Why is Hollywood So Incompetent making Great Video Games based Movies?

S

SuperJedi

CAGiversary!
Look at these Superhero movies (X-men, Batman, Spider-man, etc) it's obvious that Comic-Book gets to become really really GOOD movies!

But, video games movies on the other hand, mostly are WAY WAY worse than the video game itself.


When you play the game, it's like "Oh my God this story is so movie-like, but when movie comes out it's Nothing like the Video game at all!

Huh?

This attitude Hollywood has against Video game perplexes me, and makes me SICK!

I'd say Final Fantasy, the first Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill are the BEST quality video game based movies that's not even to say they are that great either. They are like 6-7 at most.

I want to see a 8-9+ movie based on Video Game one day!!!
 
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[quote name='cochesecochese']Videogames are a little thin on plot to stretch into a full film, no?[/quote]


This is the correct answer. Many games have great stories for video games, but they don't stack up against even mediocre movies. I gagged when I read reviews for GTA4 that compared it to The Godfather and such; I love GTA, but that was just ridiculous. It seems like a lot of game fans are desperate for their hobby to be taken seriously as an art form, and for the most part it just isn't there yet. At least not in the storytelling department.

Oh, and Mortal Kombat? Really?
 
I think the other problem is that gamers have different expectations since they interact with and control the video games, whereas the comic books are more passive. You are used to the comic books feeding you their vision of the action. Whenever I watch a video game movie, I can't help but think that I would have reacted differently in that situation if I were controlling the character. (This, and the lack of plot mentioned above.)
 
Movie producers and studios could care less about the integrity of the project, because the masses will see the film regardless of its quality.
[quote name='munch']Someone needs to find a way to Crack Hollywood.[/QUOTE]
Agreed.
 
That's BS. The Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fallout, Oblivion, Diablo, etc plots to me are DEEPER than a lot of movies I seen, Honestly!

Videogames are a little thin on plot to stretch into a full film, no?
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[quote name='exileinoblivion']I think you're forgetting about Super Mario Bros, best movie of all time.[/quote]

Or, the WORST of all!

Mario is the one I don't think should be live Action at all, it should totally be Digital/Animated/CG ONLY!

Out of all the great games I played, Mario have the least plot of all!
 
Why would they bother, they know no matter how terrible the movie is if the just call it something like Halo and show some action in the trailers people will come see it.

Even sadder is there are plenty of people who will see these movies and think they are awesome.
 
[quote name='elmyra']This is the correct answer. Many games have great stories for video games, but they don't stack up against even mediocre movies. I gagged when I read reviews for GTA4 that compared it to The Godfather and such; I love GTA, but that was just ridiculous. It seems like a lot of game fans are desperate for their hobby to be taken seriously as an art form, and for the most part it just isn't there yet. At least not in the storytelling department.

Oh, and Mortal Kombat? Really?[/quote]


Once again, I DON'T agree that video games have less of plot than a lot of movies I've seen. I actually DO think MANY of Video game plots are WAY BETTER than some of the movies I've seen!

And, Mortal Kombat have a really deep Myth (Played Deception Yo?) All those Characters, realms, etc each with it's own background/story/struggles like DC/Marvel comic characters... it's really deep!

I don't understand why people/Hollywood can't get it right?
 
And, I do lately view Video games as an Art form!

That might not be the case 10-20 years, with simple games like Pong, Super Mario on NES... but NOT today, man.

Today every thing about games are very very complex, and can be viewed as serious Artform
 
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Low expectations and low standards, really. It's self-perpetuating.[quote name='SuperJedi']That's BS. The Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fallout, Oblivion, Diablo, etc plots to me are DEEPER than a lot of movies I seen, Honestly![/quote]Resident Evil? Seriously?
 
[quote name='The Crotch']Low expectations and low standards, really. It's self-perpetuating.Resident Evil? Seriously?[/quote]
Oh yeah, Resident Evil have probably ONE of the best plot of all, actually.

EVERY Resident Evil game (NOT the movies... the movies ****ed it UP!) came out have plot and mysteries that just keep me playing find out why things are, how to survive, etc and it's NOT all about how fun killing zombies, to me.

