Rockstar Exec Criticizes Cash-In Videogame Movies

[ccesarano]

They publish the Max Payne games, right?

So who's idea was it for them to turn that into a movie? Granted it was a decent attempt, and I still say Mark Wahlberg was a perfect choice for the role, but whoever was in charge of the story just got confused somewhere and figured they'd be all kinds of artistic with the use of drugs and valkyrie and such.

Film with potential, but ended up going from boring to bad to worse.

 

[Fidelias]

What, Rockstar Games co-founder and Vice President of creativity has been releasing GTA games out of the bottom of his heart so that he could better our world? Yeah, right; it's always about the money.

Watch him change his tune as soon as someone mentions making a Red Dead Redemption or GTA movie.

Urrr, there's a whole paragraph in the article where he says that the idea of making movies had come up before, but that Rockstar wanted to focus on making games.

Okay, but that doesn't mean there wasn't more to it than just "I believe we should focus on making video games."

I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I haven't known a co-founder of a company to just screw the money for the greater good.

Then again, that's my opinion. You could be completely right. I hope you're completely right.

 

[Colonel Alzheimer's]

GTA and Red Dead Redemption definitely do not need movies. The games work so well because it made routine gameplay elements part of the story, furthering the immersion. For example, in GTA IV you could freak out and kill a bunch of civilians, but it made sense in the story because Niko was this really tortured, frustrated guy who could snap in an instant. At the end of Red Dead,

Spoiler

when you're doing all of those boring missions, you feel bored because Marston is bored. It's almost a relief when the military shows up.

Rockstar games work because they are able to put you in the shoes of the protagonist like no one else. A movie could never really capture this.
[sub]That said, if Rockstar made these movies I'd still see the shit out of them...[/sub]

 

[josemlopes]

Every artistic measure must not be inspired by money. It doesnt need to be a movie of a game.

Even a sequel from a game cant be made thinking about the money.

 

[rsvp42]

What, Rockstar Games co-founder and Vice President of creativity has been releasing GTA games out of the bottom of his heart so that he could better our world? Yeah, right; it's always about the money.

Watch him change his tune as soon as someone mentions making a Red Dead Redemption or GTA movie.

Urrr, there's a whole paragraph in the article where he says that the idea of making movies had come up before, but that Rockstar wanted to focus on making games.

Okay, but that doesn't mean there wasn't more to it than just "I believe we should focus on making video games."

I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I haven't known a co-founder of a company to just screw the money for the greater good.

Then again, that's my opinion. You could be completely right. I hope you're completely right.

Well it's never black or white. Every studio over a certain size has to start worrying about investors, publishers. stockholders, all that stuff. The sign of a good studio is one that maintains its creative integrity despite that and makes the two work together.

OP: I'm glad to hear this. I'd be as interested in a Rockstar movie as the next guy but let's be real: what could a Red Dead Redemption movie be aside from a standard western? Could GTA be anything beyond a regular crime movie with a shifty morality? Could an L.A. Noire film be anything beyond a period cop drama? I'm not saying these movies wouldn't be good. I'm saying they'd just end up being standard genre films with Rocsktar game titles. At best, they'd feel like rehashes, at worst, they'd have little to do with the game and would make the whole IP look bad.

I just can't imagine an RDR movie being any more satisfying than simply playing RDR.

 

[Freechoice]

Thank Christ for Rockstar.

 

[xscoot]

I wouldn't want them to make a movie; with the amount of cutscenes, level of characterization and overall importance that the plot plays in the average Rockstar game, a movie seems quite unecessary. The only movie they ever needed was the 8 minute GTA2 movie.

 

[The Apothecarry]

Indeed, sir. The world needs less Uwe Bolls and more Jerry Bruckheimers.

 

[Bwown]

Rockstar did a good job with the Introduction, so I'm sure if they put the time and the resources into it they could do a proper GTA movie.

 

[The Floating Nose]

Keep movies where they are and games where they are ! I seriously don't give a fuck if they stop doing movies about games. NO good filmmaker wants to risk themselves because if the movie is shit everybody laughs about it and if the movie is good BUT doesn't respect the structure of the game every fan of the game in question will make a Youtube video about it to say how much it's "bad". With all the cut scenes of games these days are like a little movie on their own anyway. I really don't know why game fans want MORE of them we are already assaulted by comic book movies (i like them but there are too many of them) and most movies based on games are shit.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Who is it that actually really -wants- video game movies?

 

[putowtin]

"The decision to make a movie out of a game has to be about more than money" Dan Houser
"We'll offer you a galleon full of gold" 21st Century Fax
"I'll take it!" Dan Houser

Don't get me wrong I applaud his stand, most movie tie in games are shocking and games that are turned into movies normally such donkey balls, but ever man has his price

 

[Saltyk]

The trouble is I think the two genres are extremely incompatible since what makes a good game doesn't make a good film. I mean GTA would never translate into a film and still be GTA. Vice City would just be Scarface.

