How many of you folks have watched a movie based off a video game and thought that it was totally awesome?
(Insert tumbleweeds here)
Yeah, I figured as much. I don't know why, but I have the urge to go through and watch them all. Yes that's right, go through and watch as many video game-to-movie adaptations as I can humanly handle. Assuming my eyes do not rot or go blind from over-exposure to too much Suck, I intend to review them as well. Maybe I'll come across a satisfactory answer to the question outlined in the title of this thread?
Does anyone have any particular suggestions as to which movie adaptations are best - which is of course to say, worst?
I myself have not actually seen very many. Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill, the first Resident Evil... needless to say, I'm not impressed. Whatever impressions I have of the movies you guys suggest, I intend on publishing reviews on my blog Foul Conversions: Video Game Cinema.
So, whether live action films, animated films, CG films, or whatever. As long as it is a video game adaptation. Doesn't matter how terrible! So lay 'em on me, TL! Bring it on!
By no means am I an expert, but my opinion of why video game movies tend to suck has to do with the fact that video games are still in a stage where they're considered immature, and most decent/serious screenwriters would pass on the opportunity to adapt a video game into a screenplay. So the writing usually gets done by sub-par writers, and studios pick them up primarily to cash in on the name recognition.
There are other reasons, like the fact that some games are 10-20+ hours long and it's just hard to cram that experience into a 2 hour movie...although again, it can probably be done by a decent writer.
Edit: oh and yeah, the first Mortal Kombat movie was probably the best videogame movie ever.
I dunno if you'll figure out why they suck just by watching them. Blame the businessmen optioning the popular video games which don't necessarily have compelling stories.
Anyways, there's the Final Fantasy CG films Advent Children and the Spirits Within. Be sure to watch them. I'm sure you know about the Resident Evil trilogy. I dunno if "the Wizard" (fred savage) meets your definition of a video game movie, but go with it. One of my favorite video game movies, TRON, has gotta be on the list. Good luck.
Two words: Wing Commander. Worst fucking movie ever.
Also: Tomb Raider, Battletoads (it's real, I just found it on imdb, figured I'd look if it existed, and well, appears there is nothing Hollywood can't ruin)
Game storylines are interesting because you, the player, are a part of them. I'm sure if you removed the part where you actually play the game and treat the game story as a movie itself, it would be much more boring. This is probably what happens.
But this doesn't offer any excuse for Doom. That movie sucked so bad I couldn't watch more than 10 minutes.
On February 11 2009 07:25 Falcynn wrote: By no means am I an expert, but my opinion of why video game movies tend to suck has to do with the fact that video games are still in a stage where they're considered immature, and most decent/serious screenwriters would pass on the opportunity to adapt a video game into a screenplay. So the writing usually gets done by sub-par writers, and studios pick them up primarily to cash in on the name recognition.
There are other reasons, like the fact that some games are 10-20+ hours long and it's just hard to cram that experience into a 2 hour movie...although again, it can probably be done by a decent writer.
Edit: oh and yeah, the first Mortal Kombat movie was probably the best videogame movie ever.
Related to this point, I think, is that there is no real incentive for studios to make a good video game movie. The fans of the game itself will probably go watch the movie as long as it is halfway decent (read: no extraordinary effort required).
Boll also made a bid to direct the upcoming World of Warcraft movie, but was turned away by the owners of the Warcraft franchise, Blizzard.
Good God... I'm actually looking forward to WoW's Movie. Thankfully he didn't get it.
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When rumors surfaced that Boll had expressed interest in a Metal Gear Solid movie, and claimed to have been given a script to read, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima responded in his audioblog HIDECHAN, "Absolutely not! I don't know why Uwe Boll is even talking about this kind of thing. We've never talked to him. It's impossible that we'd ever do a movie with him." Boll later stated that he only thought he was doing the film because he was tricked by two con-artists who claimed to work for Konami.
Bahaha, being a huge Metal Gear fan myself, oh my...
Tadzio: The Wikipedia list is quite useful, thank you!
