I'm sick of this, when a movie company comes up thinking "I know, lets make a movie out of a game" most people would rejoice at the thought of their favourite game being made into a movie. I was one, until it happened.
Resident Evil
Now, I didn't think the movie was that bad, in fact I quite liked it, as an action movie. But I think that it could have been so much more than a random action movie. They could have made it into a chilling thriller. It was a waste of what could have been a good license.
All of a sudden, its a trend, to take classic games, and smear their names in shit. Final Fantasy was such a huge disapointment to me, I wanted depth, I wanted character development, I wanted MAGIC!! But no, all we got was a fettid lump of a Sci Fi story that didn't even deserve the Fantasy part of the name. Now I hear of them making a Far Cry movie, directed by the same guy who did Alone in The Dark, and House of The Dead.
Suffice to say, the acting was bad enough in Far Cry. Without a talentless director telling second rate actors what to do.
Oh looky here, a Doom movie, that's going to be good isn't it? No, I'm afraid without even seeing it, we all know its gonna suck. Yet Doom is considered the best FPS ever, why make it into what could be the worse film ever?
Who knows what's next? Pac Man, thats a classic? Oh, I know, a Mario movie.
Face it Hollywood, games dont make good movies! Except for Pokemon THAT ROCKED!!
¬¬
Umm.. There already WAS a mario movie. And it was good, despite what people say.
Doom would be a good movie if I directed it. 90 minute goreflick with no story. I like my movies that way, gory, violent and a story full of plotholes, cause 80's action movies rock
How about Tetris - The movie ?
That would be sweet.
I think that game movies usually have the potential to be very good, but the wrong people are given the license to do them. Let's face it, this guy who's buying up all of the horror game licenses and turning them into garbage movies is who really is giving these games bad names. I haven't seen the movies themselves, but a large (http://www.allthingszombie.com/movies/houseofthedead.php) chunk (http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/0/556d4cc1598f23b088256dc20060ea98?OpenDocument)of the media (http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-12-18&res=l) agree that they're crap. C'est la vie. As far as the Resident Evil movie is concerned, I think they did a good job. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the resident evil series, as I've yet to play the orginal. Perhaps it isn't necessarily to game canon, but I have yet to see an adaptation of any one genre to another that doesn't take liberties one way or another with what they create.
Now, in regards to the Final Fantasy movie, which so many people hated, including myself at the beginning, I think that it has a really much worse reputation than it deserves. Did it have chocobos? No. Light Warriors? No. Crystals? Glass windows, but no. There wasn't a whole lot tying the movie to the series canon, except for the obligatory "Character named Cid", and the overlying 'World in Peril, must be saved by collecting something and about halfway through somebody integral to the story is suddenly in clear and present danger' formula. I, too, would've liked it a lot more if it more resembled 8-bit Theatre (http://www.nuklearpower.com) simply because even though there were no chocobos or white/black mages in Final fantasies 6,7,8 and 10, they still had magic and the same old crystal theme song. I thought that they probably could've even gotten a couple extra brownie points if they'd even bothered to do that, but if you actually take a step back and think about 'The spirits Within' without the 'Final Fantasy' brand-name stamped to it, it wasn't all that bad, and as a CG movie, it could even be described as groundbreaking.
Square did what they've been doing for a long time - they made something pretty that doesn't necessarily cater to their established demographic.
The Mario Movie? I'm going to need to take another look before I can really say anything about it, but think about what would've happened if they'd actually made the movie like the mario games?... It'd be disturbing. Mario really wasn't meant for the silver screen, but even so, they did it, and like the Spirits Within, it wasn't such a bad movie once you stopped thinking of it as ruining all of your dreams of bright happyface clouds and ginormous green pipes. And hell, it had John Leguizamo - that's gotta be a plus.
I guess what I'm saying is that yes, game movies are rarely like the games they're meant to portray, and that really pisses a lot of us off, but some reasonable stuff has been made. The benefit of the ensuing crapfest that is the trend of game movies is that there's a slim chance someone will eventually get it right, and when they make whatever movie that is, be it "The Legend of Zelda" or "The Adventures of Bayou Billy", it'll be all that much sweeter.
