John Scalzi - Doom for Dummies or How Hollywood Makes Video Game Movies
Hey, look, more reader e-mail! This one asks:
"Can you tell me why movies based on video games (science fiction or otherwise) are so very bad? Has there actually been a good video game-based movie yet?"
First, for folks generally interested in video game movies, we have our own specialist: Anthony Burch, whose AMC column on the subject runs every other Tuesday. See how we cover it all for you? We do it for the love, people.
As for the e-mail directed at me, I'll take the second question first and say, no, there has not been a single video game movie that I personally would consider good. The best I can manage here is to say that there are a couple that exist in the "don't entirely suck" category. This is not to say there have not been financially successful video-game movies: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider did especially well at the box office, although whether that was because of the legion of Lara Croft fans or simply that Angelina Jolie is smokin' HAWT in that little silver jumpsuit of hers is open to debate.
As to the first question, there are a number of reasons:
First, blame the Germans. Up until recently the nation of Germany allowed for some nice tax benefits if its citizens invested in film production. This in turn benefited a German director named Uwe Boll, who went about snapping up the movie rights to a number of video game titles and cranking them out fast and cheap.
This was a nice set-up for Boll, since he's been able to make a nice living playing filmmaker. It wasn't nice for us, because Uwe Boll makes movies like monkeys drive trucks. Through Boll, the world is saddled with flicks like House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne, which all make you want to bleed from the eyeballs.
To be fair, Boll's not the only filmmaker with an unnatural fetish for game titles. Paul WS Anderson, who has a bit more skill and flair, has given us Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil, both of which exhibited some technical competence (and attractive female stars, of course) but not much else. Now he's got the rights to Castlevania and Spy Hunter, and in both cases I wouldn't hold my breath for quality.
But this is the other problem: If you've ever watched a video game-based movie, you get the sense that quality isn't actually on the filmmakers' minds, even when the thing isn't supposed to be a slapdash B-movie funded by German dentists. I have a strong suspicion that in the mind of Hollywood, the average video game player is sixteen years old, has a double digit IQ, and is only really interested in explosions, blood and pneumatic women -- so things like plot, characterization and story are seen as optional.
In point of fact, the average gamer is nearly thirty, not dumb, and while he may enjoy bombs, blood and babes, I'm willing to bet he'd happily see a movie that doesn't assume he's stupid. When I watched Doom, the scene where a scientist explained that a certain percentage of the human genome has never been mapped (and the part that hasn't, well, that's your soul, you see) made me want to throw a rock through my TV -- which is ironic, as the film stars The Rock.
Finally, there's the problem that some video games just don't have much to hang a movie on, which leaves filmmakers obliged to make something up to fill in 90 minutes. One of the very first video game movies, Super Mario Bros., is a case in point. The game features running, jumping and landing on turtles -- not a lot to go on -- so the filmmakers decided to place the movie in the world of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and cast Dennis Hopper as a lizard. Why not, right? To say it doesn't work is an understatement; star John Leguizamo would later mention that he and co-star Bob Hoskins got drunk to get through the experience. This is also a viable strategy while watching it.
None of this suggests there can't be a good movie based on a video game. All you have to do is get a good filmmaker who puts the story first and aims for an audience with a brain. Which is to say, rather than making a video game flick, they make a good flick that happens to be based on a video game.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also Creative Consultant for the upcoming Stargate: Universe television series. His column appears every Thursday.
I suppose Tron doesn't count, since it isn't based on a specific game.
No arguments here: no good films based on video games.
To be fair that could be given as a general guideline for adaptations from all other media formats (e.g. book-to-film, comic-to-film), where the exceptions could be considered to prove the rule and the supposedly "unfilmable" ones have proven to be amongst the most successful translations (i.e. LotR and Watchmen). Possibly because more care, attention to detail and passion were applied to those considered more difficult to achieve success with.