However, I was hoping to hear what were some of the most popular amongst my fellow Starcraft fans. A careful balance of general concencus and local availability may determine my first attempt at a review. ^^
@pheer: I both agree and disagree with you here. I agree that what you described is one of the better approaches to video game story development; I disagree in the sense that I am the opposite to you in how I prefer to experience my games. As much as I enjoy the gameplay, I also enjoy experiencing its story and plot for its characters. I don't really care to be the characters myself. I just enjoy seeing the events of a game through their eyes/shoes. I don't really get the "I'm the one who's part of the story" angle. I always feel more distant in those sort of games...
the first MK movie is bearable I actually enjoyed it a lot when I was a kid and was a huge MK freak. The problem is they are almost always SUPER corny. Video games are corny because thats ok and its what we expect + they arent real people playing the parts. Imagine in say house of the dead how gay it would be if real people pretended to be the people running from the zombies (hello movie).
The Super Mario movie is the biggest piece of shit ever wtf. IMO the Tomb Raider movies are watchable at least....
Metal Gear Solid might be a cool movie to make.
and oh god at doom.....wtf.
double dragon is just beyond bleh too. Alyssa Milano is pretty hot in it though. So it saves it a bit.
On February 11 2009 07:26 Tadzio wrote: I dunno if you'll figure out why they suck just by watching them. Blame the businessmen optioning the popular video games which don't necessarily have compelling stories.
Anyways, there's the Final Fantasy CG films Advent Children and the Spirits Within. Be sure to watch them. I'm sure you know about the Resident Evil trilogy. I dunno if "the Wizard" (fred savage) meets your definition of a video game movie, but go with it. One of my favorite video game movies, TRON, has gotta be on the list. Good luck.
wikipedia has a list of them, yay. don't gotta rely on us.
Oh wow, a Bioshock movie. That actually has a lot of potential to be good, playing the game is very movie-esque as it is and the whole setting and storyline is just great. I would definitely get the guy who did 'Brazil' to do that movie.
But upon further inspection, they're getting the guy who did 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'The Ring'.
Hopefully he does a good job copying the under-water distopia that the game portrayed flawlessly.
On February 11 2009 07:49 r0kamo wrote: ...except Half-Life <3
I was thinking of half-life (and mostly FPS) when I wrote that =) RTS games, if you think about it, are the smallest ones to become movies...
final fantasy = rpg doom = fps mortal kombat = fighting silent hill = rpg resident evil = rpg
has any movie been based on RTS actually?
On February 11 2009 08:16 zobz wrote: Resident evil was an awesome movie i dunno what you're talking about. The second one not so much but the first one was very good.
And the 3rd is the best if you liked #1 but hated #2. I really enjoyed 3 for some odd reason, probably because it was somewhat outdoors like dawn of the dead and I liked that.
Yea, Resident Evil is the only good converted movie I've ever seen. (but tbh I never really played or liked the games). MK is a close second, and any other comic/game movie just plain sucks. Some of the animated movies are not bad.
Good comic movies imo: Sin City has it's good parts , Batman 1 1989, Blade , Fritz the cat 1& 2 (lol), Spawn was kinda terrible but its cool like MK, TMNT 1 & 2 awesome part 3 not so much.
Take your ~10 favorite games... and do more or less a cinematic retelling of the story/gameplay. What do you get? I have no idea because they never do anything even remotely like that when they make movies of videogames I liked. My guess is it's better than a lot of the trash they churn out.
Why did I love final fantasy 7? Tomb raider? Some of it they can't capture in a movie, but I feel like they don't even try to capture most of the rest.
Quoth my sister, "This is the thing I find astounding about it; the thing that surprises me most is the fact that I understand why that since the original videogame doesn't have a very strong story they want to massage the story or come up with a new one just for the movie, but in the case of a lot of them the story they come up with is so much worse than the one in the videogame. Example: Tomb Raider 1 vs the original TR movie. There's a lot of words there. Noooo. Stop quoting me.
On February 11 2009 08:16 zobz wrote: Resident evil was an awesome movie i dunno what you're talking about. The second one not so much but the first one was very good.
And the 3rd is the best if you liked #1 but hated #2. I really enjoyed 3 for some odd reason, probably because it was somewhat outdoors like dawn of the dead and I liked that.
Wait wait, since when do survival horror games qualify as RPG's?
