Why Movie Adaptations of Games Suck

[Something Amyss]

Books are not immersive. They're not first person (well, not automatically), and have you seen the frame rate? Plus, I mean, seriously, they're not even real time. If you start a fight and the phone rings, you can put it down and pick back up at the same spot!

The Mass Effect books, by the way, are mostly good for a specific reason: They're written by the guy behind the first Mass Effect and seek to expand the universe. Most of the game nvoels I've read aren't like that. Most are...Horrible.

Most movies seek to abandon as much of the original plot as possible in games anyway, and most are also untrue to the characters. Even if they are cardboard, fleshing them out makes more sense than recreating them from whole cloth.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Believe it or not... it was rather true to the film.

It's been a while, but I don't recall the point in the film where a midget dressed in a pink jumpsuit jumped out of a trash and kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger in the dick.

 

[Bluecho]

I mostly agree that comic books and film bridge well because they're very similar mediums. Both are largely visual in nature. The difference of course is that comics use static visuals and no audio, meaning that the medium needs means of conveying them through means wholly unique to itself.

I disagree that comics ineptly convey action and movement. The assertion is functionally correct, comics need things like motion likes or multiple still frames to convey the idea of movement. But this is more a limitation that many artists work to overcome, many times to great effect.

The point of course is that many traits are consistant with the two, and so stories have an easier time transfering over. There are three main reasons you get bad comic book movies:
1) Trying to create a film about a comic and trying to squeeze in too much. Comic books can last for decades, so they transfer best as individual stories rather than whole francises.
2) The comic in question was either ineptly made, or is horribly outdated so the film turns out unappealing outside its original context.
3) The filmakers or producers or directors or actors either couldn't convey the story and tone well, or didn't care to.

Optional 4) Frank Miller directed it. The Spirit was an awful film, and much of the blame rests squarely on the guy who seriously wrote "I'm the Goddamn Batman!"

 

[Wesley Brannock]

I don't completely agree with Yahtzee Croshaw on this. Yes a certain element goes a miss when you take an interactive element out of the experience however this shouldn't affect the movie IF the game has a strong story over it and or some wiggle room for a new story. Take Fallout 3 if someone made a movie portraying the events that lead up to " The Great War " you wouldn't have too many fan boys making a fuss because the war was never really depicted in the games just the after math. Or take Bioshock although it has a strict story line the story is so strong that someone could in theory make a prequel movie based on the original game from the perspective of Andrew Ryan and still make it seem like it came of the game as in terms of being loyal to the original content.

 

[Gunjester]

Felt shorter than most of his articles.

 

[RandV80]

I think the biggest reason why game based movies suck is because the movie studios that make'em don't care about the source material as much as they do with the expected revenue they hope to make off opening day.

A few people have been saying things like this but I find it a little misleading. Movie studios like game publishers, at the higher levels at least, care about one thing: making money. Owners of the bigger IP's generally won't release the rights to their games for a variety of reasons (Nintendo made the mistake once). Then the games that Hollywood actually gets to work with, usually stuff like Blood Rayne, Alone in the Dark, Dungeon Siege, the names alone do not exactly inspire confidence of a big audience turnout that something like Transformers or GI Joe or Batman would, so they get low budgets and 3rd rate priority.

When they get a big enough game they do can do a half decent job, like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, or Prince of Persia. And by do a good job I mean by movie standards in that they get a proper budget and attach some recognizable names to the project. But these are few and far between, and are never really big hits to begin with.

 

[srpilha]

Novelizations, if done properly - and by god have some of them been ruined - can be all of the mania of the comics, with the structure of a film and the deeper meaning of text: as long as you change gears.

Interesting point, and I would tend to agree. But could you name at least one novelization of an action movie that you found was a good book? I honestly fail to even imagine which one it could be.

Regarding novelizations, and the (potential?) ridiculousness thereof:
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING and go read this: http://btothef.tumblr.com/tagged/bttf/chrono

Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, reviews the novelization of the 1st Back to the Future film. The book came out before the movie.
YOU GUYS, IT IS SO EPIC.

(the review, of course, not the book. the book is 1,460,000 times weirder than it needs to be.)


(that's a demonstrably precise figure)

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Interesting point, and I would tend to agree. But could you name at least one novelization of an action movie that you found was a good book? I honestly fail to even imagine which one it could be.

Good books, and one's I like, often are different beasts.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is quite good (mainly because it removes the actors from the equation),[Again, it's NOT like the comic, and shouldn't be expected to be - different beast], lots of the Dr Who Novelisations are very good (Nightmare of Eden, The Claws of Axos, City of Death - because they can show without BBC's lack lustre effects), CSI/Supernatural are both good.

Often it's books based on a pre-existing era that are the best, because there's not the need for shovelling in stuff. Hellblazer, the book, is better than the film though not as visually striking. (And, again, is nothing like the comic)

Regarding novelizations, and the (potential?) ridiculousness thereof:
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING and go read this: http://btothef.tumblr.com/tagged/bttf/chrono

Now I seem to remember that in the original writing of BttF, that Doc Brown was a much nastier figure and they had to break into a nuclear power plant to get back - but the budget wouldn't stretch, and so they quick-engineered the clock tower bit - which became it's most iconic moment.

That's why the nuclear bomb is in the novel, it's a Chekov's bomb that got written out.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Why Movie Adaptations of Games Suck

Yahtzee offers his theory explaining why such movies are doomed to failure.

Read Full Article

While your objections are valid, the main problem this kind of thing doesn't work is because of budget and time, or more correctly that the developer has none. You try make a compelling game to match up with a date that is only a year away, and with only half the budget you asked for, based on a thing that is itself not entirely done. More success would happen if the film studios had two things happen. 1. Let the game developers start working on the game in tandem with the production of the film, let the game studio's see the production, costumes, and everything else and be able to use that, so the game isn't rushed out at the last minute 2. allow them to have much more freedom when actually making it. Most people won't care if the game follows the movie at all, only that if the game and movie share the box art and share the title.

