195: Paul W.S. Anderson: Not as Bad as Uwe Boll

[cj_iwakura]

W.S. Anderson actually plays the games he adapts, and tends to treat the source material respectfully.

If you think the RE movies are a respectful rendition of the source material then you're crazier than W.S. Anderson. The Alice character is a Mary Sue that's even stronger than the crazy super-speed bullet dodging Wesker of RE5 but without any of the Wesker charms. She's entirely unlikable, but she's our protagonist?

Oh, and in the RE2 movie Anderson turned Jill Valentine into a second class character - behind Carlos in importance, and Nemesis CRIED at the end.
End of debate.

I'm not fond of the RE2 movie, but Anderson phoned that in.

I liked the RE1 movie for coming up with something original that still had the feel of Resident Evil. And it could've been much worse than Alice. At least it's a cool character, I think. RE2 decided to adapt the games more directly, and look how badly that went.

 

[listerofsmeg]

Why was Alien vs. Predator not on this list? I grew up on those games... and comics... and toys...

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

...I liked the FPS secence in Doom...

I enjoyed it too. I just wish they wouldn't of goofed with the story line so much!

Yeah, agreed.

Also, insofar as the Resident Evil movies go.. I absolutely hated Resident Evil 1, I loved Resident Evil 2 because it reminded me SO much of the games, I thought it was made by a totally different production crew. Nemesis, running through the building with the helicopter after you (Code Veronica, anyone?), Jill and Carlos were all big Resident Evil kickers for me because they REMINDED me of the game. Resident Evil one felt like it was just using some of the names and made up everything else. And the sex scene in RE1 was SO freaking uncalled for, it did nothing to help the movie. I haven't seen the third one yet, but it didn't look nearly as good as RE2 did, so I haven't been in a huge hurry to see it, although my aunt has it.

Mortal Kombat 1, for me, was a great movie. It did what it could to be similar to the game, without going too far in either direction. It was lightyears better than the horrible sequal they did, which I don't think he was even a part of.

I won't even comment on Event Horizon, because it has nothing to do with gaming therefore it has no real impact. You can be a great director/film-maker and still make bad movies/good movies.

In all, I still feel that P.W.S.A. could do better. He may be doing it for the love of gaming, but he's also somewhat of a hack (insofar as game movies go) and may well be doing it more for the money than for anything else. I saw Mortal Kombat and RE2 is his best game related movies, and everything else was either sub-par or so far distanced from the source that it is barely recognizable.

So yeah, he's definitely faster than Uwe Boll, but not by much.

EDIT: Oh gods, someone reminded me of AvP.. Don't get me wrong, I liked that movie (not the sequal though), but.. when I discovered that it was AvP which turned Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver away from the Aliens series, I was downhearted.

 

[Therumancer]

Well I think Poul Anderson has some talent, where Uwe Boll just isn't very good at what he does despite his practice.

That said, I would prefer to see my video game inspired movies a bit closer to the source material than either of them do. However at least with Mr. Anderson he usually turns out a decent (if not incredible) movie that could probably stand on it's own if he wasn't attaching a video game franchise to it.

Arguably I think that Mr. Anderson has some talent, he could have turned say Resident Evil into a decent zombie series by doing exactly what he did and removing all referances to the RE franchise and replacing them with his own stuff. People would scream "RE Rip off" but still sit back, watch the movies, and laud them as cult classics.

The thing is though that by tacking the "Resident Evil" name onto them he gets people to come on the off chance that someone will do their favorite game series "right", and if not they can at least talk about how it was messed up with authority.

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In defense of game-movie creators however, turning a story that can take 12-20 hours to tell via video game (omitting battles) in two hours can be difficult, regular books run into this problem when they see movie adaptions. It's especially problematic when the story is told via exploration, and things like recovered photographs, diary pages, or whatever else. The awesomeness of what you piece together on your own can't really be conveyed in a movie the same way.

That said, I think things have been getting slowly better, and that over a period of time we might see a few good video game adaptions.

Also understand that you can't just blame the directors for wanting to tack a popular gamne franchise label onto a vaguely similar franchise movie. You also need to blame those holding the liscences to the games who pimp out this permission.

See, if I had a succesful video game franchise, I might very well agree to let someone like Mr. Anderson make a movie based on it, but I'd also want to review the script and have a say in it. Assuming my franchise is successful and making money to begin with I'm going to want something out there the fans are going to approve of.

That said I think a lot of Mr. Anderson's movies have actually been fairly decent, even if they could be better.

 

[Doc Cannon]

I actually loved the FPS sequence in Doom, and I think the film would have been a lot better if it had included one more of those (and demons goddamnit, not damn mutants). It was innovative and it made an otherwise boring shootout entertaining.

On topic: I think he's better than Boll, though that's not saying much. I did like Event Horizon, but there lies the problem, he messes too much with the background of the games he adapts, if he could tone down on that a little he'd be just fine.

 

[Terramax]

People seem to forget Uwe Boll doesn't have the budget, resources or major film company backup that Anderson has.

Anyway, saying he's better than Uwe is like saying dogs droppings is better than cows drops. You don't really wanna come across either in any case. Mortal Kombat was pretty good, but the RE movies are just plain and simply horrid.

Pity as Event Horizon was such a great film, and shows he could've been a real contender for some decent storytelling.

 

[raankh]

I'm ready to gloss over most of that other junk, because Event Horizon is such an awesome film. To me it seems that making movies based off video games has been the worst move in his career.

 

[Shiftygiant]

I liked the resident evil film because of how preposterously ridiculous they were. I feel like he knows it. Look at the first 10 minutes of afterlife. Tokyo. Ok. Snipers shooting at the zombies, fine. Killed by mysterious force, interesting. Ok. Suddenly super models attacking base like ninjas. Nice. Ohmygodtheyblewuptokyo! Its just so preposterous its not only feels like the game, but its also campy to the point of enjoyment. Uwe... Just awful. No happiness. Just trauma inducing crap.