They have had longer to get those other formats right though. Video games-to-film has had a shorter development period, and there is still time. I'm personally holding out hopes of Halo proving the exception for the video-games-to-film-being-rubbish rule.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Resident Evil movies. Part of it is because you could put zombies in every movie ever made and I would enjoy them all 100 times more than pre-zombie insertion. But another part of it is I honestly think they are well-done horror/action flicks.
Got to go. I’m working on a new screenplay, “When Harry Met Sally…and Zombies.”
Gnnnf. With Doom, I have no idea why they went that path. The "genome" thing was a bucket of cold kippers down the underoos of anyone with the least grasp of science. The game's premise of an experimental teleporter ripping a gateway open to Hell doesn't make any more actual sense, but at least everyone from honest agnostics on sideways will shrug and say "Well, we can't prove it couldn't happen, either".
I'm gonna bite my tongue on singing "Take me out to the Boll Game" because I think we all know where we are with that. A large part of it, though, is that not many videogames really have plot that you'd give a slap about if you weren't playing it. Who decided Super Mario Brothers could *ever* make a good game? Or Street Fighter for that matter? Though I hate to admit, some of Raul Julia's dialogue does make me want to sit through it, just to see him deliver those lines.
But plot doesn't feature largely in many games. Not what you'd recognise as "plot" in a literary or screenplay sense, anyway. The one game I can think of that's absolutely chock-full of story, dialogue, discovery and et cetera is the Halo series - and having read the alleged Garland script for that I'm just as happy it's in Development Hell until they get that bit right. Aside from that, very few games have an actual story to tell that could be adapted to the Big Screen.
Movies work because you sit there and watch plots unfold, characters develop, emotions be evoked and such. Games work because you get to make stuff happen with your hands. The types of stories that work for those two different media may just be irreconcilable.
I consider the Mortal Kombat movie (the first one) to be a good bad junk-food movie. It's not good, but it is enjoyable. The game's story is even more non-sensical than the movie, really. The Resident Evil flicks follow the same pattern.
I thought Silent Hill was a good attempt that actually attempted to make use of the source material and had a good director, but the script just made no darned sense at all.
I think the only real example of a successful adaption of a video game to a movie format has been the Neil Blomkampf/WETA short films for Halo. They both told a short story, were faithful to the source material and were well-produced. It's a shame Microsoft doesn't want to go that route.
The first time I watched Resident Evil it was late at night so I had the sound off so as to not wake my sleeping wife. I have to say, without having to listen to the dialogue and just watching the moving images, the movie was quite enjoyable.
I tried watching it with the sound on a few days later, and I turned it off within two minutes. I didn't want to wreck my viewing experience.
I'm having a good time thinking about movies that fit the description of "based on a video game" but aren't the kind you mean at all - movies like Tron (mentioned earlier) or The Last Starfighter.
Sorry, though, not much to add - I've never seen a movie based on a video game in the normal sense. There's a reason for that!
The only good video game movie I can recall is Casablanca.
Mass Effect is a game that's a good candidate for a movie. There's a rich game world with a lot of backstory that could be filled in, the possibility for amazingly shot ground and space combat, and a precedent for having deep characters that the audience cares about. How about a movie that covers the attack on Elysium that's alluded to in the game and the novels, or the First Contact War with the Turians that's precipitated by humanity not fully understanding the rules of the big wide galaxy it just entered?
The best thing about doing a movie that fills in gaps like these is that there's less baggage to worry about; one thing that drags down a lot of movies based on games is when a director tries to stick too closely to the structure of the game, which doesn't work since the two media are often enjoyable for different reasons. A game is often good because it makes you feel like the main character or can be amazing due to the exploration of a fantastic world, while a good movie is driven by characters that the audience can sympathize with.
The problem with video game movies is that the properties that are popular enough to attract attention are the wrong kind of games to make movies of.
eg: Zelda and Metroid: Beautiful scenery, tense action... mute loners for main characters.
