lock thread please

[sXeth]

Mortal Kombat was prettymuch the perfect videogame adapation in terms of faith to its source material (Two people with briefly stated backstories show up and fight each other, repeat several times, end with sequel bait cutscene) (even the second one really, captured the diminishing quality of an ever-expanding roster and the complete randomness of new Fatalities with the Animality being thrown in)

Which people then gave it crap for. With most other VG movies getting the general "They changed the canon" arguments.

So it just seems like a lose-lose in terms of trying to actually get one accepted with the hypothetical audience.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Where is this shit even coming from? Not a single fucking movie based on games has been good, and I defy you to find one that actually follows its source material properly.

I'm resigned to the fact that the formats are simply incompatible, barring some fucking miraculous levels of talent, which won't happen with the way Hollywood conducts its business these days.

Someone didn't read the OP.

Out of curiosity, are you ever going to discuss the subject of this thread, which has been refuted by a dozen people, or did you post just to make a statement (Something more appropriate with facebook then a forum [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forum]) and to poke at people who don't conform to absolute letter of your assertion (That source material has absolutely no place in 're-imaginings')?

If you think that was the subject of the thread you misunderstood. I never mentioned anything about source meterial. Just that YOU people expect a copy of the videogame you love oh so desrly, and are dissapointed because you expect too much. The underlining subject of the thread is the unrealistic expectation regarding videogame movies due to bias.

As for if I'm going to discuss it. Well 3 people out of 20 posters actually bothered to read and understand the OP. All 3 disagreed with me, which is fine. But at least they took the 3 minutes to understand what i was asking.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

Where is this shit even coming from? Not a single fucking movie based on games has been good, and I defy you to find one that actually follows its source material properly.

I'm resigned to the fact that the formats are simply incompatible, barring some fucking miraculous levels of talent, which won't happen with the way Hollywood conducts its business these days.

Someone didn't read the OP.

Out of curiosity, are you ever going to discuss the subject of this thread, which has been refuted by a dozen people, or did you post just to make a statement (Something more appropriate with facebook then a forum [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forum]) and to poke at people who don't conform to absolute letter of your assertion (That source material has absolutely no place in 're-imaginings')?

If you think that was the subject of the thread you misunderstood. I never mentioned anything about source meterial. Just that YOU people expect a copy of the videogame you love oh so desrly, and are dissapointed because you expect too much. The underlining subject of the thread is the unrealistic expectation regarding videogame movies due to bias.

As for if I'm going to discuss it. Well 3 people out of 20 posters actually bothered to read and understand the OP. All 3 disagreed with me, which is fine. But at least they took the 3 minutes to understand what i was asking.

Your original post was about how we expect movies to follow the source, and that's the only reason we hate video game movies so much. Half of the people here think that no, your wrong, its right for people to expect some sort of source 'loyalty,' and the other half have said no, video game movies just suck, relation to the source material or not. Your only comments after the OP so far have been a back handed insult without actually naming anyone (your second reply) and a direct insult to someone you quoted (Your first reply).

I know exactly what this thread is about. My question is if you know what a forum thread's actual purpose is.

 

[Conner42]

Considering that comic book movies have been getting way better treatment, is it really too much to ask for more than middling action movies? Sometimes, middling, go nowhere, forgettable movies do suck because they're just so fucking many of them, so it's pretty easy to fall back on video game movies suck because there never have been any truly good ones. Maybe okay ones, but is it too much to ask for more?

I am looking forward to the Warcraft movie that's in production. It's directed by someone who's shown a lot of talent even with only two movies and some of the stills look really promising.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I am looking forward to the Warcraft movie that's in production. It's directed by someone who's shown a lot of talent even with only two movies and some of the stills look really promising.

Warcraft is pretty much the second time in the history of cinema that video games have had a chance (The first being the aborted full feature Halo movie that got pretty much no where). I'm no fan of Warcraft to be honest, but for what it represents (A real chance for video games to be taken seriously on the big screen), I'm cheering it on.

 

[09philj]

We may finally, finally, get a VG film that's worth a damn when Duncan Jones' Warcraft is released. It's been rubbish all the way so far, and it could have been worse, since Gore Verbinski wanted to make a Bioshock film. I love Mouse Hunt and enjoyed Rango, but he was not the right man to handle that IP.

