HOW video game movies don’t work #2 – Adapting the right games the wrong way

In my “Video Game Movies Don’t Work” series thus far, I’ve tried to point out that films based on video games don’t work, and attempt to explain the many reasons why this is so. Today I cover reason #2 ‘How’ they don’t work… adapting a good property in the wrong manner.

1. The wrong games get adapted.
2. The right games get adapted the wrong way.
3. Inferior talent behind or in front of the screen.
4. It’s just a plain bad movie.

Even if a studio manages to grab a good license ripe for the film treatment, it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it right. Quite a few films with potential were turned into rubbish by film studios not understanding what they were working with.

I Was A Pirate Before It Was Cool

WTF is this shit? Pirates?! In Somalia?

First off, there’s a new breed of pirates. They take the form of fat, pasty, nerdy guys who often roam around the internet spewing phrases like “over 9000” and “tits or GTFO,” and while I do not deny that I’ve used the latter, but the former just isn’t me.

So, when I think pirates, I think of people like this:

I could never be a YouTube celebrity.

Oh wait, we already are?  Oh, psh, you’re too kind.

But seriously, I couldn’t be a YouTube celebrity.  Not like Tay Zonday or Lisa Nova or even those YouTube Poop guys I like.  I couldn’t be one of those arguing types.  You know… like The Amazing Atheist or Thunderf00t or Cody Weber.  Those guys.  The debaters.  The flamers.  The insulters.  I have nothing against them in what they do.  In fact, TAA is one of my favorite subscriptions… I just couldn’t do his job.

It’s a trite proverb I know, but arguing on the internet is indeed like the Special Olympics.  I couldn’t go through that effort just to bitch with someone.  I just don’t take myself that seriously.  Don’t take other people that seriously, either.  I could give a damn less what people think, to be perfectly honest.  People at large, that is.  Family and friends are something else entirely… I argue with them in person.  No, it’s the dedicated YouTube channel arguers I could never join… however great a release that would be.

Look at this doucebag here.

HOW video game movies don’t work #1 – Adapting the wrong games.

There are fewer labels in cinema that have a more negative connotation than ‘video game movie’. And this breaks my heart. It doesn’t need to be that way. While not every game movie released has been terrible, not a single big-budget adaptation has been received with high regard by critics and filmgoers alike. It’s easier to please the masses than Ebert and Roeper, sure, but it’s certainly not impossible to do both. One of the best and least-likely film adaptations of recent times went on to spawn a massive franchise and make a cultural phenomenon out of it’s subject matter. And the folks behind that are trying to recreate that magic with one of my favorite games. I’m hopeful that this interactive medium can make it’s successful mark upon the world of film.

It has yet to do so, however.

Because it seems that I didn’t make this point clearly enough in my last entry on the subject… I want a game to movie adaptation to succeed. I think it can. I think it will. I just think we’ve yet to really see one that pleases on all fronts. I’ll explain why I think this is the case a little latter on, but for now allow me to introduce the criteria for failure, as it were.

1. The wrong games get adapted.
2. The right games get adapted the wrong way.
3. Inferior talent behind or in front of the screen.
4. It’s just a plain bad movie.

In my humble opinion, every video-game movie adaptation falls into at least of these traps.

Early Edition: Episode 2 – Watchmen

Now with half the line flubs!  Twice as long… for her pleasure.  It says ‘Just Action News’, so you know it’s good.

Across the Uselessverse

If you liked this movie (Dan and Katie omitted, as I’m contractually obligated to still like them) then I officially disown you as a fan, as a reader, as a friend, as a fellow person. This movie had absolutely zero reason to exist, and yet scores of people I know seem to love the damn thing as if it actually achieved anything.

Video Game movies don’t work.

Video game movies don’t work.  I’m not saying it’s not possible given the right circumstances, just that we have yet (and I personally doubt we’re ever) to see a movie really do justice to it’s source material and be objectively good while doing it.

Film is passive.  It’s a very cool medium (definitions 5-11).  You, as the viewer, simply go along for the ride.  Games are a little different.  You’re still pretty much set in the narrative for what it is, but the minor details and overall pace are the user’s to set.  Games, as a general rule (although plenty of titles break this mold) tell the meatiest bits of their story in cutscenes- small chunks of pre-rendered video to the uniniated.  Part of the story is in cutscenes, part of the story emerges in gameplay.  Things happen on the player’s time.  That allows games to be immersive in a manner film is hard pressed to match sometimes.  Certain details, methods of storytelling, and the like have to be done in such a way as to have an open-ended type pacing.  This is all well and good for a 20 hour game; something you can play on your own time.  Film is limited so much more by the march of time.  2 1/2 is pushing the limit of most audiance members’ patience.  You see the problem here?

Things have to be cut in order to be a film.  I understand that.  Be it characterization or plot points or whatever, you have to trim a bit.  But what usually remains makes a disjointed mess on-screen.

Let’s check a line up, shall we?