MGS: The fanbase is the kind of group that would rage over any story changes, and the story is too long to tell in a movie. Besides which, playing MGS is just watching a CG movie where you have to twiddle the controller around for about 15% of the time.
Half-Life: Apart from the mute loner angle, we've got the MIT PHD physicist as everyman hero angle. Hollywood's not going for that noise. They'd make Blue Shift first.
I know it's not a fit for the category, but The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is probably the best movie related to video gaming. And a damn good movie in its own right.
But yeah, real video game movies, not so much. Final Fantasy may be the best of the bunch, and it's (a) not really based on the game all that much, and (b) still kinda meh.
Ah, Street Fighter...
If I may quote Pearl Forester; "What Raul Julia was doing in this piece of sh...urely great entertainment I'll never know."
Sarcastro, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is easily one of the two greatest Mike Nelson episodes of that show. The other is Space Mutiny.
I'll readily admit that 90% of video games don't have enough non-interactive plot to hang an audience experience onto, which makes creating an enjoyable movie from them rather difficult. And, for that matter, pointless since really what's being bought is a franchise name the film product of which will neither satisfy fans of the game or fans of non-sucky movies.
There are a couple of games that have managed to weave a plot into the game, examples of which are the Max Payne games. Both games are some of my favorite video game story telling. Sure they're no Shakespeare but they beat a lot of non-video game movies out there. So when a game with an actual plot actually makes it to the screen, you'd think they might take advantage of the source material. Instead the Max Payne movie exhibits a weaker and more disjointed plot than the game leaving you with less emotional attachment to the lead than the games (and games aren't usually known for building emotional attachment).
I guess the part i don't get, and this applies to comic book movies and book adaptations as well, is that it just amazes me that franchise names are considered so essential in movie making. I mean if you don't follow the source material, it be a hell of a lot cheaper to just take your shoddy plot and just make the movie without the name. But i guess that's not how the business works
PJ, anytime I'm down I just think of Reb Brown "bailing out" of the floor-scrubber... I mean, enforcer vehicle and I get a good laugh. But Girls Town is probably my favorite Mike ep.
I love the world's that were created for Myst and would be interested to see what kind of "action" (human or physical) they could create to make for a good movie.
Sarcastro:
Put your helmet on, we'll be reaching speeds of 3!
Woot! Shout out to Super Mario Brothers, the best video game movie evar!
Few people seem to know about or recall this one in discussions of video game movies, possibly because it was before it's time- or possibly because it made no sense at all, for the reasons that Scalzi points out.
But: Bob Hoskins with a Jersey accent! Dennis Hopper chewing scenery! Tiny, wind-up Ba-bombs that send everyone fleeing in terror! Rocket boots! Movie greatness, I tell you. Drinking does improve the experience.
On the topic of games that could make good movies: I think that Bioshock has a sufficiently flushed out style and story that it could make a great movie by simply filming it the way it looks and feels as you progress through the game's plot...
A good team of film-makers can be found over at PurchaseBrothers.com - they managed to make a movie based on Half-Life 2. I'll admit that it could be far better, but at the same time, I could never make an attempt at creating a movie on the scale they had.
As for Tron, I could have sworn that there was a game for that before the movie was even thought up. Gotta wikipedia that later.
I enjoyed "Hitman" the movie quite a bit and thought it was high quality "junk food". "Silent Hill" was also a noble attempt, as was "Resident Evil 2". As for the rest, yeah, they just aren't very good, are they?
"FarCry" Uwe Boll's latest effort seems to be available out on the Intertrons. Who are these people who sell off the movie rights to their precious IP to Uwe Boll and his ilk? Hasn't anyone learned yet?
I am surprised that Final Fantasy: Advent Children hasn't been brought up. That is a fantastically made piece that doesn't try to copy the plot, or just use the name. It is an extension to the story of FF7.
