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Video Game movies: Why they won't be good for a LONG time...
You may have noticed a trend beginning somewhere in the mid-years of the naught decade. No, it was not giving Shia LaBeouf more work nor was it the ravenous hunger of TV executives to create more "reality" shows. It involved movies, and it involved video games. Yes, that coupling spawned a slew of terrible movies based on video games.
With stinkers like Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne (or basically any video game movie directed by Uwe Boll), and Doom, it's no wonder why Hollywood tends to look down at video games as a medium to adapt stories from. However, the mild success of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the rumor of Brad Pitt getting involved in a supposed upcoming movie adaptation of Red Dead Redemption, it looks like *synergistic novels (a.k.a. video games) are at least on the right path to being good, right? Well...no.
The first problem when transferring video games to the silver screen involves something that no possible movie can offer that video games can - immersion. James Cameron can have sweeping tracking shots of Avatar's Pandora for an hour and a half, but that won't get you even 1/4 of becoming engrossed in the world like a five minute trip into Super Mario World's Mushroom Kingdom. Films cannot linger when an audience member wants them to. They cannot turn the camera to see the skyline, or look at a specific detail that could perhaps flesh out the world even more. Movies work within the confines of limited sight where the filmmakers can cheat human perception. However, this slight of film techniques comes at a price of disconnecting the audience who cannot see the entirety of the location for themselves. Video games breach that barrier by allowing the audience members to, through an appropriate avatar, interact with the game's world. When you move in the game world, it's because it's your command that is changing the world you see, not an outside party. The world only advances when you do.
The reason why I bring that point is simple: when you take a video game's world and implant it into a fixed sense of what the filmmaker wants you to see, you have freedom stripped away and instead are given a sense of being cheated a world to interact within at your desire. How can a film version of Red Dead Redemption copy the same feelings one gets of isolation and freedom that you can experience in the game at one's own leisure? Movies merely throw the stories and characters onto the silver screen without any added depth to compensate for hacking off half of why people love the universe in a video game.
Speaking of exploring at one's discretion, allow me to present my next point -- Time. When you're in a video game, you can explore the world for as long as your heart desires. Want to hear what the NPC's have on their mind in a first person shooter? Go ahead and listen to them jaw on. Want to hear more about the detailed history of the fall of Rapture in BioShock? Grab an audio diary and listen in on everyone's littlest secrets. Within a video game space, the best developers have their characters reveal their personalities over a long time as you journey with them rather than being treated to just a small snapshot of who they are as individuals on the silver screen where you must also juggle plot into the allotted time of the medium.
While this next one seems like a no-brainer, but it has to be said. Movies and video games have different markets in terms of how they sell. For the most part, the big successes in the movie industry are movies that are rated PG-13 where the content refrains from going too far in terms of adult content (which can be a good or bad aspect) while the bigger selling video games in this day and age tend be M-rated games. Will producers want to keep the content for a movie version when they can easily water-down the M-rated material to fit a PG-13 rating for a larger profit? You bet. After all, it has already happened with the movie Mortal Kombat, which was based on a video game that was focused on over-the-top violence and gore.
Neil Blomkamp. Oh boy, would he have made a great director for a Halo movie! However, that plan petered out and we were instead given the amazing District 9. However, even if the South African director had taken up the job of crafting a movie about Halo, there would have had to have been significant changes. In an interview, Bungie writer Joe Staten revealed that Master Chief was going to be reduced to a supporting role should the film have been made. To some, this is heresy as Master Chief is arguably the centerpiece of the entire Halo saga. No matter how skilled a director/writer is at crafting a film, such disregard for a relatively critical part of the story seems like they still don't understand what people love about the story in video games in the first place. Admittedly, maybe it's a problem with the medium of video games to not usually have characters as easily characterized as they are in films, but it appears that it's an issue that movie makers have not been able compromise on.
Overall, video game movies HAVE been getting better over the years, but there's still a long way to go, and with movie adaptations of BioShock and Red Dead Redemption looming on the horizon, it's with a sense of caution and cynicism that this video game player/movie watcher sees Hollywood continue to adapt material that is near and dear to my heart for films.
