Discuss: Making Video Game Movies That Work

It seems really odd that it's so difficult to turn a video game with a plotline into a decent movie. I was hopeful for Max Payne (will be seeing it tomorrow) but I've already read one scathing review over at AICN.

Vic

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I am the guy who actually liked Wing Commander: The Movie.

Can't wait for Prince of Persia.

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I've always felt that the main scourge for Games-to-film has always been the talent(or lack thereof) involved. It's not that making a movie based on a game right is it's own thing and has it's own set of challenges, it's that the ones done so far have been thrown mostly as low budget films with no hope outside of a February release. Resident Evil and Doom are not harder concepts to sell than, say, Transformers. Only that it's never even Michael Bay the one to direct those.


As for Max Payne, I'm a bit lukewarm. I'll go see it with moderate expectations. I actually don't expect the rating of it to be a deterrent. As I recall, the Mortal Kombat movie was pretty good in spite of being based on a M rated game.

I'm actually quite hopefull for Prince of Persia. And I expect moderate thrills from Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun Li next year.

And I close by saying: How come np one's licensed Sonic to make a CG movie yet?

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I am only slightly ashamed to admit how much I thoroughly enjoyed Hitman. It was really just 90-100 minutes of fanservice. Things blew up. People died. The story was good enough to keep me entertained. (my full review: http://www.privatjokr.com/index.php/movies/2008/06/05/hitman)

I'm not sold on video game movies. After Hitman I didn't run out to see Doom, but Max Payne looks really good.

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Hitman was extremely under-rated

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so you mention the spirits within but not advent children whats up with that

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Good cast, decent action, many stylishly directed moments and a good aesthetic backbone. Not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a decent film waiting to break out amongst all the studio interference and pandering to the adolescent audience. A decent director's cut would make a lot of people think twice, though It'll never happen.

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I've been lukewarm on Max Payne since I saw the first trailer. Mark Wahlberg is just slightly wrong for Max, but Mila Kunis seems to be a good fit for Mona. Toss in the Valkyries and it starts to look odd...

I've been replaying the games and they're a decent hard-boiled noir cop story with some John-Woo style thrown in. Now, if John Woo had directed a movie based on a game inspired by his movies...

As for others - I'd say we're about 5-10 years from a truly great game-based movie. The problem is that the directors who "get" the games are generally inexperienced as directors, and the experienced directors are generally to old to "get" the games. Once we get a director who grew up with modern video games, we could have something great.

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Hitman was an overlooked film because it played to the strengths of the video game. It didn't take itself like it was the most intricate and plausible story; it just had fun doing what it could do very well. The action was great, the movie moved along at a steady pace and it was worth the price of admission.

I was watching cable the other night and Double Dragon came on. Now, I must say that I always take video game movies with a grain of salt because i know that video games in general (and especially around the time DD and Super Mario Bros. came out) were more of a youthful trend. Adults, although there were many, hadn't grasped the video game culture yet. And for what it is worth, Double Dragon is good, old fashioned 90's-camp fun! Funny in the wrong places, embarassingly funny in the meant-to-be-funny places and b-movie acting at its finest.

There will always be the Street Fighter's, Mortal Kombat: Anihilation's, and BloodRayne's in the world, but i think the genre is starting to turn the corner. Max Payne looks like a straight forward action/noir film and i'm excited to check it out. I hope i'm not wrong.

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The problem with adapting video games into movies is that every attempt thus far has been for games popular because of their gameplay, not their narrative intuition. This fails and will always fail.

Silent Hill was perhaps the closest adaptation yet of a game whose story was on par with its play, but even then Silent Hill is a poor source material because the story was always second fiddle to simply navigating through dark corridors.

Max Payne, on the other hand, had a grrreat script. A strong narrative with a heartfelt story that was always fun as hell to play. The problem, evidence suggests, with the movie is that 'they' finally picked a game with a great story and still only chose to adapt the gameplay. That's like going to adapt a book and then filming a story based on the paper said book was printed on.

And yes, the PG-13 rating is an inherent flaw. Max Payne was heavy on drug usage: bad guys were always shooting up, Payne himself used pain relievers to restore health (yeah, remember when games had health points and one didn't just hide in the corner to heal?). Plus, ya know, he shot people in the face. A lot.

And double yes, Wahlberg is miscast. To make a game adaptation work you need to either pick something with a plot that can stand on its own or pick something where the gameplay gimmick will be just as enjoyable on the silver screen as it is on the game screen. This is why Prince of Persia will be a success. The story is solid, but the gameplay hook (rewinding time) will be just as cool to watch as it was to do.

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I think the only movie that may have a chance is Bio-Shock. And i only say this because of the look of the Pirates movie is along the same lines. Max Payne had to be rated R to be good on any level but its not and i think its going to take away from everything the game was.

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the movie that has the most potential is kane and lynch. it wasnt a great game but the story leaves it open to be a decent movie.


mortal kombats problem aside from the crappy acting and terrible special effects was it was done too much child lake. now if they remake it into a rated r movie and dont shy away from the violence that mk is known for. mk has a chance but even at that the story is very loose so it would just be action and violence. same thing for street fighter.

halo has a chance too with alien invasion but its really no different than any other alien invasion movie.

Call of duty could be made into a decent movie but it has no character to attach itself to.
resistance could definitely make a movie even though its another alien invasion movie.

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I'd like to see Max Payne, I think it might be pretty good, or at least the best video game movie ever.

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Frisco not to be a pain but not sure how you can think that the pirates movies (ummm. pirates) have a similer look to bioshock (50s avent garde). I think Bioshock could make a great movie but then so could lots of other games.
Movies I'm most not looking forward to are God of War (all the Ratner haters online are on to something) and the Metal Gear Solid movie which will no doubt get rid of everythign that made the franchise great.
As for other movies I was looking forward to the only one would have been Halo directed by Neil Blomkamp (who unexperienced as he is with big features has some exciting work in the past and would have done some interesting things, his halo shorts show this). I don't agree with all the film fanboys wishing Peter Jackson would have directed as the halo story and Jackson wouldn't have gelled at all.

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SNAAAAAKE!!!

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I just hope the Max Payne movie incorporates the parts where Payne is tripping balls and has to run through the darkness on these thin strips of blood/pavement/whatever and then you have to keep restarting from your damn save point and it takes about 30 tries before you finally get to the room and you don't even get to shoot anyone!

Anyway, they should have that in the movie.

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D.O.A. was a hoot from start to finish. Yes, the cheese factor was high, but I knew it would be going in. The chicks were, as the kids say, teh seks, and they kicked ass in an almost believable way. It's 89 minutes of brainless softcore bubblegum violence porn. Corey Yuen, people!

It's worth watching just to hear Jaime Pressly's reaction upon seeing Eric Roberts' evil mastermind office for the first time.

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