Why Does Hollywood always have to F*** it up?

Bob_McMillan

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I'd say its probably the stigma video games still have. With a video game movie, you're not going to attract people who either have talent, or actually care about the franchise (because there's none of them in Hollywood). I don't think it has anything to do with video games themselves. I mean really, if books, comics, manga, anime, WHATEVER can have good movies these days, why not video games? But just because it's a video game movie, nobody in the industry really cares about it. The movies are then half-assed.

Just look at this movie. Did anyone actually think the story would amount to anything for this movie? If they just did the fights well, I wouldn't have cared about the dismal plot and characters. But no, the fights bar a few were generic as hell. Not surprising, when it was the director's debut. The man was previously known for directing commercials.
 

Thaluikhain

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I heard it's because moviemakers are told to make a movie based on X, but wanted to make their own movie, so they halfway make movie X, and halfway make their own, glue them together and then roll around in a big pile of money and cocaine.

Alternatively, if you go through the motions you'll break even, or at least not be blamed when you don't, play it safe and boring and everything is fine.

What really bugs me is when they don't look like they are even trying.
 

Casual Shinji

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I think the obvious answer is that a video game's plot doesn't translate to movie form very well. A game needs a plot that's interactable and enjoyable to play for 8-10 hours. A movie needs a non-interactable plot that's started, middled and finished in 90mins.
Essentially there's no real difference between the plot of a videogame and the plot of a movie. You look at the plot of Resident Evil 2 and it's about a rookie cop (if we just focus on Leon) dealing with a zombie outbreak on his first day on the job, needs to put his trust in a dubious individual who also functions as the love interest, and escape the city ending in a climactic monster encounter. That's something that should be easy to make a decent or maybe even great movie about, since plenty of decent or great movies that follow a similar set-up already exist.

Even Mortal Kombat should have plenty of plot to pick from, since it's not like there aren't martial arts movies.

I think you're always going to run into the issue of trying to appeal to an audience by adaping something they love, but taking away the core of what appealed to them; being the character in that world. Even if the plot is paper thin and non-interactable, it still feels personal and engaging by virtue if you holding the controller and diving the action. So any story that has this precedent will always feel lesser when adapted into film, eventhough the plot should or could work fine as a movie adaptation.
 
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Cicada 5

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Mostly it seems to come down to embarrassment. The big names don't want to work on video game or comic products at all, the smaller names don't have the restraint to not pointlessly meddle*. The best example comes from the first X-Men film, where Wolverine asks (regarding their costumes) "You actually go outside in these things?" and Cyclops quips "Would you prefer yellow spandex?"

Yes, yes we would Scott, you ruby quartz speccy douche. We would prefer the design iterated over 20+ years by professionals, over the black leather preteen-angst-riddled jumpsuits Jimmy the intern slapped together two weeks ago. Hell I'd prefer Cyclops' Uncanny X-Men design, cause at least that stupid jumbo 'X' visor is visually distinct, even if it does looks like staging notes someone mistook for a new design.

And for anyone still saying that video game writing must be re-written for the big screen: Hardcore Henry... exists? It's even 96 minutes, so it's not a problem with runtime, just be more willing to have the action, physical comedy, and spectacle take center stage. This is the entertainment industry, isn't it?

*side note: Even good film adaptations have changes, Jurassic Park changed little things, Die Hard (adapted from Nothing Lasts Forever) changed major themes. However, these changes were made with the answers to both 'why?' and 'to be replaced with what?' in mind from the start. Changing things just because you 'don't like it' or 'just to leave some fingerprints' leads to sloppy, unfocused works.
I'll take the leather jumpsuits over Psylocke's swimsuit outfit in Apocalypse.

Also, whatever can be said about the X-Men movies, they were successful for their time and most people didn't care about the outfits not matching the comics.
 

Cicada 5

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Mostly it seems to come down to embarrassment. The big names don't want to work on video game or comic products at all, the smaller names don't have the restraint to not pointlessly meddle*. The best example comes from the first X-Men film, where Wolverine asks (regarding their costumes) "You actually go outside in these things?" and Cyclops quips "Would you prefer yellow spandex?"