 

[marioandsonic]

I'm surprised that no one brought up Wreck-It Ralph in this thread, which I think is fantastic. Then again, that's a movie about video games, and not a direct adaptation of a game, so I guess that doesn't count.

Like others have said, the Warcraft movie looks promising, and I'm really hoping it turns out well.

Warcraft is pretty much the second time in the history of cinema that video games have had a chance (The first being the aborted full feature Halo movie that got pretty much no where).

What the heck happened to that movie? It was being directed by James Cameron from what I heard, and then...nothing.

 

[Redryhno]

I'm surprised that no one brought up Wreck-It Ralph in this thread, which I think is fantastic. Then again, that's a movie about video games, and not a direct adaptation of a game, so I guess that doesn't count.

Like others have said, the Warcraft movie looks promising, and I'm really hoping it turns out well.

Warcraft is pretty much the second time in the history of cinema that video games have had a chance (The first being the aborted full feature Halo movie that got pretty much no where).

What the heck happened to that movie? It was being directed by James Cameron from what I heard, and then...nothing.

I think giant blue AmerInd cat waifus distracted him.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Except that movies based on video games usually do suck, but there are actually a couple of reasons for that.

For older video game adaptations like "Super Mario Bros." and "Mortal Kombat" they came from the Mid 1980's onward Hollywood mentality of: "If it's popular, make a movie to cash in on the success." So those movies generally came with no respect for the source material, nor had any decent effort to be quality films. They were literally cash-ins designed to put butts in seats, ideally making back their investment before everyone realized the movies sucked.

For newer video game adaptations we have the Uwe Boll mentality. What these film makers do is find tax havens for the film industry, like Germany was doing. Basically there were and are countries where doing a full movie production inside their borders gives the movie a huge tax break. These tax breaks are designed to make production of movies more economical, with the country in question's government getting their money back on the investment and tax breaks when the movie becomes a success. The problem is that people like Uwe Boll are using these tax breaks to recreate "The Producers" in real life and succeeding. Basically making shitty movies that will tank at the box office, thus taking a loss versus their production value, which means paying no residuals, or taxes, which results in a net profit for the people producing the movies.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Warcraft is pretty much the second time in the history of cinema that video games have had a chance (The first being the aborted full feature Halo movie that got pretty much no where).

What the heck happened to that movie? It was being directed by James Cameron from what I heard, and then...nothing.

Neill Blomkamp was the director (District 9, Chappie, and so on). Basically, infighting killed the movie - Microsoft refused to accept any risk, requiring a bunch of money up front, the director and producer were offered extremely high 'first dollar' deals (They would get payed huge percentages of the movies gross income before the money even got split between the studio and the theaters, effectively meaning millions would go to the staff before the movie ever started making money), and the studio refused to move forward until they volunteered to give up parts of their contractually promised income, the director and producer obviously told them to go screw themselves, so on and so forth. Everyone involved in the project went to do other stuff while it was sorted out, and then it died.

So essentially, a movie that would have been produced in the middle of Halo fever, with almost no chance of being a financial failure, with a very promising staff who everyone believed in, died because a bunch of greedy bastards couldn't agree on how much absurd profit the other bastards should get.

 

[Fox12]

...

They sort of do. I have yet to see an exception. The best one i can think of is Mortal Kombat, and that was so bad it was brilliant.

They don't have to, though.

 

[Joccaren]

Take prince of persia for example. I rather enjoyed that movie. It was no worst than any other action movie. But everyone expected it to follow the videogame story and have the price use the dagger every 5 minutes to go back in to to redo his screw ups. And that didn't happen. The name 'prince of persia" actively killed the movie for a lot of people.

Thoughts?

I didn't expect that, but I did expect it to use the lore from the games, as well as the general overarching story. Yeah, it was an ok movie. However it was like me taking "Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", having the White Witch be this poor little girl who finds a friendly Lion she can talk to at a zoo, and who 'travels through' a magical wardrobe to become a powerful and kind Witch, with the Zinger being she's just an orphaned kid and is imagining all this to escape her reality.
I could make it a GREAT movie. It would still be shit because it is not Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, its something completely different that is just using the name to get people to spend money on going to see it.
Its sort of like the Eragon movie. It was average, and my family had no idea why I hated it so much. It started out ok, and then they decided to make Durza a jigsaw puzzle that rides a giant bat, destroy series continuity, and remove any chance of there being an Eldest, Brsinger or... God damn, what was the last one called? movie, as they had destroyed the plot lines for those books in their actions in that movie, because they didn't have any respect for the source material - certainly not enough to have actually read the damn things - and ended up killing off "Red shirt villains" who were actually major components of later story branches.