The latest one, Resident Evil 5, it's very much like a Blockbuster Movie, itself!
 
*SIGH*

With this attitude (When Many of you Gamers DON'T even care) NO WONDER Hollywood don't care either, :| :| :|

When it all comes down to, it's ALL about your fanbase's attitude.

At this point, I realize, Comic Book fans CARE MORE than some of you all Gamers!

:(
 
[quote name='SuperJedi']*SIGH*

With this attitude (When Many of you Gamers DON'T even care) NO WONDER Hollywood don't care either, :| :| :|

When it all comes down to, it's ALL about your fanbase's attitude.

At this point, I realize, Comic Book fans CARE MORE than some of you all Gamers!

:([/quote]
You're right that I don't care. Not about Resident Evil, at least. Now, Silent Hill? No excuse. But Resident Evil? Man, do not confuse the fact that it has a plot for it actually having a good plot. Things like the design of the Racoon City PD were done for gameplay reasons, not because they made any fucking sense whatsoever. Same goes for fighting a fifty-ton tentacle rape fish with a harpoon rather than the RPG that I've been lugging around for the last three hours. Same goes for the fact that I was chasing after midget Spanish Napoleon. And then I got attacked by a ten-story clockwork statue of the aforementioned midget Spanish Napoleon. This is not the product of a good writer, dammit. And that's not even getting into the dialogue of the game - I can give them a pass on the whole "master of unlocking" thing because every game was poorly translated back then (this sentence may or may not contain hyperbole), but no such excuses exist for lines like "Writhe in my cage of torment!" It's like half the team was going for self-parody while the other half were going for straight realism and they ended up with some bizarre Superman 2 type situation.

It's just... not well written, plain and simple.
 
Well you clearly don't want to listen to the correct answers, but I'll respond anyway. Most game stories ARE thin because they are games and the bulk of the experience is what you have controlling your player. You can't recreate that in a movie since everyone would play the game differently. The story of your typical action game are the decisions and actions you make as the player. The 'story' in those games is basically motivation for you to shoot things.

On the other hand a RPG probably has the best chance of having a compentent movie made from it because the story is a large aspect of the game as a whole. Unfortunately, most RPG stories are just Star Wars or Lord of the Rings rip offs.
 
I do agree with you, its just that video games haven't been around as long as comics have. There is still a stigma around them, try giving it a few more years and we will catch up. Also Resident Evil got some nice movies.
 
The biggest problem I see is time constraints.

Movies have generally around two hours (give or take 30 minutes) to get the story and characters established and then whatever action occurs. A game like Resident Evil can take string things out for 8-10 hours with tons of action and revealing only bits and pieces of the plot as it goes along. You can't easily take 8 hours of a great video game and cram it into 2 hours of film and still have a high quality product that lives up to the game.

So what happens with video game movies? Film makers take the general idea of the game, cut out a lot of things that the masses (the TRUE primary audience of the movie) won't care about but gamers will bitch endlessly over, put in a quick plot that "works" (by Hollywood's standards), cram it with action, and slap the video game title on it.
 
[quote name='SuperJedi']That's BS. The Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fallout, Oblivion, Diablo, etc plots to me are DEEPER than a lot of movies I seen, Honestly![/quote]
I don't think the word 'plot' means what you think it means.
 
1. Most games have shallow (and often lame) plots and characters often aimed to appeal to teenage males and/or nerds.

2. They're usually just bought to have a license to make a low buget movie that can turn a small profit easily.
 
It all depnds on what you consider a good video game movie. The few ones worth mentioning, are decent movies, but don't really follow the game plot at all. For example. The first Resident Evil movie, did it fallow the plot of the Game at all? Other then having thne T-virus, no. Was it a good movie in it's self. I thought so. Then you have Video Game movies that just sucked like Doom., they turned that into another "virus turns people into zombies" movie and the doom series had nothing to do with that.


You can turn this on the flipside to, the number of good Movie based video games I played can be counted on 1 hand.
 
because... most games plots arent that complex and they cant make a game about mario running through a 2d landscape jumping over goombas and turtles?
 
The reason that the comic movies are coming along so well, is because everyone involved cares about the subject. They do their best to put forth the best film possible.