I remember back in the day word on the street was that a movie was gonna be made on the Leisure suit Larry series. That was like early 90-ies but it never got round to being done. Then came Mario and the first movie based on a game was out.
Quote from: SpacePirateCaine on Sun 30/01/2005 19:29:02
because even though there were no chocobos or white/black mages in Final fantasies 6,7,8 and 10, they still had magic and the same old crystal theme song
No, I think there were chocobo's in all those games.
Some very good points though, I think that its more the disapointment, with classics like Alone in The Dark and Doom, people really want it to be as excellent as the game, whereas it rarely ever is. Despite Resident Evil being a pretty cool movie, it wasn't at all like the first game, which is one of the scariest experiences I had with my PS (apart from that time it started to make funny noises after we dropped it), so the fans of the game were let down, the film itself makes little impact, so it feels like
a) Tainting a name with a crap outlet
b) Wasted potential
i read an article in PC Gamer the other day about the Doom movie, apparently the original script the guy wrote has been completely changed as it has entered the hands of a hollywood type person who's just turning it into a generic hollywood sci-fi action film, and i bet you they get some dick like ben affleck to play the doom guy.
i think they should get stallone or kurt russel to play him, or atleast an older actor so you actually get the impression he's a veteran...
the real main problem with making movies from games is the time factor, a game can have like 20 hours of play and movies are generally 100 to 120 minutes long (i said generally, so no "lord of the rings is 800 hours long" stuff), so they have to condense 20 hours down into a suitable movie length, which means they end up with the "starts off okay, something happens, guy kills some bad guys, somebody gets captured, guy kills more bad guys, guy kills big bad bad guy, guy rescues person, guy and person kiss, credits roll" equasion.
and i bet you when/if the doom movie gets made the character can only use the BFG once, and it'll be right at the end of the movie to kill the main bad dude...
Personally, I think they should get a professional wrestler to play the part of the Doom Guy. I mean, wrestlers are actors anyway. :P And they'd have the look of that part. Somebody like, say, Triple H (http://www.wwe.com/superstars/raw/triple_h/profile.jsp), but with a haircut. I'm not saying wrestlers are hollywood-quality actors for the most part; although there are some exceptions, it generally isn't a good idea. :P
So basically, what I'm trying to say is never mind. :P
Triple-H was in Blade 3. Him and the funny guy who's name I can't think of right now are the only one's that saved that movie from being another HOTD. Wesley just hated that movie, and it showed.
Anyways.. They're fucking up Doom. It's not set on Mars, the characters are just normal marines (not space marines), and there's no element of Hell.. It's just some sort of virus that makes people turn into crazy zombies (*cough* Resident Evil in space!*cough*)
I really hate Hollywood.[/i]
That's it. I'm making a Monkey Island movie.
Except, there won't be monkeys. Instead, I will have space zombies. And instead of a funny male blonde pirate-wannabe, I'm putting in a hot blonde chick in a bikini with a bazooka. And instead of islands, they'll be galaxies that Girlbrush Beaverwood will travel to. Choke on that!!
I wonder sometimes what the first really good game-based movie will be. Feel free to express your opinions here, but IMO, the current title holder for the best game-based movie has to be either one of the Mortal Kombat movies or Resident Evil (though keep in mind that I haven't seen part 2 yet and I haven't seen either of the Tomb Raider movies).
EDIT: After thinking about it some more, I din't see the second Mortal Kombat movie.
I wonder, too, if it'll make a difference. Will the first REALLY big game-to-movie hit be a huge green light for companies to make more game-based movies than ever, much like Spider Man and X-Men helped do for comic books being turned into movies? And if so, will it open the floodgates for more crap than ever before?... I dunno.
I do think that it's going to happen though, and sooner than later. With the gaming industry slowly gaining finacial earnings that surpass those of the movie industry by more and more, it's only a matter of time before these projects are taken more seriously and given to (or taken by) better directors.
Until then, I guess we'll just have to wait through all the terrible stinkers.
Tomb Raider movies are mediocre at best. Mortal Kombat II COULD'VE been directed by Uwe Boll, but it's still too faithful to really have been.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse is good fun, but there are is one gaping plothole:
Spoiler
Why in the hell do the zombies pop out of the ground in the graveyard. I thought it only was spread by air and bite.. And even then, only when you are still alive...