Games, books and movies have particular stories, and whilst I'm fine with some artistic liberty being taken, completely changing the lore, the story, and near everything else takes it a bit far.

Oh, and a lot of movies based on games are just crap plain and simple. Battleship. Pixels. Mario Bros. Mortal Combat. Prince of Persia was one of the few exceptions where it was merely an average movie on its own, not a bad one.

Its not impossible to do a good movie based on a game... You just need to respect the source material, and even if you don't follow the plot blow-for-blow, follow the overarching plot by and large, and preferably keep the important characters in.
It'll never be as good as the game in some cases - you could not recreate Mass Effect or Bioshock effectively as a movie; they'd be good, sure, but the hook in each's story is the player's interactivity, which can't be replicated - but it can still be good. So long as someone with some respect of the material is making it.

 

[Redryhno]

It'll never be as good as the game in some cases - you could not recreate Mass Effect or Bioshock effectively as a movie; they'd be good, sure, but the hook in each's story is the player's interactivity, which can't be replicated - but it can still be good. So long as someone with some respect of the material is making it.

I think ME could be done, the only thing would be that it would have to be massively kept under wraps and a gigantic undertaking in something similar to Clue's endings, except the entire movie having multiple differences throughout the versions of them and release them in different theaters. I mean it's not like any of the choices ever represented what you would be saying half the time anyways. Interactivity isn't fully needed to enjoy that series.

 

[Bat Vader]

Give Michael Bay the rights to direct a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare movie and it will be the best movie based on a game ever.

 

[jademunky]

I will say that there is one video game adaptation to film that did not suck: Mortal Kombat.

Seriously, it is easily as good as fantasy-kung-fu gets, stays true to the source material (A fighting tournament to decide the fate of earthrealm led by the sorcerer Shang-Tsung). Probably the only one that I would actually be willing to watch.

 

[Joccaren]

It'll never be as good as the game in some cases - you could not recreate Mass Effect or Bioshock effectively as a movie; they'd be good, sure, but the hook in each's story is the player's interactivity, which can't be replicated - but it can still be good. So long as someone with some respect of the material is making it.

I think ME could be done, the only thing would be that it would have to be massively kept under wraps and a gigantic undertaking in something similar to Clue's endings, except the entire movie having multiple differences throughout the versions of them and release them in different theaters. I mean it's not like any of the choices ever represented what you would be saying half the time anyways. Interactivity isn't fully needed to enjoy that series.

Eh, it didn't effect the overarching plot, but it did effect who Shepard seemed to be as a character. This was never more noticeable than in ME3 where Bioware tried to turn it more into a movie and removed most of your dialogue choices - which was a huge complaint on their forums immediately after it came out, and considered a leading cause for the major issues with Star Child and such in the ending - its not our Shepard doing things, its Bioware's Shepard.
Considering the reaction that got... Yeah, no, it wouldn't be a good move. There's also then the question of canon plot. Did Shepard save everyone? Did anyone die? Are the Rachni around? Is the final cinematic shot with a red, blue or green colour filter?
As I said, you could do it, and make a decent movie out of it, but it would still be a poor adaptation of the series to a movie. Interactivity was a big part of Mass Effect, even if the dialogue wasn't 100% accurate to what you were saying a lot of the time.
A better bet would be to go with an unrelated story like they're doing with Andromeda.

 

[Amir Kondori]

They don't. Well not in comparison to other movies at the very least. You see it's my opinion that, because the movies are based on games we have played, we expect too much from it. We expect the movie to follow the in game logic or story. Which isn't necessarily true , then we are dissapointed.

Take prince of persia for example. I rather enjoyed that movie. It was no worst than any other action movie. But everyone expected it to follow the videogame story and have the price use the dagger every 5 minutes to go back in to to redo his screw ups. And that didn't happen. The name 'prince of persia" actively killed the movie for a lot of people.

