiction. I'm sure Megaman fanfiction writers have their own answers to this hypothetical question. The point is, answering questions in the movie that aren't answered in the game allows the director to stick to the source material without being confined to it.

>All this talk of "nods" to the source material has reminded of a movie that never gets brought up >when this subject rolls around. CLUE.
>
>Sure it's based on a board game, but it should serve as a good example of the adaptability of >anything. You've got the mansion, the characters, the secret passageways... They even included >the interchangability of who killed Mr. Body with the alternate endings.

Dungeons and Dragons got made into a movie, and that's a board game. It's my understanding that some vampire role-playing game that's sometimes played as a board game was also made into a TV series. Clue I could see as a TV series, but are you so sure it would make a movie? Every potential story in that game is really a short story. Stretching any of them over an hour and a half, let alone two hours, might be impossible. Then too, alternate endings may be fun for DVDs, but I don't think they'd play well in the theaters.

This is part of my quibble with the idea of making RPGs into movies: when the plot is so open-ended with so many different stories, you can't really fit it into the movie format, which is usually more close-ended and linear and has to stick to one story. Dungeons and Dragons managed to have a workable plot as a movie mainly by nature of the game being a world in which one could set any number of stories rather than being a story in itself. (The flaws that dragged that movie down came from the kind of problems that any movie might face: that the actors didn't bother to do much acting, the characters were annoying, and its low budget tended to show a little too much in places, etc. Of course, it would have helped the movie's makers to have a little more respect for the players and play the story by the game's rules, too.)

One could likewise make movies from Nethack and other dungeon games, but it would be a misnomer to call such movie (for example) "Nethack: The Movie" since no single character's story out of Nethack is the essence of the game. It would make more sense to call a movie based on Nethack "Sisterhood of Athena: A Nethack Movie" just as the Dungeons and Dragons Movie should have been called "Dungeons and Dragons: The Dragon Sceptre" or "The Queen's Thief: A Dungeons and Dragons Movie."

A Clue story... well, again, I think that might make for a decent TV series. The fun of that would be having the same characters star in every episode and maybe even the same story, but having a different ending every time to make the viewer say "Wait a minute! Colonel Mustard is the culprit this time? You mean this isn't a rerun?"

>How about a TIME PILOT movie? That sounds pretty cool.

Yes, if you could get it a plot and a character worth following, I could see that. There has to be some reason for the character to be traveling from one time to the next, but I'm sure someone could flesh that out. There's also the question of how many people would notice that it's a video game movie. I grew up in the Nintendo Era when Atari's line of games had faded from public memory, so Time Pilot (which I had to look up before I even knew what it was) might not have much name recognition anymore.

The games that occur to me as potential candidates for cinematization, of course, mostly come from the old 8-bit Nintendo gray box: The Legend of Zelda, Gauntlet, Ninja Gaiden, River City Ransom, Astyanax, Battletoads, and Double Dragon, to name a few. I also liked Earthbound and Chrono Trigger from the Super Nintendo 16-bit system, though I'm not so sure they'd be so easily given the cinematic treatment.

[DPK]

Inyarear Wrote:
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>
> The games that occur to me as potential candidates
> for cinematization, of course, mostly come from
> the old 8-bit Nintendo gray box: The Legend of
> Zelda, Gauntlet, Ninja Gaiden, River City Ransom,
> Astyanax, Battletoads, and Double Dragon, to name
> a few. I also liked Earthbound and Chrono Trigger
> from the Super Nintendo 16-bit system, though I'm
> not so sure they'd be so easily given the
> cinematic treatment.

I've heard a lot of rumblings of people wanting a Zelda movie, but having not played the game much I wouldn't know how it would work out.

Also Double Dragon was made into a movie, which I have on DVD.  Sure it's nothing special, but I found it fun enough to warrant a thumbs up rather than a thumbs down.

Wasn't TRON considered to be a pretty good adaptation of a game to a movie?  What elements are present there that are absent in the newer attempts?

Wasn't TRON considered to be a pretty good adaptation of a game to a movie?