I never want to see this happen to humanity ever again:
*...What? If comic books can get a bullshit synonym (graphic novels) to cover up what they really are, then we should get one too.
...
With stinkers like Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne (or basically any video game movie directed by Uwe Boll), and Doom, it's no wonder why Hollywood tends to look down at video games as a medium to adapt stories from. However, the mild success of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the rumor of Brad Pitt getting involved in a supposed upcoming movie adaptation of Red Dead Redemption, it looks like *synergistic novels (a.k.a. video games) are at least on the right path to being good, right? Well...no.
The first problem when transferring video games to the silver screen involves something that no possible movie can offer that video games can - immersion. James Cameron can have sweeping tracking shots of Avatar's Pandora for an hour and a half, but that won't get you even 1/4 of becoming engrossed in the world like a five minute trip into Super Mario World's Mushroom Kingdom. Films cannot linger when an audience member wants them to. They cannot turn the camera to see the skyline, or look at a specific detail that could perhaps flesh out the world even more. Movies work within the confines of limited sight where the filmmakers can cheat human perception. However, this slight of film techniques comes at a price of disconnecting the audience who cannot see the entirety of the location for themselves. Video games breach that barrier by allowing the audience members to, through an appropriate avatar, interact with the game's world. When you move in the game world, it's because it's your command that is changing the world you see, not an outside party. The world only advances when you do.
The reason why I bring that point is simple: when you take a video game's world and implant it into a fixed sense of what the filmmaker wants you to see, you have freedom stripped away and instead are given a sense of being cheated a world to interact within at your desire. How can a film version of Red Dead Redemption copy the same feelings one gets of isolation and freedom that you can experience in the game at one's own leisure? Movies merely throw the stories and characters onto the silver screen without any added depth to compensate for hacking off half of why people love the universe in a video game.
Speaking of exploring at one's discretion, allow me to present my next point -- Time. When you're in a video game, you can explore the world for as long as your heart desires. Want to hear what the NPC's have on their mind in a first person shooter? Go ahead and listen to them jaw on. Want to hear more about the detailed history of the fall of Rapture in BioShock? Grab an audio diary and listen in on everyone's littlest secrets. Within a video game space, the best developers have their characters reveal their personalities over a long time as you journey with them rather than being treated to just a small snapshot of who they are as individuals on the silver screen where you must also juggle plot into the allotted time of the medium.
While this next one seems like a no-brainer, but it has to be said. Movies and video games have different markets in terms of how they sell. For the most part, the big successes in the movie industry are movies that are rated PG-13 where the content refrains from going too far in terms of adult content (which can be a good or bad aspect) while the bigger selling video games in this day and age tend be M-rated games. Will producers want to keep the content for a movie version when they can easily water-down the M-rated material to fit a PG-13 rating for a larger profit? You bet. After all, it has already happened with the movie Mortal Kombat, which was based on a video game that was focused on over-the-top violence and gore.
Neil Blomkamp. Oh boy, would he have made a great director for a Halo movie! However, that plan petered out and we were instead given the amazing District 9. However, even if the South African director had taken up the job of crafting a movie about Halo, there would have had to have been significant changes. In an interview, Bungie writer Joe Staten revealed that Master Chief was going to be reduced to a supporting role should the film have been made. To some, this is heresy as Master Chief is arguably the centerpiece of the entire Halo saga. No matter how skilled a director/writer is at crafting a film, such disregard for a relatively critical part of the story seems like they still don't understand what people love about the story in video games in the first place. Admittedly, maybe it's a problem with the medium of video games to not usually have characters as easily characterized as they are in films, but it appears that it's an issue that movie makers have not been able compromise on.
Overall, video game movies HAVE been getting better over the years, but there's still a long way to go, and with movie adaptations of BioShock and Red Dead Redemption looming on the horizon, it's with a sense of caution and cynicism that this video game player/movie watcher sees Hollywood continue to adapt material that is near and dear to my heart for films.
