Let’s hope they listen for the sequel, because apparently that’s the one that sounds like it should have what we wanted in the first place.
Why Does Hollywood always have to F*** it up?
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
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Mass Effect was never about having major story decisions, the games were always going to follow a certain plotline. It was about your ability to develop your own Shepard through dialogue choices and side-story choices. The player wanted to see what effect what you did with the Geth or Quarians or Krogans have on the main plotline vs actually changing the main plotline. That's not to say you can't make a Mass Effect movie (watch Star Trek Picard for a shitty Mass Effect movie
), it just can't recreate that aspect of Mass Effect. Also, very few games are like Mass Effect as incorporating choice into games in hard so developers don't do that or usually just save the important choices to all the way at the end so the main story doesn't splinter until the very end and thus takes less resources than if it splintered in the middle.
Yeah that movie didn't turn out so good.
The biggest problem in the movie seems to be Cole which is exactly what I was expecting. He's so obviously a character the marketing department forced into the movie to ensure there was a relatable every man to appeal to people who don't know Mortal Kombat. As a result you get a bland, boring character who's story is so by the book I could predict every single thing Cole was going to do or say long before he did so. That he's Scorpions great great grandson furthers my suspicion he was specifically crafted by demand of the marketing department. That something marketing department tend to do. They force writers to include a bland audience surrogate who as a result of being so bland can't possibly carry the weight of being the main character.
There's three words that made my hype tank like a rock:
Emperor Shang Tsung
Did they just fuse Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn? Granted the movie never addresses Shang Tsung as emperor but most marketing statements name him as such, and there's no mention of him serving a higher power.
Kano however is great. Kano is absolutely wonderful and the best thing about the movie.
The biggest problem in the movie seems to be Cole which is exactly what I was expecting. He's so obviously a character the marketing department forced into the movie to ensure there was a relatable every man to appeal to people who don't know Mortal Kombat. As a result you get a bland, boring character who's story is so by the book I could predict every single thing Cole was going to do or say long before he did so. That he's Scorpions great great grandson furthers my suspicion he was specifically crafted by demand of the marketing department. That something marketing department tend to do. They force writers to include a bland audience surrogate who as a result of being so bland can't possibly carry the weight of being the main character.
There's three words that made my hype tank like a rock:
Emperor Shang Tsung
Did they just fuse Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn? Granted the movie never addresses Shang Tsung as emperor but most marketing statements name him as such, and there's no mention of him serving a higher power.
Kano however is great. Kano is absolutely wonderful and the best thing about the movie.
The first 2 Warcraft games had incompatible campaigns, though the Warcraft movie picked the one that Warcraft 2 settled on, and stuck stuff from WoW in.
Something like Skyrim, however, where a major point is whether or not Age of Aggression or Age of Oppression is a better pub song, probably wouldn't work that well.
Okay so I have a question on the wider MK lore, not just this interpretation of it. Has there ever been a MK tournament that went the way it was supposed to? Like going beyond why Earth and Out World agreed to a tournament in the first place, or why humanity by and large just forgot about it, every movie and game seems to be about someone cheating to win. And this is an inter-dimensional tournament run by literal Gods for tens of thousands of years, and every shmuck with a cheap jacket and ridiculous accent can just cheat.
"I'm gonna kill all the Earth Champions so they can't compete in the actual tournament.""
"Well I'm just going to invade Earth anyway, even though I lost the tournament!"
"That's nothing, I'm gonna get the Infinity Stones and time travel to prevent Earth's Avengers from assembling and stopping me in the past."
What's the point of Gods laying down the rules if OutWorld warlords can break them every time? How is it considered fair to Earth that their champions have to go above and beyond to stop the cheating invaders, and the prize is that Earth is safe until the next Tournament. Shouldn't OutWorld be disqualified? Shouldn't the other realms just go to regular war and wipe them from the multiverse if they're just going to cheat?
because if they didn't there wouldn't be an interesting story.
In reality I think there have been plenty of Mortal Kombet's in times past that went the official way they were supposed too. Earth presumedly wins everytime and it is only during the games events that Shao Khan and Sheng Tsung decide to break the rules to try and win a victory for Outworld finally.
The reason we dont see those tournaments is because they went according to plan and the good guys won without drama.
I guess every movie and video game is supposed to be the last Mortal Kombat tournament? I mean once the can of worms that OutWorld can cheat and ignore the rules is opened, you can't close it. Once Earth sees the Gods don't have power enough to enforce their own rules, its over. There's no reason to keep having the tournament.
Like in the movies Radian gives up his Godhood in order to help Earth from the dirty dirty cheaters. Sure, fine, good character moment. But he can't do it again, and now Outworld knows there is no real consequence to cheating. Sure they lose and their Warlord is killed, but its a fight to the death tournament anyway. I mean just keep cheating and forcing Earth to spend their God favors until they're out and then just win.
- Feb 7, 2011
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Jurassic Park is a 400 page book (most of which is descriptions).
Your average movie script is 100 pages of mostly dialogue.
It's not really all that difficult to condense your average book into movie length.
It's harder to condense a 20 hour game down to 2 hours of movie.