The movie came frst and then the video game...and that worked because the whole premise of the movie was about being inside a computer system with elements of video games, etc...anyway

Fearless Freep Wrote:
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> The movie came frst and then the video game...

Ah.  I couldn't remember which came first, but thought I'd throw the dice and try, for once, to look cool.

Inyarear Wrote:
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> series. Clue I could see as a TV series, but are
> you so sure it would make a movie?

It was a movie, twenty-some years ago. Had Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Eileen Brennan and a bunch of others. Pretty funny. If I recall correctly, the alternate endings went to different theatres. The video shows them all.

The good thing about Clue was that it provided basic characters, a setting, some murder weapons and a bit of structure, but not much of a story. The filmmakers were able to build a nice spoof of whodunnits around these elements. It looked and felt like Clue, but it was also a decent comedy, and a genuine novelty.

That might be the problem with today's video games -- too much story of their own. You either adapt them exactly or build a new story around the basic elements. Either way presents problems. A simpler game, that would allow you to tell your own story, while staying faithful to the source, would work better.

Funny, we complain today that movies based on video games are nothing like the games. I remember when the same complaint could be made about video games based on movies.

Notably, adapting movies into video games hasn't worked very well so far either, though Tron was a very good exception. Of course, Tron also didn't do so well at the box office, although it's become a cult hit and made a fair amount on video sales since then. (Another modest movie-to-video-game success came from another box-office-bomb-to-video-success, Willow.) As I recall, the particular game in Tron that got adapted most often was the one with the racing cars that built walls behind them to trap the enemy. My own brother wrote a version of that game on his PC back in the 1980s.

There actually is a Clue movie? Yes, checking the Internet Movie Database, I see that there is:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088930/

It does strike me, from the preview and all the user comments, as the very kind of movie that works best on a DVD: it has numerous endings, any of which could be considered legitimate, and this in 1985! I'm surprised, though, that it actually went to theaters. Does anyone know how it did in the box office?

AndyC does have a very good point: video games with a lot of story might be too confining for adaptation into a movie script. That's part of why those old 8-bit games strike me as some of the better ones for adaptation: they've got stories that are little more than bare-bones outlines of a plot. A competent writer could fill in the gaps with more of a plot, a moral message (not too heavy-handed, mind; Keep It Simple Stupid is the rule to follow here), and lots of character development. After that, an editor could throw in various miscellaneous sight gags, pop-culture references, puns, double entendres, etc.

The problems with the Double Dragon movie, as I see it, mostly came from its immature style. The Double Dragon video game being based on lots of cheesy kung fu flicks, nobody was really expecting high-brow art here, but it could at least have had some of the stuff from those cheesy kung fu flicks that had everybody watching them back in the 1980s. Instead of teens, the Double Dragons should have been twenty-something men just as they appeared to be in the video game. Instead of brothers, they should have been identical twins. Instead of those astoundingly gay-looking costumes, they should have been wearing some more credible martial arts uniforms in darker hues of blue and red. Of course, they should also have both known enough martial arts to look good for the camera. (Scott Wolf didn't.)

Here's what I would have done (in addition to the obvious things mentioned above), had the movie been mine to make:

I would have based the plot mainly on the first Nintendo game, in which Billy was the big hero fighting against his twin brother Jimmy, the villain running the Black Dragon gang which (apparently) runs the city. The opening to the movie would involve a setting up of the romance between Billy and Marion, maybe back in the days before Billy and Jimmy became enemies. In the aftermath of a nuclear blast that destroyed most of the city's inhabitants but managed to leave most of the structures standing (a plot point from the second game), the twins went their separate ways, Billy setting up a dojo to train local citizens how to defend themselves in one of the still-somewhat-civilized quarters of the city; Jimmy, at this time, fought his way up from the ruins into leadership of the violent Black Dragon gang that came to rule one of the otherwise more anarchic sections of the city.