That being said, are there movies based on video games that are bad? Sure. But not all of them suck. Some are really good if you just forget it's based on a game. Another example being the hitman movies. They are good action flicks. Just don't expect 47 to be changing costumes every 10 minutes.

Thoughts?

Prince of Persia, while not a good movie, was much better than the average video game movie. They suck not because we play games, look at the reviews on rotten tomatoes or metacritic. Most of those scores were given by movie reviewers who do not play games.

Video game movies suck because of several reasons. The license costs money so less money goes into the production. They have to try and adapt narratives that are often bare bones filler around game mechanics into something that can drive a movie and hold your attention for an hour and a half. Then you have the input from the company that owns the IP for the game, and more often than not you end up with hot garbage.

 

[Redryhno]

It'll never be as good as the game in some cases - you could not recreate Mass Effect or Bioshock effectively as a movie; they'd be good, sure, but the hook in each's story is the player's interactivity, which can't be replicated - but it can still be good. So long as someone with some respect of the material is making it.

I think ME could be done, the only thing would be that it would have to be massively kept under wraps and a gigantic undertaking in something similar to Clue's endings, except the entire movie having multiple differences throughout the versions of them and release them in different theaters. I mean it's not like any of the choices ever represented what you would be saying half the time anyways. Interactivity isn't fully needed to enjoy that series.

Eh, it didn't effect the overarching plot, but it did effect who Shepard seemed to be as a character. This was never more noticeable than in ME3 where Bioware tried to turn it more into a movie and removed most of your dialogue choices - which was a huge complaint on their forums immediately after it came out, and considered a leading cause for the major issues with Star Child and such in the ending - its not our Shepard doing things, its Bioware's Shepard.
Considering the reaction that got... Yeah, no, it wouldn't be a good move. There's also then the question of canon plot. Did Shepard save everyone? Did anyone die? Are the Rachni around? Is the final cinematic shot with a red, blue or green colour filter?
As I said, you could do it, and make a decent movie out of it, but it would still be a poor adaptation of the series to a movie. Interactivity was a big part of Mass Effect, even if the dialogue wasn't 100% accurate to what you were saying a lot of the time.
A better bet would be to go with an unrelated story like they're doing with Andromeda.

Oh god, don't even get me started on Andromeda...they've got so many plot holes and things they could do in the local system with all the now stranded aliens, but nope, time to head off to another galaxy cause lol.

 

[Joccaren]

Oh god, don't even get me started on Andromeda...they've got so many plot holes and things they could do in the local system with all the now stranded aliens, but nope, time to head off to another galaxy cause lol.

Completely agreed here at least. They would have done better to make it a Human-Turian war prequel to Mass Effect than a sequel with plot holes the size of Russia.
I'm honestly not looking forward to Andromeda, it'll be detailed more objective reviews that'll determine whether I get it or not. Or, I guess, more accurately, summaries of the game. I can't see it being good, but I guess there is a chance. It was the only option they had in some ways in terms of lead character though - separate itself entirely from the previous story. They just did that in a stupid way rather than a more logical or consistent way.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

They don't. Well not in comparison to other movies at the very least. You see it's my opinion that, because the movies are based on games we have played, we expect too much from it. We expect the movie to follow the in game logic or story. Which isn't necessarily true , then we are dissapointed.

Take prince of persia for example. I rather enjoyed that movie. It was no worst than any other action movie. But everyone expected it to follow the videogame story and have the price use the dagger every 5 minutes to go back in to to redo his screw ups. And that didn't happen. The name 'prince of persia" actively killed the movie for a lot of people.

That being said, are there movies based on video games that are bad? Sure. But not all of them suck. Some are really good if you just forget it's based on a game. Another example being the hitman movies. They are good action flicks. Just don't expect 47 to be changing costumes every 10 minutes.

Thoughts?

Well there's the thing: if you're not going to follow the one thing the franchise is distinctively known for (time reversal for Prince of Persia, the several stealth gameplay elements for Hitman) then why bother even calling the movie the videogame for any other reason than franchise recognition? Why not just buy, say, the likeness rights to some characters, or the rights to a certain plotline if it's really good, and just make an original movie? Like it or not, no movie that has a video game name attached to it has ever been above average, and directors like Uwe Boll seem more than happy to keep that stigma alive and well.