On February 11 2009 07:49 r0kamo wrote: ...except Half-Life <3
I was thinking of half-life (and mostly FPS) when I wrote that =) RTS games, if you think about it, are the smallest ones to become movies...
final fantasy = rpg doom = fps mortal kombat = fighting silent hill = rpg resident evil = rpg
has any movie been based on RTS actually?
On February 11 2009 08:16 zobz wrote: Resident evil was an awesome movie i dunno what you're talking about. The second one not so much but the first one was very good.
And the 3rd is the best if you liked #1 but hated #2. I really enjoyed 3 for some odd reason, probably because it was somewhat outdoors like dawn of the dead and I liked that.
Wait wait, since when do survival horror games qualify as RPG's?
Yea, I think it's more of an action adventure game imo. It's obviously a cross genre though. Because you've got countless puzzles, lots of items, role playing, tons of reading, some have spells or counterparts, etc.
Hahaha someone is screwing with the Uwe Boll wiki. Check under the "Financing" section.
Wikipedia: Boll continues to find investors who wish to acquire the rights for future video-game-to-movie adaptations. His investors are mostly Ex-Nazis. He acquires the rights for potential future adaptations and personally oversees the execution of all Jewish studio employees, filming, and post-production.
Because the people making them just see a quick cash-in and don't consider things like plot, coherancy, actual links to the material their movie is based upon or fan reactions? I think the only one which has come close to being decent was Silent Hill and that was solely upon an aesthetic level - the look of the town and the monsters was perfect, but the plot still descended into OTT lameness by the end and they seemed to believe that a Ringu style formula of annoying woman plus annoying child would be better than the original set up.
I have to say I loved Mortal Kombat though (guilty pleasure.) - it was just cheesy and lame enough to be fun and the fights were actually quite nicely co-ordinated.
They play the DoA movie here on S.Korean TV all the time - god knows why because it stereotypes Asians so, so badly. It does have lots of gratuitous bikinis tho
My general opinion on this topic is that movies made from video games often try to be faithful to the storyline of the video game in some way. This is usually a horrible idea.
Blizzard Entertainment refused Boll's request to make a World of Warcraft adaptation; Boll said, "I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, 'We will not sell the movie rights, not to you... especially not to you.'"
LOL...
Max Payne would have been one the best video game movies ever if it didn't deviate from its original storyline and had a little more action. 2 bullet-time scenes for god's sake. WTF
The problem is that the only people who would watch these video game movies are people who have already played the video game. So, either they recreate the video game perfectly in movie form and put 90% people watching the movie to sleep (because they already know everything) or piss off 90% of the people watching the movie by changing everything too much.
I don't get why movie companies still make video game movies....-.-;;
First of all, most video games have crappy plots that are just shallow devices to drag you from one action scene to the next, and then maybe set up for a sequel. For instance: There is a martial arts competition to prove who is the best fighter in the world. Player fights 12 characters, one by one. He kills big boss in the end but big boss is not really dead... That is hardly movie material but it can be a very entertaining video game.
Secondly, there is a lot of conflicting pressure from fans, video game companies and Hollywood executives which makes it difficult for scriptwritiers to do their jobs. A lot of fans want to see certain characters in the movie. They can also get caught up in what the video game has presented, and insist on things being done just as the video game has said, even though it will make for a lousy movie. The video game companies that own the rights to the characters and brand name will want the movie to at least uphold the spirit of the game so that buyers of the game do not get confused. And the executives have a certain audience in mind which is not hardcore players. They want something that appeals to young people who may have heard of the game but haven't played it.
Thirdly, a lot of video games are fantasy/science fiction. You need a big budget to get good effects for that kind of movie. However, because the audience for such shows is limited, executives will not release funds to get good effects done. So the movies end up looking cheesy.
Has anyone seen the Street Fighter Animated film? How about the American animated version? Here's an entertaining comparison.
Since there seems to be a lot of Mortal Kombat love amongst you folks, I figured I'd give it another go and watch it for the first time in years. Sadly, the rental store did not have a copy. After debating with myself for a good 15 minutes on how much pain I wanted to force upon myself, I settled (reluctantly) on Tomb Raider from the available selection. Ew Blockbuster -____-; I'll let you guys know how much I hated it when I finish watching it... assuming my heart doesn't collapse from the stress D:
In the mean time, you guys should also check out There Will Be Brawl. It's an adult oriented Super Smash Bros. short film. I thought it was rather brilliant. I'd like to point out that this, while not exactly ideal for mass consumption, is a pretty good example of how a film adaptation of a video game should be like.