On the video game end seems that neither the publishers nor the film makers care about the subject matter.

Iron man was a great movie because Jon Favreau and Marvel cared.

Neither Gas Powered or Microsoft cared about Dungeon Siege, or they would not have turned the film over to Uwe Boll.

Video game based films will never get any better until the developers, put the films into the hand of someone who gives a damn.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']1. Most games have shallow (and often lame) plots and characters often aimed to appeal to teenage males and/or nerds.

2. They're usually just bought to have a license to make a low buget movie that can turn a small profit easily.[/QUOTE]

1. Would that not cover every summer action blockbuster?
 
A few points in terms of why there are little to no good video game movies.

Early video game movies had inherent problems with the fact that the game plots are either shallow or non-translatable. Mario Brothers for instance has no good translatable plot to a movie, hence the terrible movie. Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat had thin plots and thus the movies had nothing to work with. The more recent Doom and DOA had similar issues. Tech issues also existed in terms of translating game images into movie special effects.

In more recent times we haven't had nearly the same effort and attention put into game movies as comic movies. Marvel made a conscious effort, with Fox/Sony support, to help get X-men and Spider-man to actually be good movies and that helped start the current comic movie boom. Comic books were seen as potentially successful and thus got the talent and budgets needed to be made relatively right. Video games have no such exemplars, with really only Resident Evil being a "hit," and more of a smaller hit at that.

Modern video game movies have also suffered by the fact that Ulle Bowle has gotten his fingers into game adaptions such as Alone in the Dark, Blood Rayne, and Postal. After seeing the box office and quality of these movies do you really expect movie execs to invest $150M in a Halo movie?

On the positive side, the special effects are there for a good video game movie and you only need one or two breakouts in terms of box office for hollywood to jump on a the video game bandwagon. Halo seemed like a potential game to make a break out movie off of, or maybe something like Gears of War. Shooter games could be made into potentially decent horror/action films given big enough budgets and credible enough scripts and actors. Grand Theft would take quite a bit of translation which can be dicey, so I don't think it would be way to go.

When comics cool down hollywood will be looking for the next thing, and video games might very well be that.
 
You can't recreate that in a movie since everyone would play the game differently.
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I think this plays a large role in it. Granted a lot of people like the same movies for a ton of different reasons, but when you're playing a video game and you enjoy it for different reasons than other players, it's because you CHOOSE to focus gameplay on the things you enjoy. Maybe I loved DOOM because of its multiplayer experience and just played the hell out of that - someone else may have loved the single player mode and the ability to kill Hell Knights. Same game, both ways to enjoy it, but different experiences. The fact that you control which aspect of the game you can enjoy (to an extent) is something that can't really be recreated in a movie format.

Additionally, yeah, sometimes video game based movies make too much plot out of nothing. I didn't play Super Mario because I *really* cared about saving the princess, or try to find out why she was kidnapped in the first place - I cared because it was just a fun challenge. Similarly, for games with rather thorough storylines, you just can't compress that into an average length movie. It's all the little things in games that most of us enjoy, and to cut out any of it would lessen any real meaning.
 
I still find it appaling that many of you keep insisting that video game plots are thin.

I wonder if you all people actually played some of the 2000+(Year) games and pay ANY attention to the story at all? GOD, NOT all Video games are as thin as games like Super Mario in the old days! That I can admit IS Thin on the plot, but even Super Mario Sunshine and Galaxy's plot gotten thicker than the older ones! A little bit more, at least.

But When I play Silent Hill or Resident Evil, I KNOW very well, it's NOT just about shooting zombies, but also very much a deep plot behind the gameplay that is very interesting. When you goto a freaking room, you can ALMOST ALWAYS see/read up stuff that reveals something about the Plot! More so than a tons of Movie plots, for real!

There are a lot of movies, all it do is people kill each other, say some stupid ****, but nothing as deep as some of the stuff you read/see in games like SH or RE, at all! I just don't see how you all insist that Video game today's plot are thin? We don't ALL only play games like Mario, and those Mindless FPS games you know?
 
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[quote name='SuperJedi']I still find it appaling that many of you keep insisting that video game plots are thin.