Also I will point out that every time a movie based on a book comes out everyone who read the book goes "the book did it better."
I hear that is not always true, although I have not read the right books to make that judgement personally.
I think the problem is generally that people like making movies of much loved and appreciated books, because there is a ready audience there. Then there are two problems: firstly, a lot of these books set high bars to pass because they are good books. Secondly, people who loved the books are likely to be hypercritical of adaptations.
Not all the time. The movie version of Read Player One is 1000x better than the novel. Stephen Spielberg is known to hate the original novel of Jaws, because all of the characters are assholes. Many people prefer the film version of First Blood due to Stallone's performance and turning Rambo in to a more sympathetic character (in the novel he is a straight up villain). Twilight sucks, no matter which version you're going for. Die Hard is more remembered than the novel its based off of. Nothing Lasts Forever is the name. I've read, and the advantage that novel has, is that the book was a sequel to The Detective and featured an older protag in his late 50s. NLF has more grey areas too, and not a complete black and white story, but that was the point. Obviously, a few changes had to be made in order for it to be adaptable. The Thing (1982) is considered superior to the book, The Thing From Another World. I could go on all day.
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The Godfather is often cited as the classic example of the movie being better than the book. But that's the sort of thing I might mean when I say few people have read the books where the movies were better, because they're often not good books.
I figure film adaptations of Dan Brown's books have to be better than his novels. I know it's a cheap shot, but Dan Brown is a truly awful writer. He's made a lot of millions though, so he can afford to suck up some punishment and still have the last laugh.
That's not how the tournament works IIRC.
Basically, if one realm wants to merge with another, the competing realm needs to win ten straight victories, the tournament being held once a generation. The person who wins the last tournament becomes immortal and is the reigning champion. So in-universe, Outworld's attempt to merge with Earthrealm went as such:
-Tournament begins.
-Outworld wins 9 straight victories. On the tenth, Kung Lao (not the one in-game, an ancestor) wins, resetting the clock.
-Goro wins the next tournament, and wins tournaments 2-9. On the tenth (the one where MK1 takes place), Liu Kang wins. Only Shang Shung gets into shannanigans (steps in, but is also defeated), and Shao Khan, sick of losing his winning streak twice, gets into shannanigans as well (won't go into the details as they may vary between the original and rebooted timeline).
Basically, the tournaments went as normal most of the time, but then you don't have an interesting story. At most, you could do a prequel with the original Kung Lao, but that's about it IMO.
(I assume that if Earthrealm won ten straight victories, Outworld would forever lose any chance at claiming it - maybe Earthrealm would claim it?)
Personally I think the Gods declaring a martial arts tournament to the death between humans and a bunch of beefy fantasy monsters and ninja ladies in bikinis, and the winner gets to take over the lands of the other sounds pretty interesting without the need for dirty dirty cheaters.
Im kinda reminded of that ZP quote from Technomancer I think it was about the writers failing to find the interesting story part about a race of lightning wizards from Mars. Like that's enough.
I actually think a fighting game is the perfect game to base a movie around and it's kind of telling that Hollywood doesn't see the money they could make from it. It's essentially another Marvel money maker if they did it right. Don't have a Mortal Kombat movie that tries to cram all the characters into some kind of tournament, do a movie about the conflict between Sub-Zero and Scorpion, do a movie about Raiden and his interactions with the other gods etc. etc. Then once you've done all these smaller stories about one or two characters (And assuming they were successful) have a big mash up movie of all of them in a central conflict.
Like seriously. This isn't HARD!
Like seriously. This isn't HARD!
Key difference being that stuff like the MCU and DCEU are using characters that exist in the cultural zeitgeist to at least some extent. In contrast, how many Average Joes/Janes could name a MK character if asked?
I don't understand why that's important and it ignored how Iron Man was the most popular character of the MCU despite being unknown to most people before the first Iron Man movie.
Isn't this an admission that MK can't work as a movie? Like sure, MK can work as a movie, if you drop the plot and setting and just take the characters and have them do something completely unrelated to the tournament.
I mean if you just want two ninjas to fight, just make a ninja movie. Why bother with the MK ip if the first thing on the chopping block is the tournament?
You can absolutely do a Mass Effect movie if you just get rid of that whole Reaper business, and never mind the space adventures and aliens, its about Ashley Williams as a high schooler whose a little awkward and has a crush on a boy.
Even then, before the MCU, I'd wager that more people would have heard of Iron Man than any MK character. While it's true that the MCU kind of had to rely on C-listers, those heroes would still have some cultural draw.
???? How is the history of Sub-Zero and Scorpion not part of the plot and setting of MK? It's the backstory of characters participating in the MK story, it's why they're there, how is that not relevant or part of the story? Isn't the entire draw of fighting games the different characters and their interactions with the "main plot" being secondary to that? Fighting games show story from the perspective of the fighter you play as, how it's relevant to them and what their part in it is, I don't understand where you get your notion of fighting game stories.
Regardless, it's irrelevant. The point of having a movie about Sub-Zero and Scorpion would be to INTRODUCE THEM to the audience, no different than if they were brand new characters.