I never want to see this happen to humanity ever again:
*...What? If comic books can get a bullshit synonym (graphic novels) to cover up what they really are, then we should get one too.
...
Comment
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Comment by slusho98 on November 24, 2010 at 12:26pm -
To be honest I think one of the biggest problems that these movies have is the games that they pick to turn into movies. Games like Mortal Kombat have no real story, but thats okay because its main attraction is the gameplay. Which DOES NOT translate into action scenes in a film. Hollywood needs to make intelligent movies that tie into smart games with good stories. Like a Bioshock prequel film.
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on November 7, 2010 at 1:04am -
@Chucky - It's obvious that neither of us is going to give up our positions.
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on October 24, 2010 at 1:31am
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@Don Panini - In the case of cypher characters, yes, I would concede with the argument that Master Chief is a relatively blank slate with only a few twinges of personality - something akin to, I would argue, The Man with No Name. The only thing I take umbrage with is that Master Chief has never been a character who has been so self-absorbed, mentally unstable, and obnoxious in any form that he's been in.
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Comment by Don Panini on October 23, 2010 at 7:54pm -
Your only problem with your argument? Slow down, you´re getting confused.
I never said Master Chief was an annoying character on par with Bella, I did however say that he is the equivalent of Bella for young male adults. Why? Because he is presented without much to him, he rarely speaks and you never see his face(you never see him emote), the only character traits he has is being very determined and being lucky. This is done so players can put as much of their own personalities in him when they are playing, and that is something Bungie has admited several times in the past. He is not portrayed as superfitial, but he is superfitially portrayed. Same thing with Bella, Stephanie Mayer has admitted that she didn´t put that much into Bella, so her readers could put as much of their own personalities in her.
Different characters, from different creators, for different targer-audiences, using the same strategy to hook people in.
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on October 23, 2010 at 4:35pm
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@Chucky G - 1. Are you kidding? A) Not true. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is motivated to destroy the ring, but encounters continual problems from the moment he sets out on the journey. It would be as equally easy to say that there are only 'external forces' the impede his journey. Have you played Dante's Inferno? The game where the main character goes from a entitled asshole to a character who realizes that he's done nothing but punish the people around him for his own vices? B.) The player IS THE AUDIENCE!!! Why don't you understand this? C.) In some games, (such as Enslaved or Alan Wake) the player controls a fully realized character that has his/her own story arc - a fact that you continually ignore in my arguments. D.) That's your argument, however, you've failed to logically explain WHY. E.) Video game characters DO go through the exact same things as actors do and it is EXACTLY how 'actors' convey it in movies. Everyone who works on a video game has to develop a movement style, voice, and look for characters that they feel is right. Much like a movie, a good majority of what you see onscreen is not 'incidental', but rather conscious decisions made to incorporate into the game world. F.) I have taken the Batman Begins quote entirely in context. Batman/Bruce wants Rachel to know that what he does isn't who he really is and that his character isn't as apparent, but Rachel reminds him that his character is based on what he does as those are the traits that everyone sees him as. The audience only knows differently because we know of his actions and his motivations (SHOWN THROUGH DIALOGUE).
5. I HAVE watched the movie recently. They form a partnership, which doesn't prove his 'money-obsession'; it just proves his partnership with Tuco (who's the supposedly "Ugly" in the movie). He feels remorse when he lets the other man be hanged when he was obligated to saving him. Tuco could have grown on him, but there is nothing of substantial evidence to conclude that he is a changed man besides what his ACTIONS suggest.
6. Metropolis and Dark City? Really? Ok. I'm going to assume that you've never actually played BioShock, since that anyone who HAS played it can easily tell that it has a style all its own within the confines of being an 'art deco' stylistic inspired story.
As much as you would like it, video game characters can be (and have been) whole and fully realized as actual characters. They have character arcs, and actual struggles. They are fully realized people, who are realized through willing players to achieve their goal in their struggles. Cutscenes and in-game dialogue reveal their true personalities, which showcase that they are characters who have distinct and mature goals in mind from the start of the story. They are completely developed, and there are increasingly more protagonists in video games who could be put into a movie with each released game. A good movie will only come out if the right director/studio comes along and correctly adapt the source material to actually fit a movie rather than shelving the source material in favor of a cheap knock-off of what the source material held.