I wonder if you all people actually played some of the 2000+(Year) games and pay ANY attention to the story at all? GOD, NOT all Video games are as thin as games like Super Mario in the old days! That I can admit IS Thin on the plot, but even Super Mario Sunshine and Galaxy's plot gotten thicker than the older ones! A little bit more, at least.

But When I play Silent Hill or Resident Evil, I KNOW very well, it's NOT just about shooting zombies, but also very much a deep plot behind the gameplay that is very interesting. When you goto a freaking room, you can ALMOST ALWAYS see/read up stuff that reveals something about the Plot! More so than a tons of Movie plots, for real!

There are a lot of movies, all it do is people kill each other, say some stupid ****, but nothing as deep as some of the stuff you read/see in games like SH or RE, at all! I just don't see how you all insist that Video game today's plot are thin? We don't ALL only play games like Mario, and those Mindless FPS games you know?[/QUOTE]

Ok, you're right and everyone else is wrong, video games have amazing stories that no one in 20 years have been able to capture on screen.
 
It's not me insisting I am right and everybody else is wrong.

The fact is THERE...

Fact is, After a Resident Evil or Silent Hill game, if you read EVERY Note, message, story, cutscenes without skipping... you have like A TONS of reading(but depends on HOW you play the game I guess.)

It wouldn't surprise me, many of you just skip reading those, Or find what you read Boring, and just want to go back to MORE killings.

While I read them ALL and frankly there IS a LOT to read and I take them all In, and it's all very interesting stuff that's seriously BETTER of plot than a lot of movies able to show, really!

After Played Resident Evil games, these 3 RE movies are Garbage, but as action movies they aren't bad, but they are Nothing like the games, at all! That's what make these 3 movies very Poor coming from a fan's perspective.


I mean, the way I Play games is I make the most out of the stories/plots from the games. So, even with like Mortal Kombat, even if it's not really that deep/complex, it's pretty Rich in the characters, the backgrounds, Realms where these 8 MK games have came up with, enough to make a BETTER movie than what's already out there.
 
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Some games, like Mass Effect etc., do have plots much deeper than games in the past.

But they tend to not be great plots--maybe some could be made in to decent mindless popcorn action flicks or something I suppose. But I still don't pay much attention--I need some plot to keep my interest but I don't put that much stock in it. If I want to enjoy a story I'm going to watch a good movie or read a good book--two things I like to do more than playing games anyway. Games are just to vegout and relax every now and then for me.

But the main reason they aren't is the same reason that games based on movies tend to suck--when someone buys a license they're usually just trying to cash in quickly on the franchise name without having to spend much money to actually make a good product. Most are just shovelware essentially (or the movie equivalent).
 
[quote name='SuperJedi']
Fact is, After a Resident Evil or Silent Hill game, if you read EVERY Note, message, story, cutscenes without skipping... you have like A TONS of reading(but depends on HOW you play the game I guess.)
[/quote]
No arguments about Silent Hill, but again with regards to Resident Evil, you're mistaking quantity for quality. Yes, it has a lot of story, yes there is a lot of stuff going on in the background, but it's all fucking retarded. Resident Evil is the Zerg of videogame plots: "We can't explain shit, so here's another ten conspiracies and hey look, Wesker everyone! Wesker! Remember him? Look, Wesker!" as the Ultralisk tears through your lines and right into your workers because your Archons were still merging.

Or something. Kinda lost my train of thought. I should be more careful with my analogies.

Point is, having a hundred cutscenes doesn't mean that you have a good story. Having a billion notes left lying around for no fucking reason (inexplicably in English in RE4, and all detailing future bad guy plans - yeah, no lazy writing there) doesn't mean that you have a good story. You might have a lot of it, but friend, that's the difference between fifty cans of spam and a steak dinner.

But hey, whatever, we all obviously just ignored all this. Passed up the notes, skipped the cutscenes. Us troglodytes were just there to killkillkillkillkill (the poor!), 'cause that's all we look to videogames for. We're the ones hurting videogame stories by not taking them seriously enough. It couldn't possibly be that the reason we don't take them seriously is because sometimes they're god damn horrible. It couldn't possibly be that insisting that games like Resident Evil have great stories contributes every bit as much to the problem as ignoring the story altogether. Nah, couldn't possibly be the case.