As I said, it contains many elements that just would not be tolerated by a large scale audience (due to both a lack of familiarity and perhaps too great a sense of surrealism). But the direction There Will Be Brawl takes - an atmosphere of maturity and a sense of relevancy, both in the personalities of the characters and in the environment that effects them - is something that an adult audience can appreciate. It's something that video game movies really seem to lack. IMO, anyway.
On February 11 2009 07:26 Tadzio wrote: Anyways, there's the Final Fantasy CG films Advent Children
Agreed. Watch it if you haven't already, even if you haven't played the game! I'm really surprised FFVII AC has been only mention once in this thread so far.
The movie is amazing, definitely lives up to it's expectations and it's video game counterpart (considering FFVII is arguably the greatest game ever made by mankind, this is, for lack of a better term, a strong assertion). Looking forward to your analysises (analyses?)
FF7: AC is defintely the least suck out of all video game adaptions. THough it's own story is hollow, it actually successfully latches on where the game left off. RE: Degeneration fails at this hard, but it was still better than all 3 piece of shit live actions put together.
probably the worst one I've ever seen though was parasite eve. there's like no reference to the game at all. Just a weird b-grade japanese sci-fi.
On February 11 2009 11:16 falls wrote: The problem is that the only people who would watch these video game movies are people who have already played the video game. So, either they recreate the video game perfectly in movie form and put 90% people watching the movie to sleep (because they already know everything) or piss off 90% of the people watching the movie by changing everything too much.
I don't get why movie companies still make video game movies....-.-;;
great explanation.
the thing i don't get is...a video game movie SHOULD only appeal to the fans of the game. Fuck deviating from the original premise to try to cash in on the general public that would only go see it most likely because they'd be dragged to it by a game fan. Game movie =/= profitable in the bigger picture.
I'm still pissed about the RE movies. RE is my fav series ever and way back in april '98 when I remembered seeing on the RE2 game box about a movie cameo contest I was SO pumped. FF to 2002....utter clusterfuck trainwreck shitfest of a movie.
Degeneration is only par at best, but it was still better than live action where they do whatever they want to it (the nemesis is fucking robotic?!?!?). And it used RE4 Leon, who you would know if you;ve ever played RE4 is a qualified ninja and BAMF.
Halo is gonna suck hard, no matter which direction they go with it. It's too generic of a sci-fi to really even warrant a movie.
I don't even know the GoW storyline so no comment there.
I think what will be interesting is MGS. each game is pretty much a movie in itself, and the first and fourth games are stellar in terms of story. Hope that one won't crash and burn.
The enviroment in witch GoW passes is not really new, humans vs underground humanoid aliens of somekind.
The cool thing about GoW is the lore of the war, and the characters on it, also, the whole game is made to be movie-like, so everytime I was playing it I thought "damn this scene would be awesome in a movie"
In general, it would be a mix of special ops/sci-fi/post apocaliptical world with a tech level much similar to our own.
But all in all, what will make a movie great is a good script, and an excelent director (actors too but, script and director are more important)
I thought Final Fantasy wasn't terrible. And I don't really consider myself a fan of the series. All the other movie adaptations seem to only be based on trying to cash in on brand recognition. Funny story: My dad bought a Sin City shirt for himself thinking that it said Sim City. I wonder what a movie based on that game would be like...
My personal opinion is that video game movies fail, beacuse they cannot stand on their own and rely on the popularity of the video game to succeed rather then attempt to be good by themselves. That is the reason why the Mortal Kombat movie was not bad. It was cheesy, yes, but it still was good enough on it`s own.
The Mortal Kombat: Conquest TV series was also not bad, but for the simple reason that the ending was tragic (which is unusual for a corny TV series). However, the way they carried it out was still lame, since they essentially wrote a cheat code which gave the bad guy a squad of unbeatable grim reapers which proceeded to kill all the good guys as well as any opossing bad guys. A corny tragic ending, if something like that ever existed.
Anyway, I have high hopes for the World of WarCraft movie since it is planned to be a war movie, although I think it would have been better had they stuck with their original plan to potray the events of the First War (since the events there were epic and not a lot of people know the lore of it). I also think a Metal Gear movie has great promise since the games themselves are quite cinematic.
