Poll: Movie adaptations of video games?

[Scarim Coral]

I would say mostly no (a few are decent) because they are never accurate to the source material (e.g. live action Street Fighter or Super Mario Bros) but this doesn't mean it should be 100% accurate (think of like live action comic films compare to the comic itself).
The only good game films I have seen is Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill although people complain that Silent Hill was like watching someone playing the game but shouldn't a good game film be like that?
If you are going to include animated game films like Street Fighters then those animated films are miles better.
Since you mention improvement then I can only suggest keeping it faithful and I think it should be like watching the person playing the game since I think that how game movie should be like.

 

[Jumping_Over_Fences]

I lived through and vividly remember the Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Double Dragon and Mortal Kombat movie years, so I am very much against movie adaptations of video games. Sure, they have all attained some kind of "let's-watch-this-in-an-ironic-way" status among people of my generation, but generally speaking they are just bad news.

I gave up after the nineties.

 

[DarthFennec]

They always fuck it up. Every single time. Super Mario Bros was horrible, Street Fighter was horrible, Resident Evil was horrible, Doom was horrible, Uwe Boll's stuff I don't even need to get into, etc. Silent Hill wasn't totally horrible but they still botched it pretty badly.

I think it's completely possible, just like it's very possible to make a good movie adaption of a book or comic, even though most people can't do it right. It's about getting the right guys with the right artistic flair for the game, making sure they know and can be faithful to the source material, and working with that. But that just hasn't happened yet.

Hopefully soon we get a decent movie adaption. But until then, they aren't worth watching.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Mostly horrible, I especially hate the ones that are just a story the screenwriters have been trying to push through for years and in the end they fuse it together with recently purchased movie rights to a game.

I do love the ones that went out of the way to be terrible.

Street Fighter: they need a guy to play Guile, a no nonsense all American soldier, a perfect role for Jeane Claude Van Damme.

Super Mario Bros: We need an Italian Plumber, nah Americans need to be able to relate to him, make him Italian American. Now we need a believable Italian American actor, like er.. Bob Hoskins. Also I love the plot they came up with for that film, translating a colourful side scrolling platformer about rescuing a princess into a cyberpunk/sci-fi/dystopian thriller/comedy is a very impressive feat. Strangely this also happened between Jak and Daxter and Jak 2.

With silent hill they managed to stay pretty true to the games, fog check, static check, cult check, nurses check, straightjackets check, pyramid head check, nightmare world check. Problem was they forgot it was meant to be a horror.

Resident Evil. The director seemed to think, hmm a horror franchise, zombie based, evil pharma, this is all well and good but I really need millions of people to see my wives lady bits, oh I can, excellent.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

I don't think I've ever seen a decent movie adaption of a game...
Bearing in mind I've never seen Prince of Persia.

Also, Silent Hill was okay- but that's basically because all movies of that type anyway tend to be 'meh' to pretty god damn awful. So for it to be even acceptable was a good thing, I suppose? Much better than the Resident Evils.

 

[Sampler]

There's alot of Uwe Boll bile in here - which is understandable, I've sat through Alone in the Dark and skipped through Bloodrayne to see if it picked up (it didn't) but Postal I laughed my ass off at.

It's like Mr Boll sat down, read all the comments on his films and went, yeah, you're right and then made a parody of himself and it works brilliantly (well, a little flat in places but that's more than made up for with the best opening sequence of a movie ever - what, America, too soon?)

 

[ThisIsSnake]

I've remember blindly hating Uwe Boll like most people, until I saw him being interviewed by gametrailers (I think). He makes a point that he isn't ruining the games he uses for his films, they're ruining themselves or weren't that great in the first place. Uwe established his reputation for making terrible game-movies but people still sold him the rights. With the exception of Far Cry, the source material for his game-films was awful in the first place.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I am amazed that you got even 25% of people to vote "yes".

Although I will admit to a sneaking liking of both the "Street Fighter" and "Double Dragon" movies. They're classic guilty pleasures because they are so bad, but at the same time have a good deal of camp charm about them.

I mean, in "Double Dragon" there's a scene where Alyssa Milano tortures a guy in a 600lb pimpled fatsuit by force-feeding him spinach. And the whole film is filled with moments like this. At one point there's a random zombie attack (with no setup whatsoever - there's no reference to zombies before that point). At another point a river is set on fire. This is the level of bizarre we're dealing with here.

So I guess my point is that if you can't have good, you can always settle for ridiculous camp.

 

[darth.pixie]

I haven't seen a good one yet.

Silent Hill was fine because it was somewhat creepier than what's on the normal horror movie market. But never as scary as the games and they just mashed all the lore and events in one movie. Also the ending was...strange.

Off the top of my head Prince of Persia, Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne all sucked...Street Fighter, gods, Street Fighter (especially the new one)...

I won't even go into that one.

So basically, they're never like the games even in events and sometimes things get modified so much that you can't even tell what you're watching.

 

[s0p0g]

good god no, they're awful, horrible, atrocious, awkward (especially if Boll is involved... and the german tax payers (partially) pay for his "films"... as we didn't have better directors >.< )

with the exception of Doom; i know most hate it, but... how can you not like a movie with The Rock! ? ^^ doom is awesome!
and silent hill was alright, i guess. as in, doesn't make you want to puke. unlike Boll's "films"

 

[Soxafloppin]

The first Mortal Kombat is very entertaining!

Also want Pixar to make a Ratchet and Clank movie!!

 

[Legendsmith]

An EVE Online Movie would be amazing.
Day of Darkness II is a fanmade movie. The guy went to CCP and used their tech to do it. I think it's great, apart from that one grammatical error.


This is the dominion trailer. While the alliances named there do not actually exist, the voice chatter is pretty accurate. (Yes, at the moment is IS Russians vs the Northern coalition, which mainly consists of English speakers).


EVE Online has the story, both player made and "game storyline" to make an awesome movie. It's something easily dramatised. Just look at the Dominion trailer. That kind of thing actually happens, completely player driven.

That's something that I think a lot of other games didn't have, not properly. They didn't survive the translation to the movie medium intact, as you can see from the SMB movie and the like.. EVE would. Just think of Avatar. Think if that budget, that CGI tech went into an EVE Online movie. It would be wondrous.

 

[Lionsfan]

For the most part no. As a whole video game stories don't really work as movies, that's why they're games. So you can control the story and have an interactive medium. But what movies should do is take the basic plot elements and story structure, and the in-game universe and try to create their own piece of work. Like how Goldeneye was an actual game and not just a "let's hop on the movie's hype and get a quick profit"

 

[Mozared]

To tell you the truth, I don't consciously know a lot of movie adaptions of video games? The only one that sprang to mind before opening this thread was the Max Payne movie, and that was pretty terrible when compared to the game(s). Other things users have mentioned in this thread are Silent Hill and Resident Evil, and I've played the games of neither so can't *really* compare. I though Resident Evil was a dime a dozen, but I kind of liked Silent Hill.

So if I had to pick a general, I'd say 'no' because out of the three movies I know, two were rather meh-ish. I guess that's not really to representative, though.