/me is still waiting for that infamous PONG movie to be out.
That must be the GREATEST movie eva!1!
Oh yeah?
http://www.terran-x.com/pongwars.swf
I didn't make it. ;)
Haven't checked that yet, but I think it's something I'd seen already.
I meaned real actors real actions and real PORN PONG, on big screen.
I think a PONG movie could be totally awesome if it was a parody of the Pokémon/ Yu-gi-oh phenomenon. ::)
Little bit of mindless information for you. Did you know that the creators of the origional arcade game Joust! had plans on making their game into a movie? now...what would the plot of that really be? just a little guy with his faithful pet flying bird thingy in a fiery arena of doom fighting off hordes of knights in order to obtain the holy eggs of pointliness! Brilliant!
Bah, you're all full of crap! Game-to-movie adaptations are wose. I played How To Make An American Quilt and got to the third patch before I turned it off and committed sepuku. And I'm still alive to deal with the pain, which shows how bad it was.
Exactly, I once played a game based on this movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196530). I think it was called Sim City...
...I quite enjoyed the Mario film...
Apparently the ROCK will play the marine (woohoo :-\)
The most likely reason they're not setting it with any religious implications is because they're scared of controversy.
Obvious observation, but the real problem with videogame movies is that they're not videogame movies at all - they're generally just your average garden-snail genre flicks, only with a scenario and (if you're lucky) characters loosely inspired by a videogame. And they always insist on polluting the purity of the game concept with typical Hollywood conventions like having rounded characters and romantic subplots. No need!
I remember the old teletext daily games/comedy magazine 'Digitizer' once had an "exclusive extract of the Tomb Raider movie script", and the whole thing just read like:
---
LARA CROFT misjudges her jump and bumps into a WALL.
Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, LARA CROFT: Uh.
She approaches a KEYHOLE, but realises she doesn't have the appropriate KEY.
Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, Ã, LARA CROFT: No.
---
...and so on. They were joking, but that's what game movies should be like! Next-to-no dialogue, just literal, live-action recreations of the games.
Just think - A live-action Mario film that flawlessly recreates the level design from '3' or Mario World. A Doom game that's just some faceless guy shooting up monsters for 70 or 80 minutes. It'd be the best film genre ever, I say!
The thing is, as games get more and more sophisticated and realistic, the less and less interesting the idea of a movie conversion gets. Seeing live-action conversions of blocky old 2D games is quite an intriguing idea, but when the games are cinematic and realistic to start with, who really needs a film?
I admit I’d kill for a Schafer-directed stop-motion Grim Fandango spin-off movie, though.
I quite liked the old mario cartoons, though.
Quote from: [lgm] on Mon 31/01/2005 02:40:57
Resident Evil: Apocalypse is good fun, but there are is one gaping plothole:
Spoiler
Why in the hell do the zombies pop out of the ground in the graveyard. I thought it only was spread by air and bite.. And even then, only when you are still alive...
I was kinda wondering that too.
Spoiler
I could never figure out why in RE3 they had zombies coming out of the ground, because you're right: the t-virus was only transmitted through bodily fluids (I don't know about airborne... in the first movie, it said the virus was "protein; changing from liquid, to airborne, to blood transfusion").Ã, But it could have been something like what happened in Return of the Living Dead, where the t-virus got washed into the soil, and re-animated the corpses.
Yeah, it was a cool idea, but they should have shown some kind of reason why it happened.
As for other game-based movies:
Street Fighter - crap
Super Mario Brothers - it was okay
Resident Evil - Not bad, I kinda wish this one and the sequel would be able to tie-in with the game better.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse - I liked it
Tomb Raider 1 and 2: So-so... but Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft... *devilish grin*
Mortal Kombat - Bad
Mortal Kombat: Annhilation - Worse
House Of The Dead - Such a disappointment, but it's got zombies, so you know I like it a little.
Pokemon - I've never had the spleen to watch any of them
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - I don't understand why everyone says it was such a piece of crap... I didn't really think it was that bad.Ã, I'm hoping that Advent Children will offer something newer, something that will tie-in with the game better.Ã, Tifa is looking damn sexy though.