For personal reasons left to be explained at the end, Jimmy sends some of his henchmen to bring him Marion, and they kidnap her right outside the dojo apartment while Billy's out scavenging for groceries. Coming home earlier than expected, Billy sees the thugs fleeing the scene and takes off after them. Fighting ensues as he battles his way through the hordes of thugs sent to stop him, many of them fresh from Black Dragon's new accelerated-cloning vats (which are casually shown to be a kind of technological foundation for the gang's metropolitan empire.)

Meanwhile, Jimmy renews his acquaintance with Marion along with his rivalry with Billy for her affections. She's not so happy about being kidnapped, but he tries to make it up to her by insisting that he didn't really authorize his henchmen to beat her up as much as they did, and giving her a tour of his gang's technological empire, which he insists serves the admirable purpose of rebuilding civilization. He also sets her up in a comfortable apartment and tells his henchmen to bring him his twin brother alive, authorizing the use of knives and dynamite only as it becomes obvious that Billy is too tough and clever for mere brawling and blunt weapons to bring him down.

As for Billy, he keeps interrogating the various gang leaders he meets (and beats) with the same basic questions: who do you work for, and where is he? Little by little, he finds his way through city warehouses and reforested country estates on the outskirts of the city to his brother's underground residential complex and throne room in a former crypt. There, Jimmy throws everything he's got at him, including his right-hand man Machine Gun Willy, who has orders to shoot to disable--Jimmy still wants Billy alive.

Finally Jimmy comes out and fights Billy himself, in a scene involving a lot of back-and-forth dialogue to go with the physical battle which has Jimmy insisting that he only wants what's best for everybody and Billy insisting that Jimmy's authoritarian methods are not really the best way of rebuilding civilization. Their argument ultimately gets personal as it turns to Marion, and how Jimmy wants her for himself, or at least someone like her: he makes an entirely credible offer to clone her so that the twins can each have a girlfriend and, ultimately, a wife. He insists that Billy is throwing away a chance at a very good deal for them all. Billy counters with a kind of individualistic argument that diversity and uniqueness are still very important to humanity, and that made-to-order people would be a blight on human liberty and dignity.

In the end, neither Billy nor Jimmy can persuade each other, and Billy prevails only physically, knocking his brother out. Finding Marion in her comfortable apartment, he embraces her and they go home together. In the final scene, after a happy homecoming, Billy gazes wistfully out his apartment window at the streets below, while Jimmy, recovered from the beating Billy gave him, sits on his underground throne looking very lonely in the solitude of his underground lair. Each brother then quietly vows to persuade the other to his own point of view the next time they meet.

See how this goes? The script follows what little story there was in the NES game almost religiously, right down to the part about why the enemy thugs are all copies of the same few guys. There's a message of sorts--kind of a pro-individualist moral which, while it doesn't condemn the clones themselves (Billy and Jimmy being natural "clones" themselves after all), does condemn the rather utopian purposes some scientists have in pursuing human cloning. There's plenty of opportunity for character development (which the director had better not allow to go to waste or--so help me--he's fired!), and if you're not into all that deep philosophical stuff, you still get plenty of cheap thrills from watching Billy beat the crap out of hordes of thugs with his advanced martial arts in a post-apocalyptic setting. It even leaves open the possibility of a sequel (based, of course, on the video game's sequel). What more could you want?

For those of you who have been waiting for a good video game to movie adaptation, you're prayers have been answered.

Dead or Alive (http://www.doa.film.de/)

Is this a joke?  No, really.  Is this a joke?

Mofo,

No, it's not a joke.  It's 100% real.  Now I enjoyed the DOA games, but this looks awful.

I believe this is what we call a "dick flick" where I live. Dead Or Alive? Try "Dead On Arrival" for the real title of that movie. What little I know of the game comes from this:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/censorship.html

In the words of the writer (Wong):

3. Most games do appeal to the worst in us.

Or, more specifically, the worst in teenage boys. Can any of us deny that game makers profit from the hormone-driven urge to define manhood through violence? Do you think the makers of the Dead or Alive series know a thing or two about how to tap into sexual frustration in young males?


Look at how her boobs jiggle when she gets kicked in the face! Girls are even hotter when they're in pain!