1. Uwe Boll is a genious, he's just way ahead of his era (like Frank Zappa). House of the Dead was brilliant. Laughed my ass off with friends on several ocasions when watching it.
2. Mortal Kombat was teh shiznit when it came out, I was just a kid and won free ticket in some computer magazine for exclusive pre-premiere with live martial arts show before the movie. One of the happiest moments of my life.
3. Doom was watchable.
4. Silent Hill was pretty good.
5. Street Fighter was awesome when I was young (every movie featuring JC VanDamme was awesome back then).
The rest of the vg-movies I've seen aren't really worth mentioning.
Don't know if it was mentioned before: Watch Blood Rayne 2: Deliverance. Fucking greatest movie ever! It's from Uwe Boll, watch his other ones too if you are somewhat masochistic.
Mortal Kombat and Silent Hilll was decent IMO. However, I still agree that we hold a different standard for Game-to-Movie simply because most movies aren't based around awesome storyline games. (FFVII has an awful SL =P sorry if you like it) Something like Xenogears, Shin Megumi Tensai or FFVI would've been full of own as a movie.
On February 12 2009 06:12 ZoW wrote: The only reason I would watch Doom again is to hear The Rock say "Big... Fucking... Gun...". And that first person scene, that thing was awesome
LIke others have said, the main reason is that almost all videogame stories in the 1st place are totally fucking stupid, and for some reason hollywood people decide that the ones with the especially crappy stories deserve to be made into games (street fighter/mortal kombat, doom).
Theres tons of games with compelling stories and characters(BW movie anyone ? Could be made good, specially a trilogy), but most of them are neglected by the movie industries or the companies are not interested in selling the rights and potentially ruining the franchise.
On February 12 2009 06:12 ZoW wrote: The only reason I would watch Doom again is to hear The Rock say "Big... Fucking... Gun...". And that first person scene, that thing was awesome
bioshock movie would be great lol.... i dunno reallyy why all the video games to movie adaptions suck I gues its just we are way more critical of things we love but like the original superhero movies sucked, I think with developing better graphics each day soon Videogames will be great movies too
On February 12 2009 06:10 D10 wrote: I have no respect for Uwe Boll whatsoever, if anything, he painted a bad pictures on vg movies with his mediocrity
I've never seen a movie adaptation that closely followed the game... if it did it probably wouldn't suck so bad, i.e. Hitman was decent in a genre of shit.
The fact of the matter is the makers of the movie are not the creators of the game and im sure most of them do not enjoy the specific games nearly as much as they should in order to bring the vibe seen in the game into a film. Its not that its hard but theres more technique required to pull it off
On February 12 2009 06:12 ZoW wrote: The only reason I would watch Doom again is to hear The Rock say "Big... Fucking... Gun...". And that first person scene, that thing was awesome
On February 12 2009 06:12 ZoW wrote: The only reason I would watch Doom again is to hear The Rock say "Big... Fucking... Gun...". And that first person scene, that thing was awesome
"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is an upcoming film and the second live-action film based on the Street Fighter series of video games. It follows the quest of Street Fighter character Chun-Li, who will be portrayed by Smallville star Kristin Kreuk.[1] The story follows Chun-Li's personal history and her journey for justice.[2] The film co-stars Neal McDonough as M. Bison, Chris Klein as Charlie, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, and Black Eyed Peas singer Taboo as Vega. Rick Yune was originally cast as Gen but has been replaced by Robin Shou, who portrayed Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films.[3] The film is scheduled for release in February 27, 2009."
Haha, sounds badass. Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li. Also, Balrog and Gen?!?!
i really like all of the resident evil movies personally, and advent children was pretty good too. i think these sorts of adaptions definitely have a lot of potential if they're done right. if you look at the amount of movies released and the amount of those that you'd actually consider good, it's probably about the same ratio for your run of the mill hollywood movies. there's just far more regular movies released compared to video game adaptions.
and the other way around too, with a lot of care and attention to detail you can adapt a movie to a video game with great success. just look at the chronicles of riddick: escape from butcher bay.