Yes, yes we would Scott, you ruby quartz speccy douche. We would prefer the design iterated over 20+ years by professionals, over the black leather preteen-angst-riddled jumpsuits Jimmy the intern slapped together two weeks ago. Hell I'd prefer Cyclops' Uncanny X-Men design, cause at least that stupid jumbo 'X' visor is visually distinct, even if it does looks like staging notes someone mistook for a new design.

And for anyone still saying that video game writing must be re-written for the big screen: Hardcore Henry... exists? It's even 96 minutes, so it's not a problem with runtime, just be more willing to have the action, physical comedy, and spectacle take center stage. This is the entertainment industry, isn't it?

*side note: Even good film adaptations have changes, Jurassic Park changed little things, Die Hard (adapted from Nothing Lasts Forever) changed major themes. However, these changes were made with the answers to both 'why?' and 'to be replaced with what?' in mind from the start. Changing things just because you 'don't like it' or 'just to leave some fingerprints' leads to sloppy, unfocused works.
Also, I didn't see Hardcore Henry but looking it up, it seems it got mixed reviews and was a box office bomb.
 

Agema

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I'd say its probably the stigma video games still have. With a video game movie, you're not going to attract people who either have talent, or actually care about the franchise (because there's none of them in Hollywood). I don't think it has anything to do with video games themselves. I mean really, if books, comics, manga, anime, WHATEVER can have good movies these days, why not video games? But just because it's a video game movie, nobody in the industry really cares about it. The movies are then half-assed.
In theory, this should not hold. Plenty movie and TV makers are fans of the media of their youth, and want to make high quality product of that much cherished media. No-one running a studio gives a shit, but they aren't the creatives and they still end up handing the money over to a good enough pitch. There is every reason to think that computer game lovers should be filtering through into film production and should have sufficient will to make quality films.

I think there's a much bigger problem, which is that (as said), game media often may not be conducive to a film - or at least, not a well budgetted one. There's usually a serious lack of significant narrative and character development, and often length issues: 15h gameplay into 2h film? Mm.

I think in many cases they aren't developing the right product in the right medium: there are a load of RPGs that would convert well to decently-funded miniseries.
 

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Like in the parable with the frog and the scorpion, it's their nature.
 

Bob_McMillan

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In theory, this should not hold. Plenty movie and TV makers are fans of the media of their youth, and want to make high quality product of that much cherished media. No-one running a studio gives a shit, but they aren't the creatives and they still end up handing the money over to a good enough pitch. There is every reason to think that computer game lovers should be filtering through into film production and should have sufficient will to make quality films.
I mean, just looking through the past maybe 10 video game movies, none of these directors are what I would call "talented". Unfair and mean I know, but I am just basing on the fact that most of them either had no experience with blockbuster movies or had their movies are their directorial debuts. So that would fall into the first category I gave. It's also worth pointing out that a lot of these dudes are just old. That doesn't mean they can't be fans of video games, but it does make it less likely.

I think there's a much bigger problem, which is that (as said), game media often may not be conducive to a film - or at least, not a well budgetted one. There's usually a serious lack of significant narrative and character development, and often length issues: 15h gameplay into 2h film? Mm.
See, I don't buy this idea, at least for video game movies as a general concept. I think just remaking a game's story beat for beat into a movie is pointless. What the hell would a video game benefit from being made into a movie? A book or a comic, you get words and pictures transformed into an entirely different medium. A videogame movie, that just directly lifts the game's plot, could not possibly be better than the game (unless the game had other issues to begin with). We see this in Tomb Raider and Warcraft, and their flaws definitely come from trying to just be the games.

But there are plenty of video game movies that aren't adapting the whole plotline from the games. This movie obviously didn't, it wasn't even really about Mortal Kombat. Sonic definitely didn't, same for Detective Pikachu, Assassin's Creed, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Hitman. They all tried something unique and they were still mostly terrible. I think we're all just waiting for a miracle to happen: a good director who is knowledgeable about the franchise coming to a studio willing to keep their hands off and letting them do something new, without feeling the need to introduce an obviously ridiculously popular franchise to the audience.
 
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SilentPony

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Essentially there's no real difference between the plot of a videogame and the plot of a movie. You look at the plot of Resident Evil 2 and it's about a rookie cop (if we just focus on Leon) dealing with a zombie outbreak on his first day on the job, needs to put his trust in a dubious individual who also functions as the love interest, and escape the city ending in a climictic monster encounter. That's something that should be easy to make a decent or maybe even great movie about, since plenty of decent or great movies that follow a similar set-up already exist.