My small reviews of Video-Game based movies...
Super Mario Brothers: Terrible, but I love it so.
Street Fighter: I remember thinking it was bad when it first came out (Probably was... 5 at the time, haha.)
Double Dragon: Pure crap. Not many people even remember it.
Resident Evil: Not half bad. Enjoyed it.
RE Apocalypse: Haven't seen it. Want to, to laugh, but don't want to pay to rent it.
Tomb Raider 1: Bad.
Tomb Raider 2: Not touching it with a 10-Foot pole.
Mortal Kombat: Highly entertaining, despite being a rip-off of Enter the Dragon.
Mortal Kombat 2: Haven't seen it.
FF Spirits Within: Oooooh, looks preeeeetty... Can't remember much else, except I enjoyed it at the time.
Quote from: TerranRich on Mon 31/01/2005 01:26:03
That's it. I'm making a Monkey Island movie.
Except, there won't be monkeys. Instead, I will have space zombies. And instead of a funny male blonde pirate-wannabe, I'm putting in a hot blonde chick in a bikini with a bazooka. And instead of islands, they'll be galaxies that Girlbrush Beaverwood will travel to. Choke on that!!
Wow! When will you finish it? :D I hardly can wait!
Just kidding. But as I can see, there aren't any adventure-related movies. Even fan-made.
QuoteBut as I can see, there aren't any adventure-related movies.
Well, there are a few exceptionally good FMV adventure games that you can ALMOST count as movies... The Tex Murphy series (Pandora Directive in particular), Gabriel Knight 2, Phantasmagoria...
They're all better than Alone in the Dark, hahaha.
(Of course, even Phantasmagoria 2 is better than Alone in the Dark)
There was Tekken anime film. That was pretty good. I've not heard anyone mention it yet so i thought i would.
Alec
Double dragon was awesome, one of my fave movies ever!!! lol
Ladies and gentlemen, this is all you need to know:
http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0795/
That makes two video game-based movies that Christian Slater has been in now.
I liked that movie.
The best movie-from-an-adventure EVAR.
PEASANT'S QUEST- the trailer (http://www.homestarrunner.com/filmstyle.html)
Warning, it's a rather large download.
Also, Mirrors (http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/Peasant%27s_Quest_Movie_Trailer#Temporary_Mirrors)
They should make a half life 2 movie... That whole game was like one big movie anyway.
Ali G as Gordon, (Who?) as Alex, Will Smith to play Eli Vance, Sean Connery as the Administrator and Ben Affleck for Gman!
Why, Jennifer Lopez as Alyx of course! It's time for Ben and J Lo to recreate the magic we saw in Gigli once more.
Actually there were two Street Fighter movies... one is a live action movie which is total crap (bad and cliche storyline, very stupid acting, and lame fight scenes, plus it breaks away from the canon of the video games, and there really aren't any special moves because of the lack of budget). The other is an anime, which is pretty good (better than the Tekken movie, although that one comes close, imho). It has extensive special effects and does follow the plot from the games. It allegedly had some sequels.
I remember so many guys at my high school were all ga-ga about the Street Fighter anime, not because it was the most popular game when I was a teenagers, but because word had gotten around that Chun Li appeared naked in the shower.
Teenage boys will do anything to see some tit. Even if it's animated tit.
Quote from: DGMacphee on Tue 08/02/2005 11:13:53
Teenage boys will do anything to see some tit. Even if it's animated tit.
Why do you think I got so fat in highschool? Tit is tit!
Amen, Eric.
Oh, and.. The Streetfighter games actually had a plot to them??
http://www.mixnmojo.com/php/news/catnews.php?category=lucasfilmnews
This probably would've bastardized my childhood.
I'd still like to see it made, though.
Quote from: [lgm unplugz0red] on Tue 08/02/2005 20:47:14
Oh, and.. The Streetfighter games actually had a plot to them??
Rather surprisingly, yes. Also rather surprisingly, it does kind of make sense (as compared to, say, the plot of Mortal Kombat, which mostly consists of secret cyborg ninjas being sent to kill one another).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Street_Fighter_characters