...

Actually, I guess Metal Gear Solid would be the Zerg of videogame stories, right? Blows Resident Evil out of the water; just trying to overwhelm you with its own mass? So... what would be Protoss? And what would be steak?
 
[quote name='Brak']Movie producers and studios could care less about the integrity of the project, because the masses will see the film regardless of its quality.
[/QUOTE]

"B/c they can."

^seconded.
 
I'm probably going to take some fire for this, but whatever - I thought that Silent Hill did it more right than any game film before it. And it was because of the the direction of Christophe Gans. The film had an eerie feeling, and was visually very well done. I think the weak point was the script. The acting was actually good, and the effects were cool. It was the script all the way. Still I think it's an enjoyable film, even if it isn't 'canon' for Silent Hill as a game series.

And that brings me to my second point - script. It's not that the games don't have enough plot for a feature film, it's that someone needs to adapt it that not only understands the game, but how a film would work based on it. That is where the problem lies, and why the films are atrocious.

Comic book films sucked for YEARS until mainstream writers took Comics as a serious medium that could sell to an adult audience. The only one that ever got a serious look was Superman in the mid 80's.

I think we're hitting a point where the movie studios are understanding more and more that game tie-ins are VERY useful from the revenue standpoint, and they can mine that audience and format for other ideas.

It's actually quite similar to the comic book comparison - that industry and culture has evolved into an older age group, and has a much broader appeal than just kids and teenagers anymore. The core is still in that group, but it's much much more spread out across Young adults and people approaching middle aged at this point. 15 or so years ago, you'd have found a much smaller audience that would be purchasing games and systems. I play COD with guys that are close to 50 years old, and that was a rare audience in the early 90's for most game formats.

Once the film industry comes around and accepts games as a serious medium, there will be higher quality films based on them. All it's going to take is one hit film, and they'll run with it. Call me crazy, but if it ever gets off the ground with a halfway decent script, it could be Halo that does it.
 
[quote name='Ronin317']





Once the film industry comes around and accepts games as a serious medium, there will be higher quality films based on them. All it's going to take is one hit film, and they'll run with it. [/quote]

Exactly I'm hoping the hit is Bioshock.
 
[quote name='evildeadjedi']Exactly I'm hoping the hit is Bioshock.[/quote]


Eh, I think a lot of what made Bioshock tolerable was the fact that the backstory/atmosphere was set up by through convenvient tape recordings. I could see the Hollywood twist just being making the people in all those tape recordings ACTUAL characters that Jack interacts with, ruining the sense of isolation. And probably a ton of flashbacks.

Or it could stray completely, just using the basic concept
(guy goes underwater, meets a bunch of freaks, ends up saving survivors, goes home)
and completely eliminating the backstory. I could even see the typical, "Oh, it was a horrible government experiment gone wrong!" scenario. Potentially entertaining on its own, handled a different way, but once you apply the "Bioshock" tag to it everyone is going to have their own critical expectations of it just based on the game.

At least it would probably be better than a System Shock 2 movie!
 
[quote name='mwynn']1. Would that not cover every summer action blockbuster?[/QUOTE]

Number 1 yes. Number 2 no as summer blockbusters tend to have big budgets while game movies are usually small budget and just trying to cash in on the license.

It's the two together that's a recipe for disaster--though I don't like most summer action blockbusters either.
 
Silent Hill could have been good, but they fucked it up. C'est la vie.

One of the problems I see is character interaction. Most of the time in a videogame you're on your own. When you do interact along side an AI bot, due to the need to communicate the bot's purpose they are almost always personified as a painfully obvious cliche (the hardened soldier, the damsel in distress, the helpful sidekick...)
 
Now, just off the top of my head, Drake's Fortune COULD be a good movie...if only because it plays out like one so much. There's little choice (the game experience is essentially the same for everyone), you've got enough supporting characters already so you don't have to add anything (I'm looking at you, Tomb Raider), and it's got enough action/light humor/some mystery to be an entertaining summer movie. Not a classic, but at least entertaining - a good, simple money maker.
 
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