So in the course of defending the right of game makers to express themselves through their art, let's not pretend there's anything redeeming about a whole lot of the games they make. And let's leave room for people to express their freedom of speech by calling such games "worthless s**t."

Much as I'm in favor of pretty women being in games and movies in general, I also agree with this point from Wong's Gamers' Manifesto:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifesto.html

Developers will be shocked one day when they notice that the world is full of women. It's true! More than half of your potential customer base are penisless. They have money. They like doing fun things. And yet, how do you think they feel when they play a game where the heroine looks like this:


Yeah, that's what she wears into battle. Thong-length kimono, no bra for those flopping DDD breasts.


And this is years after analysts told developers that women would happily play games if they didn't feel so objectified by them, and several decades past the point where they should have even needed to be told that. Have you guys ever met a woman? Then why don't you try making just a few games that don't play off of a 14 year-old male's idea of womanhood on the apparent hope that he'll play the game one-handed?

Interestingly enough a friend of mine [who is a female] happens to like DOA the games, so just because they are obviously marketed otherwise doesn't mean that every single woman is going to shout at the screen and say how bad a game it is because it objectifies women [which it obviously does].

That being said, I don't hold much hope for the movie, and I'm pretty sure it's just an excuse to get T&A on the screen as much as possible.

For that matter, objectification of women in games doesn't strike me as any huge threat to women or assault on their personal dignity either. What it does strike me as is rather stupid: just as an anime isn't much of an anime if it's all about fanservice, a game isn't much of a game if it's all about T&A. If the game has nothing whatsoever to recommend it to the intellect, you KNOW the movie isn't going to be any good.

Of course, the same people who are counting on fourteen-year-olds to play this game one-handed are probably counting on them to watch this movie no-handed, if you know what I mean.

Parasite Eve was a book before it became a video game.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932234195/sr=8-2/qid=1152539540/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-8856295-2996048?ie=UTF8

It was made into a movie in Japan

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JIX6/qid=1152539647/sr=8-8/ref=pd_bbs_8/002-8856295-2996048?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=404272

I have the DVD with english subtitles.  It is VERY good from a horror standpoint.  There is very little gore, but a lot up build up of situations and plot elements.  It has a few B-Movie moments, but the story is really developed.

It could, I think, survive an American treatment similar to The Ring.

A friend of mine describes video game animators as 'lonely men chained in basement cubicles'.  Given the increase in size and gravity resistance of the breast in most animated characters, I can't argue with him....

I mean hell, just look at the Charlies Angel's video game for PS2.  You know, the one they called Final Fantasy X2.  One of the characters has a camel toe for crying out loud. Try kicking ass and taking names wearing an outfit that tight....

Yeah, those anti-gravity breasts really say it all for those guys, don't they? Personally, I think a girl with well-proportioned breasts is prettier than one whose breasts each qualify for their own zip code, and I am one of those lonely gamers the makers have in their target audience.

Frankly, I think video game movies ought to capitalize on our loneliness instead of trying to alleviate it with unrealistically beautiful women. I think at least one video game movie ought to have a story in which the heroine is lean and mean with minimal well-proportioned breasts, there are no guys around to admire her body anyway, and there's no one to hear her scream when she gets into a tight spot. Guardian Legend from the 8-bit Nintendo was like that; the hero might be a girl in a bikini, but I didn't really notice that much until I won and saw a close-up shot of her at the end. Meanwhile, she's wandering around an alien planet completely alone (the sentient population having been wiped out) with no one to converse with her except some blobby-looking robotic things.

If they ever made a movie out of that, it could be an excellent kind of reversal fantasy: let the pretty girl be the lone warrior who can do things no one else even dares to attempt, but is denied acceptance and integration into society because of those very abilities. Maybe she could be something like the Psyche of Greek mythology, who was so stunningly beautiful that no man thought he stood any chance of winning her hand. (Thus, she ended up all alone until Cupid took an interest in her.) A girl with metallic wings on her back as portrayed in Guardian Legend might be so cybernetically enhanced that she's too smart and powerful for any ordinary guy to think he stands any chance with her, however desirable she might be. The last scene in the movie could portray the heroine's homecoming to the cheering and applause of all the grateful peoples of the world--but to no husband, no family, no boyfriend, not even so much as a friendly pet, ending an otherwise upbeat flick on a very downbeat note.