 

[Mr_Jellyfish]

While there is a certain amount of participation when reading a book you can't change the outcome of the story (unless it's one of those choose-your-own-adventure books). I'd say the film medium is closer to books than games are! Some games are pretty linear, the older Final Fantasy games were like picture books almost, but I reckon the future of gaming will be giving players the power to change the story.

 

[Extragorey]

Not all movies based on games suck; just most of them, because the writers usually make the mistake of using the same characters and plot (instead of just the setting/universe) and all the fanboys get their knickers in a bunch.

The Prince of Persia movie was pretty awesome, though - I haven't played any of the games, but I thought the movie was exceptionally well-made for a video-game-based movie.

Some people like the Tomb Raider adaptation; personally I think it sucked. I haven't seen Max Payne or Hitman or Doom, so I can't comment there. And the last few Resident Evil movies have been good as action movies.

To be honest, there's a lot more decent games based on movies than there are movies based on games.

 

[Dreadjaws]

Batman Begins was mediocre at best...

The ONLY reason anyone payed any attention to The Dark Knight was because of Heath Ledger's STELLAR performance. Every other performance by every other actor in that movie was somewhere between mediocre and TERRIBLE.

I'm sorry, but no. Absolutely no. You're taking your personal opinion and expanding it to fit everyone else, and that's no way to make an argument. If you didn't like those movies, fine. If you thought the actors weren't good, fine. But you can't just assume everyone else thinks the same, because that's not just pure BS, but also egocentric.

 

[Vault101]

I think this is especially true for RPG's with big long running stories..like dragon age or even Fallout

playing fallout 3 felt like somthing out of a tv series or a novel

 

[robert022614]

I agree that the interactivity kills movie adaptations of video games. Also there is one story that the guy is who he is and does what he does despite how you would do it. One example that made me angry was the hitman movie. When I played those games I made it a point to try to kill everyone on the stage innocents and evil doers alike because well that was fun to me and what better way to not have witnesses. Then I watch the movie and he falls for some russian sex slave Instead of jabbing a meathook into her throat and I was a little bit saddened.

 

[Dr. Face Doctor]

I've always thought video games were closer to novels than to films. Where a film is event, a book can be an invested experience. No matter how good a film gets and no matter how much the memory of it sticks in your head, you'll never become attached to the characters or the world in quite the same way or degree.

The biggest factor however is that the best games, like the best books, are a one-man affair while they're experienced and a social affair in between. When I visit my parents they'll always at some point start discussing whatever book they're reading in a shockingly similar way to how two kids would talk about a videogame. They talk about their progress in the story and their theories on so-and-so's ulterior motives, an so on.

The best way to adopt a videogame to a movie would be to avoid the game's main story and characters at all cost but keep the setting and timeframe intact. I don't want to re-experience how everyman Shepard saved the day once again, I want to see what Garrus is up to in his free time, or even just some random fleet of soldiers fighting a space war in space.

 

[malestrithe]

The main problem with movie adaptations is that fans do not want to see their favorite game turned into a movie. Instead of that, they just want to see the game adapted word for word, scene by scene movie from one medium to the other. That is not how it works. There needs to be room for a movie to come out what's written and it that means things get dropped, events gets changed around, friends in one medium are now enemies in another, and multiple characters get combined into one, then so be it. If that also means heretofore unknown vampire powers emerge because it would make sense for them to be there, so be it as well.

You need to make changes from one format to another in order for it work. Watchmen is a terrible adaptation not because of the giant squid. The movie had a lot more problems than that. Although a lot of you want to invest some cosmic meaning to it, about how it symbolizes such and such, its inclusion in the comic book series was rushed and poorly thought out. Alan Moore said so himself and even said that he did not like that in his original work and oule change it at a moment's notice.

The reason why it failed as an adaptation is because it was too faithful to the source material. It felt like looking at the motion comic version of the comic book and that is not an adaptation. It is regurgitation and nothing else.

My version of Watchmen would mostly be about Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Ozymandias. Anything that does not aid their story line would be gone from the movie. That would mean Poppa Smurf, the Comedian, and 90 percent of the ancillary characters are gone. When that does not leave me enough material to get to a 110 page script, then I would add more to it. If that also means that Ozymandias was the one that kills Rorschach instead of Manhatten, that's going to happen in my adaptation.

A lot of you would hate that version, but I do not care. None of you would ever be 100% satisfied anyway. Even though the movie followed the comic book almost incestuously for 99 percent of it, a lot of you still hate it for not having the giant squid. So I am not going to cater to you in my adaptation.

 

[gamegod25]

IMO the reason why movies based on games (vice versa) almost always fail is because for one reason or another they are not given the time, money, talent, etc. needed to make them good. Many (if not all) of the movies based on games are written/directed by people who have little to no knowledge of the source material or are forced to make changes by producers who know nothing about it. Games based on movies almost always suck because they are made in a fraction of the normal production time so that they can coincide with the movie release.

It's not that you can't make/expand the story for the movie it's just a lack of effort and/or giving a shit about the source material combined with budget limitations and corporate interference.

 

[RA92]

... lots of the Dr Who Novelisations are very good (Nightmare of Eden, The Claws of Axos, City of Death - because they can show without BBC's lack lustre effects)...

If you like Dr Who novelizations, I would suggest their spin-off - The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

Finally he expands upon what he said in the The Common Mistakes of Horror Games extra punct he did 1 and half years ago

 

[Henson]

Best movie based on a game?

Clue.