@Don Panini - My only problem with my argument is that you still haven't explained WHY you think Master Chief is an annoying character on par with Bella from Twilight. You're jumping to conclusions rather than explaining your reasons. You STILL don't explain WHY video games characters are weak in story and character development through the use of actual EXAMPLES and ANALYSIS. I'm not a fan of the Resident Evil games in terms of storytelling, although I did enjoy Resident Evil 4 as a campy American-jingoistic romp through the Spanish country-side. Yes, much like comic book movies and movies based on novels before them, video game movies are currently being adapted in order to cash in on their name brand, however, movie studios eventually learned to respect the source material and make a great film, something that will eventually happen with video game movies.
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Comment by Don Panini on October 23, 2010 at 1:14am
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I second that, ChuckyG, and I'd also like to point out that Cortana is also a deeper, more fleshed-out character that Master Chief.
@Gorog: You may see it as offensive, but I see it as realistic. While I enjoy video-games as much as the next guy, I also see them for what they really are, with both their strenghts and weaknesses. And the vast majority of high-profile video-games are weak when it comes to story and character development.
A lot of people were surprised when the Resident Evil movies turned out to be shit, but I was surprised someone was actually expecting them to be great. Those games(specially 4) are fragile as glass in the areas of story and character.
And yes, I simplify the games because I'm putting myself in the position of the average movie-goer. Those games(and countless others) are inspired by movies, and the average movie-goer would see the similarities and brush it off. UNLESS it has the brand recognition of being based on a video-game. Let's not kid ourselves, video-game movies are done because the brand recognition would bring in big bucks(theorycally), not because the stories and characters were so powerful that they needed to be placed in the silver-screen.
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on October 23, 2010 at 12:30am
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@Don Panini- Whoa, calm down. I just said that I take umbrage because Master Chief has NEVER been that annoying/useless/irritating of a character. And no, me taking umbrage doesn't prove your point, so before you come to a conclusion, you have to explain your point-of-view before declaring victory. Your simplification of video games is at the point of being offensive. That would be like saying that "The Usual Suspects" is just another crime film compared to another movie, like Goodfellas. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow has 1/40 of the thematic material, weight of dialogue, and story that BioShock had, so your comparison holds no water until you actually explain WHY you feel that way.
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Comment by Don Panini on October 22, 2010 at 8:31pm
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Yes, I do compare Master Chief to Bella. And the fact that you "take umbrage" with me proves my point. It proves that Master Chief is as effective to young male adults, as Bella is to teenage females, without either of them being a real character. As I said, they are hollow shells(hollow armors, if you wanna make it sound cooler) that the player/reader put on to ride the experience.
I also agree with video-games being based on movies. Let's say a Resident Evil movie comes out: Another zombie movie with a bio-terrorist twist in it; a Red Dead Redemption movie comes out: Another western; a Dead Space movie comes out; a rip-off of Aliens; an Uncharted movie comes out: A rip-off of Indiana Jones Video-game movies NEED the brand-recognition in order to be noticed and consumed.
I also can't help but to think that if a Bioshock movie does come out, it wouldn't be that much different from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on October 22, 2010 at 6:05pm
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1. How is an actor different from a video game character in terms of motivations? Look at Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto 4 who has to actually choose between his principles or the people he loves to find some semblance of peace (who doesn't even really get that). Or even Raz in Psychonauts who has to come to terms with his estranged father and background. Or how about Alan Wake who actually has to confront his own insecurities about himself to save his wife? All this aside, you can design characters with the deepest motivations and aspirations in mind, however, in order to properly convey it to the audience, you need to have the 'other elements' to define them. For all we know, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator could have been motivated by some internal conflict to live up to his father's expectations. Dialogue and actions give the internal conflict a 'voice', so to speak, and define the characters internal motivations. That's why I argue that it is more of the 'external elements' that make a character great because they are the only things that allow the audience to see who that person is at the core.