Even Mortal Kombat should have plenty of plot to pick from, since it's not like there aren't martial arts movies.

I think you're always going to run into the issue of trying to appeal to an audience by adaping something they love, but taking away the core of what appealed to them; being the character in that world. Even if the plot is paper thin and non-interactable, it still feels personal and engaging by virtue if you holding the controller and diving the action. So any story that has this precedent will always feel lesser when adapted into film, eventhough the plot should or could work fine as a movie adaptation.
but they've never done a Resident Evil 2 movie. The RE movie writers looked at the entirety of the Resident Evil lore and decided the only thing worth adapting was the zombies. Nothing else was used, and the movies are incredibly successful.
They didn't use Claire and Leon, or Chris and Jill. They didn't do STARS traitors in a spooky mansion with giant spiders and weird magic plant girls. They did zombies and t-virus and just made everything else up
 

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but they've never done a Resident Evil 2 movie. The RE movie writers looked at the entirety of the Resident Evil lore and decided the only thing worth adapting was the zombies. Nothing else was used, and the movies are incredibly successful.
They didn't use Claire and Leon, or Chris and Jill. They didn't do STARS traitors in a spooky mansion with giant spiders and weird magic plant girls. They did zombies and t-virus and just made everything else up
And they are all the more shittier for it. The Paul WS Anderson films are nothing but live action fan fiction with an overpowered OC as the main character. Maybe they'll strike it right with this new adaption that's actually based off the first game and truer to the source material. James Wan is on board, so definitely has a better chance of being adapted the right way. We could have had a more accurate adaption back in the early 2000s with the George A Romero script, but apparently the executives "didn't get it". Dumbasses.
 

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And they are all the more shittier for it. The Paul WS Anderson films are nothing but live action fan fiction with an overpowered OC as the main character. Maybe they'll strike it right with this new adaption that's actually based off the first game and truer to the source material. James Wan is on board, so definitely has a better chance of being adapted the right way. We could have had a more accurate adaption back in the early 2000s with the George A Romero script, but apparently the executives "didn't get it". Dumbasses.
But my point is has there been one, just one, video game adaptation movie that was a straight one-for-one version without major changes/adaptation because the mediums of story telling between movies and video games are fundamentally different?
The Mass Effect movie, if they ever get to it, is not going to be 40+ hours long with alternate scenes for alternate romances and paragon/renegade choices that the audience wants. It'll be 90-120 mins long with a single story line that takes elements from the game and fills in gaps they can't afford 10 hours to explain.
Same reason why the Avatar movie was doomed from the start, trying to take a hundred hours worth of plot and character development and compress it to 90mins
 

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but they've never done a Resident Evil 2 movie. The RE movie writers looked at the entirety of the Resident Evil lore and decided the only thing worth adapting was the zombies. Nothing else was used, and the movies are incredibly successful.
They didn't use Claire and Leon, or Chris and Jill. They didn't do STARS traitors in a spooky mansion with giant spiders and weird magic plant girls. They did zombies and t-virus and just made everything else up
They have made CGI movies with Leon and Claire, but those were just as dull. Same with Advant Children.

It's something we just haven't cracked yet, because there's no real reason it shouldn't be possible yet it never works. And it's not just the people in charge "not getting videogames". The first thing people need to do is stop though is making adaptations of games that are already very cinematic, because those are just too literal to try and adapt to live-action. The more cartoony or abstract games probably lend themselves to a movie adaptation way better.
 

SilentPony

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They have made CGI movies with Leon and Claire, but those were just as dull. Same with Advant Children.

It's something we just haven't cracked yet, because there's no real reason it shouldn't be possible yet it never works. And it's not just the people in charge "not getting videogames". The first thing people need to do is stop though is making adaptations of games that are already very cinematic, because those are just too literal to try and adapt to live-action. The more cartoony or abstract games probably lend themselves to a movie adaptation way better.
But I think that's where you're wrong. You're trying to take an interactive, 40+ hour long experience and compress it to a non-interactive, 90min experience, expecting the same result. Its not. A movie is fundamentally different than a video game. The stories you can tell with a movie are not the same as a video game. Pacing is different, dialogue is different, scene composition is different, who the audience is supposed to identify is different. Its a different medium.
The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words springs to mind. Even setting aside the numerical value of a thousand, the principle that words and a picture are fundamentally different still applies. Imagine trying to tell what a picture is, but you have a much more limited amount of words to use. That's what your asking movie writers to do with a video game, so you shouldn't be surprised when they fail at the impossible task.
 