"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is an upcoming film and the second live-action film based on the Street Fighter series of video games. It follows the quest of Street Fighter character Chun-Li, who will be portrayed by Smallville star Kristin Kreuk.[1] The story follows Chun-Li's personal history and her journey for justice.[2] The film co-stars Neal McDonough as M. Bison, Chris Klein as Charlie, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, and Black Eyed Peas singer Taboo as Vega. Rick Yune was originally cast as Gen but has been replaced by Robin Shou, who portrayed Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films.[3] The film is scheduled for release in February 27, 2009."
Haha, sounds badass. Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li. Also, Balrog and Gen?!?!
"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is an upcoming film and the second live-action film based on the Street Fighter series of video games. It follows the quest of Street Fighter character Chun-Li, who will be portrayed by Smallville star Kristin Kreuk.[1] The story follows Chun-Li's personal history and her journey for justice.[2] The film co-stars Neal McDonough as M. Bison, Chris Klein as Charlie, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, and Black Eyed Peas singer Taboo as Vega. Rick Yune was originally cast as Gen but has been replaced by Robin Shou, who portrayed Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films.[3] The film is scheduled for release in February 27, 2009."
Haha, sounds badass. Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li. Also, Balrog and Gen?!?!
I don't get why people actually think some of these movies are anywhere close to being any good. Sure, one vg movie is better than the other and some are actually pretty enjoyable to watch because of nostalgic reasons or the horribleness actually makes it funny.. but if you compare any of these movies to a decent (real) movie out of the same genre, they'll look like shit.
Book-to-Movie adaptions seem to do way better in general, because the storytelling is way better and way more in depth. They often get criticism for taking the life out of the story, not being able to catch the right vibe of the book, or leaving out too much of the original story.
I think when looking at VG-to-Movie adaptions we're facing the exact opposite problems. How do you blow life into a story that has hardly ever been there, how do you catch the right vibe of a game which has been great because of it gameplay, how can you a good storyline with great dialogues when they have never been there? Next to all that, games already give visual expectations which is another limitation.
Movie makers who take such a job upon them are facing big challenges and it the outcome can't be expected to be any good. Even though some movies seem to do a good job, they're still miles behind.
Some really quick comparisons I made in my head while reading this thread: Hitman - The Bourne Identity Doom - Predator SF / MK - Old boy Tomb Raider - Gladiator
The left part of the list doesn't even come close to the right part of the list, while the right side of the list is just a random list of nice movies that came up in my head.
A Starcraft or Warcraft movie could do really good and has a lot of potential, because of all the storytelling around both games. If there would ever be a World of Starcraft game, the problem would probably be the variance of races/classes but definitely not the storytelling. The lore around both these games even live on in books.
So in general I would say that VG-to-Movie adaptions are just doomed to suck. We're all just waiting for a brilliant screenwriter to pop up.
Also, Dead or Alive is probably the worst vg movie ever.
Sorry for the long post but I guess I find it an interesting subject :D
On February 12 2009 18:27 MrHoon wrote: IMO, I think most Video Game stories in general are very bad. Its just that we tend to forget about how mediocre it is because of the gameplay.
And fuck you all, Super Mario Brothers was my favorite movie of alltime.
Agreed. "Deep" by video game story standards is still pretty superficial and generic. And that Doom FPS sequence is horrible. Its like watching Halo with a mouse/keyboard on easy, not Doom 3 on Hell.
On February 11 2009 07:35 pheer wrote: Game storylines are interesting because you, the player, are a part of them. I'm sure if you removed the part where you actually play the game and treat the game story as a movie itself, it would be much more boring. This is probably what happens.
But this doesn't offer any excuse for Doom. That movie sucked so bad I couldn't watch more than 10 minutes.
Pff, I've seen it more than once - I like it My expectations weren't high tho, so maybe that helped. It's a million times better than the travesty that is AvP: Requiem. I like almost anything with aliens and a vaguely survival horror theme and still hated this movie.
Oh and I liked Silent Hill as well, but I never played the game so who knows what my opinion would be if I had.
I think the first Resident Evil movie is fine, second meh, 3rd sucks. There are several non-videogame based movies in the same genre that I'd put below them (I'd rather watch RE1 than Doomsday for instance ;p http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483607/).