Agreed. Only thing I would add is that a good Vice City movie would just be Scarface. A bad one would just be laughable.

Not that I don't think that a good original IP could not translate into other media well, it just takes effort. Just look at KOTOR. What makes it work is the fact that it's not a tie-in game, but an original story based in the Star Wars universe. And it was made a few decades after the beloved trilogy, not as a cash-in to go along with it, allowing plenty of time to actually craft a proper game as apposed to the rushed hack jobs most tie-ins are.

Not really related, but I'll also bring up KotOR II: absolutely brilliant stuff is in there (read this [http://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/] if you don't believe me), absolutely ruined in most eyes by all the cut content, and that was caused by lack of development time (though, it was more that their time was suddenly cut in half; one of the things that made it frustrating was all the loose threads that would not have been there if they knew how much time they had). So I think you hit the nail on the head with the part I bolded.

First off, Awesome name! Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the best shows I have seen in a while. If not ever.

Actually, KOTOR II was one of the games that proved to me that developers need a decent amount of time to produce good work. Don't get me wrong, KOTOR II was a great game, but even before I knew any of what had happened, I felt that something was missing. That things weren't there that should have been (like a romantic relationship with the Handmaiden or Mira or a resolution with the HK-50 assassin droids). When I heard how they were forced to release an incomplete game, I knew I wasn't wrong. And honestly, I felt cheated.

Really how is this not related? Sure, this topic is about movie tie-ins, but I stated that not being given enough time is one of the reason such games fail. KOTOR II wasn't a movie tie-in, but illustrates the problem perfectly. Maybe even better than an actual movie based game would. After all, we kind of expect them to suck.

 

[Avatar Roku]

The trouble is I think the two genres are extremely incompatible since what makes a good game doesn't make a good film. I mean GTA would never translate into a film and still be GTA. Vice City would just be Scarface.

Agreed. Only thing I would add is that a good Vice City movie would just be Scarface. A bad one would just be laughable.

Not that I don't think that a good original IP could not translate into other media well, it just takes effort. Just look at KOTOR. What makes it work is the fact that it's not a tie-in game, but an original story based in the Star Wars universe. And it was made a few decades after the beloved trilogy, not as a cash-in to go along with it, allowing plenty of time to actually craft a proper game as apposed to the rushed hack jobs most tie-ins are.

Not really related, but I'll also bring up KotOR II: absolutely brilliant stuff is in there (read this [http://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/] if you don't believe me), absolutely ruined in most eyes by all the cut content, and that was caused by lack of development time (though, it was more that their time was suddenly cut in half; one of the things that made it frustrating was all the loose threads that would not have been there if they knew how much time they had). So I think you hit the nail on the head with the part I bolded.

First off, Awesome name! Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the best shows I have seen in a while. If not ever.

Actually, KOTOR II was one of the games that proved to me that developers need a decent amount of time to produce good work. Don't get me wrong, KOTOR II was a great game, but even before I knew any of what had happened, I felt that something was missing. That things weren't there that should have been (like a romantic relationship with the Handmaiden or Mira or a resolution with the HK-50 assassin droids). When I heard how they were forced to release an incomplete game, I knew I wasn't wrong. And honestly, I felt cheated.

Really how is this not related? Sure, this topic is about movie tie-ins, but I stated that not being given enough time is one of the reason such games fail. KOTOR II wasn't a movie tie-in, but illustrates the problem perfectly. Maybe even better than an actual movie based game would. After all, we kind of expect them to suck.

Hehe, I see what you're saying about most of that stuff, but here's food for thought about the romances: they're actually exactly as intended. The head writer, Chris Avellone of Planescape Torment fame, is on record as saying he is awful at writing normal, Bioware-style romances. That's why there are 2 "romances" in the game (which get beyond the "there should be a romance here" feeling of Handmaiden and Disciple. at least)and they are REEEEEAALLLY creepy. The male one is Visas (with her constant "my life for yours" and all that), and the female one is (no joke) Darth Sion. Seriously, play as a woman, Sion gets all creepy stalkerish (and sort of incestuous, when you think about his and your relationship to a certain character). You know the final fight against him?When you're a man, he fights you out of jealousy, but when you're a woman, he fights you in order to try to keep You-Know-Who from breaking you. Seriously.

Honestly, I think I'd take that sort of romance over a Bioware one any day. So weird.

Oh, and as for Mira, they made a point of having her say that she was not interested, but if I remember, they did it in a way that basically gave the middle finger to shippers who insist everyone has to be a romance. I remember finding it quite funny, actually.

As for the HK-50's, that Let's Play I linked includes a walkthrough of what we know of the Droid Factory, so you may find that interesting. Looks like, either way, we'll get to play it for ourselves when Team Gizka finally finishes, so there's that.

EDIT:Thanks for the complement, by the way. I'm a bit annoyed with the name, actually; as soon as I chose it, I realized I could have done "DragonOfTheWest". Would have been so much better. Oh well.