Well........Most of what I could say has already been said.
The Resident Evil movies are pure crap, 'nuff said on that.
The choices for the games have to be good choices, as folks have said.

I just read that they are making a video game adaptation to film for the game HITMAN.

Did they hire Jason Statham, which would have been the obvious choice in my mind?

Noooooo.....they got Vin Diesel as the main character.

This alone could wreck the movie before it even begins. He doesn't look, talk, walk or react like the main character in the game.

>Noooooo.....they got Vin Diesel as the main character.

As noted in "CRAP" (Supposedly by 50 Cent) by MadTV:

2 Fast 2 Furious was a waste of 90 minutes;
The only good thing is Vin Diesel wasn't in it.

I don't know, me I thought Mortal Kombat (the first one) wasn't too bad.  I mean, yeah, it was just a fighting movie with the occasional otherwordly move throw in, but still, it did what it very well.  

I guess the main thing is not have Uwe Boll involved, and just go with the video game's premise rather than trying to up (or down) grade it.  

I mean, if you gonna make a movie based on a fighting game, fine, have it be an action packed fighting movie.  If you gonna make a movie about monsters coming up from hell, make it about monsters from hell.  If the game itself didn't have a "deep" plot, then don't try to cook up one.

Haven't seen Silent Hill, so I can't render a verdict on that one yet.  Although the too biggest things I hear is that it was too long (and at over two hours, that might be true) and it didn't make any sense (course, the games THEMSELVES don't completely make sense, so that's to be expected.)  

Mike

Speaking of video game movies, what did you guys think of Final Fantasy Advant Children?  It's based on the Final Fantasy VII (which I told the ending of the game left the fate of many of the characters in doubt.)

Me, I played FFVII but only got like a third of the way through the game.  (Boy, sure did love that Tifa though... hehehe...)

Well, I'm going to make mention of a lot of these posts here...

I'm a girl.  *checking to make sure*  Yep, girl.  I like the DOA games, just like I like freakin Outlaw Golf.  The jiggle doesn't bother me because......it's a videogame.  I think any girl that gets all upset and p**sed off because her boyfriend/husband/best male buddy thinks Lara Croft is one fine piece of ass needs to grow up and find something real to get worked up about.

Sure, there's "objectification of women" in movies, music, games.  But there is of men too.  Vin Diesel, The Rock, Jason Statham (thank you GOD.)  They're pieces of meat.  Trust me, I'm NOT complaining.  I just cannot get worked up about boobies bouncing on my husbands video games.  Now, if the husband were to scream out said video vixen's name...well.  Then there may be some asskicking, or, in the vein of one good turn deserves another, I could just do the same.  

I happen to like the Resident Evil movies, rather a lot.  I also really liked Doom.  Silent Hill, eh, not so much, but I didn't hate it either.  Disappointed, yesh, but not to the point of bemoaning my loss of two hours and ten bucks.   The best thing to do when going from Video game to big screen is to...NOT LET UWE BOLL NEAR THE FREAKIN THING.  Didn't he challenge his naysayers to a fist fight?  But, limited it to only certain sized men?  I read that somewhere.  Personally, I'd love the opportunity to beat his ass with a chair or whatever else I could get my hands on, but.....I'm not a certain sized man.  

However much I loathe the man, there was one redeeming quality to Alone in the Dark.  Awesome awesome soundtrack.

I never saw Advent Children myself, and I haven't played the game either, so I can't really help you there.