1 its an adaptions it's too much wrok and sacriface to make it all good like the game also unlike the game it's just storyline no plaing so guess what your storyline in teh game is shit you just never noticed
2 the same shit that makes animes into real action protrals suck big balls you arent a cartoon so you can't look and act like one. sigh streetfighting movie about chunli t-t
Okay, so here’s the deal. We’ve got Lara “totally-bored-out-of-here-mind” Croft getting thrown into the midst of a conspiracy with the Illuminati by the totally coincidental discovery of a left-behind artifact her Father (Jon Voight) hid ’cause he knew she’d find it. He was a smart guy, the dad. Too bad her daughter didn’t take after him. The approach she undertakes to complete this ridiculous task left unto her makes absolutely no sense. Granted, it wasn’t like her dad’s instructions (”Get all three artifacts together in one place and destroy them!”) were exactly top notch. You’d figure that, since the task was ultimately just stop the Illuminati from gaining access to the full relic… DESTROY the part you have in your possession so the rest can’t POSSIBLY be attained!
Seriously. If you have the key to something so dangerous that no one should ever be able to use it… destroy the god damned key.
But no, simple solutions are too obvious and make far too much sense…
In other news, I still don't see how they couldn't get Vega's mask to look even marginally right in the new Street Fighter movie... nothing's more painful than poorly executed costumes or props >.<;
And man, I was totally thinking about making another thread about the Half-Life 2 short film by the Purchase Brothers, but someone beat me to it! It's short films like that fill me with hope that maybe a video game to movie adaptation is actually possible. It's just too bad that the only good examples that I can think of are all low-budget short films...
Hmm... *writes a blog about Escape from City 17 anyway*
On February 12 2009 10:52 b3tty wrote: the resident evil CG one that just came out was awesome.
If you know what I know you would know you might say different about a few things.
wtf are u saying?
is it good or not lol, i dont know if you're agreeing or not
mouth rig was terrible for all characters. Skin weights werent painted correctly for the corresponding joints. Totally ruined the movie for me. Theres nothing wrong with the storyline; the actual CG techniques ruined it for me. Its hard to explain being that I am studying all this stuff. bahhhhhhhhh forget it.
I didn't read the entire thread, but one of the things that I feel is contributes to bad movie conversions is that often the movie industry doesn't quite respect the gaming subculture and feel they have to "mainstream" it for it to sell. Its the same thing for anime / cartoons. I'm specifically thinking of this.
On February 12 2009 23:06 Smorrie wrote: Some really quick comparisons I made in my head while reading this thread: Hitman - The Bourne Identity Doom - Predator SF / MK - Quest (same level fight here) Tomb Raider - Indiana Jones
Fixed it for you.
Edit: And Silent Hill was pretty good movie overall, easily better than most horrors being released not based on VG.
I thought Silent Hill was one of the better horror movies to have come out overall recently. Most are completely boring, not scary, and are visually lame. I have never played any of the Silent Hill games, but I really liked that one...well, except for the climactic monologue the MC makes at the end...that was horrible acting...but aside from that!
Also, I heard Hitman was actually a decent movie in its own right...in any case, Ebert was more on the favorable than dismissive side concerning it.
On February 14 2009 03:52 IzzyCraft wrote: Why do Video Game-to-Movie Adaptions Suck?
Simply put 2 reasons
1 its an adaptions it's too much wrok and sacriface to make it all good like the game also unlike the game it's just storyline no plaing so guess what your storyline in teh game is shit you just never noticed
2 the same shit that makes animes into real action protrals suck big balls you arent a cartoon so you can't look and act like one. sigh streetfighting movie about chunli t-t
I don't usually pick on people for grammer, and all that crap but holy shit. You are barely even readable. Do you know what a sentence is?
On February 14 2009 03:52 IzzyCraft wrote: Why do Video Game-to-Movie Adaptions Suck?
Simply put 2 reasons
1 its an adaptions it's too much wrok and sacriface to make it all good like the game also unlike the game it's just storyline no plaing so guess what your storyline in teh game is shit you just never noticed
2 the same shit that makes animes into real action protrals suck big balls you arent a cartoon so you can't look and act like one. sigh streetfighting movie about chunli t-t
I see one period in all of that. one. Ow my eyes hurt.