In the words of Batman, "It's not who I am, but what I do that defines me."
2. On those grounds, especially with the characters in today's video games, I strongly disagree.
3. To summarize this link, Dead Space has a arched, ribbed, stylized design akin to the cathedrals that inspired it. It also has a dash of German expressionism through the usage of the environment appearing to be overwhelming.
5. I can easily disprove your argument. He's never shown as being uncaring (saying sorry to the other sad sapp who he was responsible for rescuing from the hanging) so just saying that he was in it for the money since the start seems like a bit of stretch.
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Comment by C.H. Gorog on October 20, 2010 at 12:19pm
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@QbanKnight - I just don't think Nolan is right for the role, should he make a Metal Gear movie. It's way too surreal for his current movies, and I don't think he could handle the more campy, psychedelic, and ludicrous elements that worked for Kojima.
@Chucky G - Video game characters have voice actors, dialogue, and animations (or movement), the same exact things actors in movies have. I challenge you to find a deeper antagonist than Andrew Ryan in BioShock or well developed protagonist as John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. There's nothing wrong with characters following archetypes, as long as they are great characters within that archetype. While I do see how video games influenced early video game design, that's not the case these days. Dead Space's Gothic architecture is unlike anything I've seen in any horror/sci-fi film, which can also be said for BioShock, Shadow of the Colossus, Portal, Mirror's Edge, Enslaved, and Alan Wake in their respective equivalent genre in movies. Clint Eastwood's No Name had no internal struggle of any sort and the only times where he reveals his character (if we're talking about The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) in sparse segments (such as giving Tuco a cigarette on their journey or saving him at the end) which can be argued to be very lackluster, or at the most minimalistic, in terms of character development. He's more of a force of nature than a character.
@ Don Panini - I disagree. Great characters are ones that you can understand and empathize with on a personal level. You're comparing Master Chief to one of the most annoying, self-centered, manipulative, aggravating excuses for a character in cinema history? I take umbrage with you, sir. Characters in good games, just like in good movies, have terrifically defined personalities.
@ Zpowers - I don't know anything about that development, but at the moment, I think that Nathan Fillion might be a tad bit too on the old side to play such a young character like Drake was in the video games.
@Robert Colyar - In my opinion, developers have gotten better in terms of actually combining gameplay and story without the crutch of cutscenes (Hideo Kojima has not learned this lesson, yet).
@Jean Genie - Yeah, the traditional Hollywood classical design of a film requires a heterosexual love interest and other storyline, whereas the audience that plays video games aren't bound to that traditional aesthetic in the story of a game. And now, it's time to skin you alive! *Bares teeth* :)
@Shinigami64 - I don't want to go into dealing Cracked.com, I'm just not a fan of their site, nor their particular opinions on the subject of stories in video games. But yes, if video games became movies they would have to change their story to suit to needs of a film, however, it must be done within reason of staying true to the material.
@ - SkellingJACK154 - Batman is one of those franchises that can either branch off into crime or supernatural storytelling. Nolan went with the former instead of the latter, and disregarded the supernatural elements altogether, even to the point of parodying it in several scenes. Metal Gear Solid is a hodge podge of storytelling elements which I would equate to an extremely delicate Jenga tower - remove one too many elements and the whole thing topples over.
@Darksider - Haven't heard any news of the Gears of War movie, either.
@Liquid - I would argue that Superhero films REALLY became good after the introduction of Blade and X-men, but Spider-man set the bar for how superhero movies were done. It will take a while for video game movies to get their due, but it will happen eventually. I mean look at Batman - it took 4 films, a reboot, and one of the greatest directors of our time to get a great Batman film. I fear that video game movies will have to travel a similar bumpy road to get to the good stuff.
@Vig - Although Gears of War and Halo haven't actually been made, I see your point. I believe it's because they had rather simple story elements to transfer over to film for a quick profit (although I am a fan of the first Mortal Kombat film). I for one hate the Half-life story and I think that there's nowhere to go but up for the series in terms of storytelling, but I digress.
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