I don't believe a movie made from a game has to be as lowbrow as its origins necessarily, but trying to make the movie anything other than what the game is definitely won't improve it. Lowbrow or highbrow, the movie should expand on whatever's already in the game, not shoehorn in some irrelevant agenda. A film made from Half-Life could have been about the horrors of genetic tinkering by aliens and such, but that doesn't work for a film made from Doom: Doom's about the horrors of Hell. These games play similarly, but they're about two completely different subjects, and ne'er the twain shall meet. Whether you just want to see lots of gratuitously violent scenes of guys blazing away at monsters or you want to find some all-important meaning to all this violence, the film should always stick to the original premise.

Having a smart and powerful editor probably makes a big difference too: if the editor at the studio had enough power over the production, he could strongarm the director into shooting all the scenes that fit and cutting out all of the irrelevant stuff: "What the hell is this doing in here? We're doing a car chase movie, not a feminist screed! It's out! And what's this joke doing in here? I don't remember seeing that in the script. I don't care how much you hate Bush! Bush jokes are lame! That scene's out! Now what's this? Since when do we need 40 minutes of acrobatic road rage to kill off one stupid driver!? Here, I'll cut it down to 2 minutes: take this shot and this shot. The rest is out. What's this guy doing in here? What's he got to do with anything? Your hick cousin wanted a part, huh? Well he's fired! This scene is out!"

If the film's any good, a good editor could help trim it down until there's nothing but the good stuff, and if it's no good at all, a good editor might have the sense to shut down the production altogether and cancel the film... as should have happened to the Super Mario Brothers movie.

Again, "objectification" doesn't bother me; it's just stupid, that's all. Films that spend a lot of time showing off Vin Diesel and The Rock won't get me hollering about matriarchal oppression, but if that's all they're about, you'll probably see me sitting there drumming my fingers on the arm rest, going "When's it get good!?"

You're spending TEN BUCKS a shot on these flicks? Ai yi yi, what a rip-off! It's a pity you don't live around here: in my town, there's a drive-in theater that charges five dollars a head to see two movies. For real marathoners, they'll sometimes show as many as three films on the weekend for the money. With that arrangement, you can get your money's worth or die trying.

Speaking of your money's worth, if the Alone In The Dark soundtrack's as good as you say, I guess the sensible thing to do would be to tell all your friends to avoid the film like the plague and buy the CD instead. "You get what you pay for" is the guiding principle of the seller as well as the buyer. We appreciate your warning.

Never played FF7 but watched the movie and enjoyed it, though it's the type of movie where you really have to be a fan of the source to really love it I'd imagine.  What was handy though was the dvd extras had clips from the game to catch people up on the important plot points which was handy.

The animation was great, but the plot was kind of thin, though it's lots of fun so its a matter of personal choice I guess...

I spend ten bucks WITH a soda.  

The soundtrack is only good if you like metal.  And I do.  He must not have had anything to do with the soundtrack whatsoever!

I like crap movies.  I admit it.  I can find something to defend in even the most reprehensible, meritless, steaming load of film ever.  Almost.  I can even find little tiny snippets of amusement in Uwe Boll's crap.  So, maybe my opinion shouldn't be trusted.   :)

Amanda Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I spend ten bucks WITH a soda.  
>
> The soundtrack is only good if you like metal.
> And I do.  He must not have had anything to do
> with the soundtrack whatsoever!
>
> I like crap movies.  I admit it.  I can find
> something to defend in even the most
> reprehensible, meritless, steaming load of film
> ever.  Almost.  I can even find little tiny
> snippets of amusement in Uwe Boll's crap.  So,
> maybe my opinion shouldn't be trusted.   :)

Oh, ten bucks for the ticket AND the overpriced beverage. Whew! I could feel my heart palpitating there... Well, metal's not for me, so thanks again. If you're that much in love with crap movies, I prescribe a round of movies that get a skull rating for their reviews on here, preferably two of them played back-to-back. You've got to be cured of this mysterious affliction of finding the good in the execrable!

Nah, I'm hopelessly addicted.  I've tried that particular cure, and although it drives my husband from the room screaming, it merely makes me giggle.  

I read some of Andrew's reviews for the really abysmal and think, "Huh.  Might have to try that one."  

I'm sick, SICK I TELL YOU.