I feel game to hollywood adaptations suck for the same reason that ALOT of game story lines are atrocious. In many interviews i've read, the writers and designers (of games) look directly to "mainstream" hollywood for the crafting of story lines for games for the action packed heart pumping emotion that one can only find in Lethal Weapon 4 etc....While it may work in a game (because the focus is mainly on gameplay and not the story) the reconversion to movie format leaves a dry husk that never had the initial depth to survive transitions between mediums.
Metal Gear Solid has such a ridiculously deep story (look at the hours of cutscene in #4 for example :o) that i feel it could easily be adapted for film. On the other hand i think World Of Warcraft to film is going to suck. Not because the original story of the warcraft world is particiularly bad...but because when it was written it was written for games, and not to provoke depth of thought that is required for a GOOD movie. Just my opinion.
On February 18 2009 04:23 Kennigit wrote: I feel game to hollywood adaptations suck for the same reason that ALOT of game story lines are atrocious. In many interviews i've read, the writers and designers (of games) look directly to "mainstream" hollywood for the crafting of story lines for games for the action packed heart pumping emotion that one can only find in Lethal Weapon 4 etc....While it may work in a game (because the focus is mainly on gameplay and not the story) the reconversion to movie format leaves a dry husk that never had the initial depth to survive transitions between mediums.
Metal Gear Solid has such a ridiculously deep story (look at the hours of cutscene in #4 for example :o) that i feel it could easily be adapted for film. On the other hand i think World Of Warcraft to film is going to suck. Not because the original story of the warcraft world is particiularly bad...but because when it was written it was written for games, and not to provoke depth of thought that is required for a GOOD movie. Just my opinion.
Well Wing commander had hours of real movie cutscenes and had a deep backstory with books being writen on the world around it. Still they mannaged to fuck that movie up.
On February 11 2009 08:16 zobz wrote: Resident evil was an awesome movie i dunno what you're talking about. The second one not so much but the first one was very good.
Gtfo, the first one sucked balls. The second one sucked slightly smaller balls. I hate how they made that bitch the most badass person ever, too. The cops that you played as were pretty regular people doing something extraordinary, and they turned her into this superhuman. It's retarded. (I'm basing this off of games 1-3, and Code Veronica X. I haven't played the other thirty or so games that they've made for RE.)
On February 11 2009 11:25 ghermination wrote: I liked the silent hill movie. I thought it was atleast passable.
Yeah, that was pretty good. It wasn't exactly like any of the story lines that I could remember (but I didn't play 2 or 3 =( so maybe it was), but it conveyed the disturbing atmosphere pretty well.
While I think an MGS movie would be awesome, I would rather not have them taint the series by releasing a movie of it. It's practically a movie already if you don't spend hours searching for things.
And on DOOM: I kind of liked it, but I think that if I had seen it before I saw everyone calling it the worst movie ever made that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. It's just a mindless movie that I can waste time with. The first-person scene was really bad though.
I think the ratio of good movies ~ bad movies is the same for game movies as it is for normal movies. Just that you expect lot more from game movies when you loved the games and you dont pay much attention to some upcomming movie that you know will suck.
There are really good Game Movies like Hitman, Mortal Kombat or Final Fantasy Avent Children and some horrible ones like Street Fighter. But in the end there are good and bad ones and the reaons movies own or fail are all the same over all genres and were mentioned in this thread before.
I just posted this, because i wanted to add how much i love the hitman movie. It was made with so much love to details and it stuck the the game till the end. Remember the scene where he is just walking along in the restaurant and he walks exactly like 47 in the game. When the movie comes close to the end you could expect some cheesy "happy end" but the characters remain true to the original. Even all the explanations are pretty valid.
And the lack of this is imho the main reason why game movies fail often.. If you played the game you have not only *high* but *exact* expectations. You know the settings, you know the characters and you know the story. And everytime the movie bends or breakes this expected scenario you feel dissapointed. Same thing is even more true for "based on book" films which are forced to skip and change things to fit the ussual movie lenght ..
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee113/boogynoogy16/StreetFighterBisonSkull-Pic.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2009/01/streetfighterposter.jpg)
MORTAL COMBAT!
![[image loading]](http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/1849/doa0ow9.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2009/01/sfposter.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.pushingplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/uwe_boll_finger.jpg)
My expectations weren't high tho, so maybe that helped.