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But my point is has there been one, just one, video game adaptation movie that was a straight one-for-one version without major changes/adaptation because the mediums of story telling between movies and video games are fundamentally different?
The Mass Effect movie, if they ever get to it, is not going to be 40+ hours long with alternate scenes for alternate romances and paragon/renegade choices that the audience wants. It'll be 90-120 mins long with a single story line that takes elements from the game and fills in gaps they can't afford 10 hours to explain.
Same reason why the Avatar movie was doomed from the start, trying to take a hundred hours worth of plot and character development and compress it to 90mins
I don't mind small changes or something that could benefit better in cinema than in game form, but my problem is when you make a whole bunch of unnecessary changes that wasn't asked for, unnecessarily complicate things, or just make changes that make little to no sense and makes the overall story worse. Hence why they're called adaptions. They're supposed to adapt to what's best of their medium. Small changes or changes that actually make sense I can get behind, but when you're serious movies are just glorified fanfics there's no point in watching them. As you when you have a dull and uninteresting character that's overpowered. The problem with the last Airbender film, as he said was that they're trying to crunching over hundred hours worth of TV into a two and a half hour film. Plus it's clear from the production, that similar to the Resident Evil movies, the studio didn't give a crap. A mass effect movie can work, but obviously there's stuff that's going to be changed. Some is necessary and others aren't. I'm not a hardcore Mass Effect fan, so I can't comment on how the changes would work. A near one to one adoption to Resident Evil can work. George A Romero almost freaking had it. There was some changes he did and while I disagree with him, I still would have preferred it over the crap Paul WS Anderson did. Romero was actually trying. He even had the zombie sharks. The zombie sharks!
 

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But I think that's where you're wrong. You're trying to take an interactive, 40+ hour long experience and compress it to a non-interactive, 90min experience, expecting the same result. Its not. A movie is fundamentally different than a video game. The stories you can tell with a movie are not the same as a video game. Pacing is different, dialogue is different, scene composition is different, who the audience is supposed to identify is different. Its a different medium.
The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words springs to mind. Even setting aside the numerical value of a thousand, the principle that words and a picture are fundamentally different still applies. Imagine trying to tell what a picture is, but you have a much more limited amount of words to use. That's what your asking movie writers to do with a video game, so you shouldn't be surprised when they fail at the impossible task.
That's certainly a pitfall, but I don't think it's THE pitfall.

Story-driven games with 40+ hours of content should probably be avoided though. But you take a concept like Super Mario or Ratchet and Clank and it should be totally possible to make a fine 90 to 2 hour movie out of it. These story concepts are hardly unique to the videogame medium, and they're abstract enough to bend them into an adaptation without losing that recognizability. Of course they continue to not work, but nothing says that it shouldn't. So why doesn't it?

I think a big reason is that the only games that get targeted for an adaptation are cinematic ones, which already have a very clear and real look to them and the characters. Any deviation from that and things already look off, like Tom Holland playing Nathan Drake. And at this point AAA cinematic games rival blockbuster movies in production values, some even far exceed them. Games like Red Dead 2 and The Last of Us 2 are stupidly massive in terms of visual scope, and nothing short of MCU level budgets can compete when it comes to movies, which those adaptions just won't have. I haven't seen The Witcher series on Netflix, but I doubt it can hold a candle to what The Witcher 3 was able to put on screen.

Honestly, I think the best way to adapt those kinds of games is through comics. You wouldn't be dealing with a blockbuster budget, it'd be easy to get the character likeness, you can embellish on the world as much as you want, and you're not tied to a 3-act structure or 2 hour runtime. You can even have pages of text explaining lore without boring the audience, since they're already reading anyway.
 
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SilentPony

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I don't mind small changes or something that could benefit better in cinema than in game form, but my problem is when you make a whole bunch of unnecessary changes that wasn't asked for, unnecessarily complicate things, or just make changes that make little to no sense and makes the overall story worse. Hence why they're called adaptions. They're supposed to adapt to what's best of their medium. Small changes or changes that actually make sense I can get behind, but when you're serious movies are just glorified fanfics there's no point in watching them. As you when you have a dull and uninteresting character that's overpowered. The problem with the last Airbender film, as he said was that they're trying to crunching over hundred hours worth of TV into a two and a half hour film. Plus it's clear from the production, that similar to the Resident Evil movies, the studio didn't give a crap. A mass effect movie can work, but obviously there's stuff that's going to be changed. Some is necessary and others aren't. I'm not a hardcore Mass Effect fan, so I can't comment on how the changes would work. A near one to one adoption to Resident Evil can work. George A Romero almost freaking had it. There was some changes he did and while I disagree with him, I still would have preferred it over the crap Paul WS Anderson did. Romero was actually trying. He even had the zombie sharks. The zombie sharks!
I'm guessing by Romero you mean the Night of the Living Dead movies? The ones that not only have nothing to do with Resident Evil, but are also a completely different tone and genre? They're nothing like the Resident Evil games, which are action packed thrillers where hot people use grenade launchers to fight giant spiders and body-horror monsters with giant eyeballs. Even the first RE was nothing like any of the Romero movies. The first like 10 mins were slow paced, sure, but it pretty quickly turned into running around with a shotgun fighting giant bees, zombie dogs, plant witches and actual plants.

If you want a slow paced, horror focused, zombie movie, that's all well and good. Don't look to Resident Evil adaptations to be that, because that's not what Resident Evil is. They share zombies in the same way Wolfenstein has zombies, but no one thinks Dawn of the Dead is an accurate recreation of BJ Blazkowicz's wacky adventures at the secret Nazi zombie moon base.
 

Agema

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I mean, just looking through the past maybe 10 video game movies, none of these directors are what I would call "talented". Unfair and mean I know, but I am just basing on the fact that most of them either had no experience with blockbuster movies or had their movies are their directorial debuts. So that would fall into the first category I gave. It's also worth pointing out that a lot of these dudes are just old. That doesn't mean they can't be fans of video games, but it does make it less likely.
Well, it strikes me that Duncan Jones - although relatively early career - had some very well received work under his belt before he did Warcraft. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was directed by the guy who'd already made the highly successful Con Air. Christophe Gans who directed Silent Hill had made the very effective French thriller Brotherhood Of The Wolf (worth a look if you haven't seen it). So I don't think video game conversions are quite the talent-free zone we might portray. Although I fully accept that the general rule is that the people who have taken up these projects are generally not the sort of talent you might hope for. I think there is an aspect that an established IP is a lazy way to pump up some low quality product with extra viewers, so can attract mediocrity.

See, I don't buy this idea, at least for video game movies as a general concept. I think just remaking a game's story beat for beat into a movie is pointless.
Oh absolutely. When moving medium, often the creator needs to be to be prepared to utterly gut the source material and replan it suitable for the new. But we do run into the problem such as appears in this thread, that some fans then complain it isn't true (enough) to the source.

But there are plenty of video game movies that aren't adapting the whole plotline from the games. This movie obviously didn't, it wasn't even really about Mortal Kombat. Sonic definitely didn't, same for Detective Pikachu, Assassin's Creed, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Hitman. They all tried something unique and they were still mostly terrible. I think we're all just waiting for a miracle to happen: a good director who is knowledgeable about the franchise coming to a studio willing to keep their hands off and letting them do something new, without feeling the need to introduce an obviously ridiculously popular franchise to the audience.
Right. But what do you do with them?

We must jettison the gameplay converting to movies because the media will not support it, so there must be something else to inspire someone to love something enough to make it. What is it? It's plot, character, art design and atmosphere. These are the fundamentals of the medium. But computer games tend to be perilously thin on these: and if we jettison what little of that there is too, there's basically nothing left.

Hitman (game) is a guy who assassinates people, almost characteristic by lack of character and the technical merits of how he assassinates a target. A Hitman movie fundamentally throws the game out of the window, because it would be unwatchable. But what do you have, once you've done that? At best, you'll make a James Bond clone with a less stylish hero. There is little point to the franchise, in movie terms. Far Cry, Monster Hunter, Half-Life, Assassin's Creed, any number of these games, you are almost intrinsically just going to get a baseline action movie. There's not enough to attract anyone. I don't mind functional action movies, there's plenty of place for them. But they aren't likely to be great art and we shouldn't expect them to be.

Lara Croft is the obvious example of a video game to make into a movie because the central character is an easy hook. (Although in a way she's still just Indiana Jones with oversize breasts in the first place, and they'd be going some to outdo Indiana Jones, especially when that franchise already exists.) You could probably get a good film out of Bioshock, although I might be worried about the amount of exposition required to explain in the time available. And our hero might need a sidekick / love interest for more human interaction.

Like I said, I think it would be better taking some adventure / RPGs and adapting them for TV, as they've got a stronger core of movie-friendly stuff to build on.
 

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If you want a slow paced, horror focused, zombie movie, that's all well and good. Don't look to Resident Evil adaptations to be that, because that's not what Resident Evil is. They share
It's funny you mentioned that, cuz even the big execs Capcom don't know what Resident Evil is. They've been fighting over this discussion too. You got some that think it's always pre-RE4, you got some that it's always has been 4-6, and then you got the really dumb, delusional, and oblivious that claims that the Resident Evil series was always multiplayer focused. The last example which is total bull crap. You meanwhile are being contrarian. A slow pace horror Resident Evil came work. It just has to be in the hands of someone that cares and knows what the hell they're actually doing. If the games can pull this off well, the movies can pull this off well. You forgot that the horror film genre has plenty of examples of slow building wonderfully, well, or masterfully. Not just a zombie films, but plenty. It's all about timing and suspense.

I believe James Wan can pull it off. Nothing is totally impossible, you just have to try and care. Enough of the laziness and doing dumb decision to making the audience "relate" to somebody by having a audience surrogate no one asked for. No more glorified fanfiction characters that overpower because the director is boning his wife.
 
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You could probably get a good film out of Bioshock, although I might be worried about the amount of exposition required to explain in the time available. And our hero might need a sidekick / love interest for more human interaction.
...I think I've got it! We could use this guy as the sidekick!



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SilentPony

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It's funny you mentioned that, cuz even the big exact Capcom don't know what Resident Evil is. They've been fighting over this discussion too. You got some that think it's always pre-RE4, you got some that it's always has been 4-6, and then you got the really dumb, delusional, and oblivious that claims that the Resident Evil series was always multiplayer focused. The last example which is total bull crap. You meanwhile are being contrarian. A slow pace horror Resident Evil came work. It just has to be in the hands of someone that cares and knows what the hell they're actually doing. If the games can pull this off well, the movies can pull this off well. You forgot that the horror film genre has plenty of examples of slow building wonderfully, well, or masterfully. Not just a zombie films, but plenty. It's all about timing and suspense.

I believe James Wan can pull it off. Nothing is totally impossible, you just have to try and care. Enough of the laziness and doing dumb decision to making the audience "relate" to somebody by having a audience surrogate no one asked for. No more glorified fanfiction characters that overpower because the director is boning his wife.
See that's my sticking point. In order to make a Resident Evil movie that's a slow paced horror movie, you have to "adapt" it so much its not Resident Evil anymore. You can't do the giant set pieces, the giant monsters, the action scenes, the goofy dialogue, the international bio-terrorist groups. You have to stick to spooky empty hallways, slow moving groaning zombies, individuals with only a handful of rounds, and no way out of a spooky place.
And at that point, if you want to do the slow paced horror movie you're limited to the first game, the first mansion of the first game, the first floor of the first mansion, and the first 10 or so hallways within the first floor.
After say the first half an hour Resident Evil its no longer the slow paced horror game but an action set-piece adventure game with puzzle elements and zombies are more road hazards than legitimate threats. And that's before the giant spiders, giant snakes, zombie sharks, and magical tree witches, and that is before the bio-titans with swollen eyeballs and cheesy one-liners and ALL of that is before fighting a giant fly in downtown Hong Kong with a rocket launcher.

And I love Resident Evil games. Loved 1, 2, 3, 0, 4, 6, Outbreak I and II, hell I even liked Dead Aim. But these are not slow paced subtle games, they're high flying action games more akin to Duke Nukem than Silent Hill.