I was also quite surprised to see how long it took for someone to bring up Advent Children. I suppose it may be a love it or hate it sort of film, since I can imagine it being very confusing for viwers with no knowledge of Final Fantasy VII.
I'd say it all Bolls, er, boils down to whether the video-game-turned-movie has a good script. I don't think it's necessarily that the filmmakers cited above aren't concerned with quality, but rather that the screenplays that were developed out of these properties simply weren't good. I imagine that very good films could be made from some of the same properties -- given the same budgets, same effects, and even with the same (sub-par) acting -- if the story were better developed.
Oddly, I think the less story-centric the video game is to begin with, the better the resulting movie could be, if only because the filmmakers are less bound to specifics. I suspect fewer gamers might argue that a movie version of, say, Frogger "got it wrong," than would be let down by a big-screen version of Grand Theft Auto -- if only because in the former there would be fewer things to "get wrong." (That said, "A bullfrog dodges traffic" isn't exactly high-concept.)
Also, it seems that (traditionally, at least) so many video games are already so derivative of successful movies (there would be no Tomb Raider if there hadn't been a Raiders, e.g.), that when Hollywood looks to games for "new" properties, it's merely watering down its own Kool-Aid.
Perhaps "Price of Persia" will be the exception that proves the rule. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed for big-screen versions of "Galaga" "Joust" and "Q*bert."
EuniceX:
You say it in jest, but I think a big screen version of Joust, if done right, WOULD TOTALLY ROCK.
Joust? It could happen.
Time to start on that screenplay...
EXT. NIGHT. AN ISLAND IN A PIT OF LAVA.
I'm actually sort of surprised that no one else has suggested this yet, but it seems to me that the first decent video game film could easily come from the MMO genre. They offer almost fully realized worlds visually (which leads to its own challenges, obvs.) and huge amounts of story to work with, but also leave space for extra, new story to be written. Put together a team of the best fanfiction writers from among the hardcore players of the game to rough out the characters and the plot line, and then hire professional screenwriters to turn it into an actual screenplay. In fact, given all the diverse ways Blizzard is already making money off of World of Warcraft (and its built in audience of millions), I'm sort of surprised a live action WoW movie isn't already in the works . . .
ah, there appears to be some discussion of such a subject out there on the 'nets . . .
Oops, that should have gone to the 33.6 million Google hits for "'world of warcraft' movie". Suffice it to say that it's allegedly happening but far more discussed and debated and begged for than actually, you know . . . being made.
If "good" is to be estranged from "enjoyable" (for example, Starship Troopers) Mortal Kombat can land in the second category, if not the first. It even had some good lines mixed in.
"The fate of millions will be in your hands! Hah ha haha... Uhm, sorry."
There's also the question of a "faithful" movie which will please fans of the game without even beginning to engage anybody else on the planet. I shouldn't admit this in public... but I watched, and had quite a good time, watching the DOA movie. Partly I was just amazed that they made a movie which was, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the game. All but one of the characters that had a personality (okay, maybe that's too strong a word...) in the movie essentially matched the personality (again, wrong word) of the character in the game. The joy to be had was basically the same (small women doing high kicks) etc. It was exactly the movie that fans of the DOA video games deserved.
Also, as a final note, the Paul WS Anderson "Castlevania" script was written by notorious, and reknowned scary (but lovably so!) nutter Warren Ellis. If script-writing can make a video game movie work... we might be in for something with that one!
Scalzi says: rather than making a video game flick, they make a good flick that happens to be based on a video game.
Kind of like what Disney did with Pirates of the Caribbean? I was skeptical (A movie based on an amusement park ride? C'mon!) at first, but pleasantly surprised. With the first one, that is.
I don't know about a "good" movie based on a video game, but you have Rowdy Roddy Piper in the Cult Classic "It Lives" which is B movie heaven to all of us fans. I loved "Duke Nukem" and I could have seen it totally going the other way around.
But what does They Live have to do with anything? It was based on a short story. And even though Piper was decent in it, that movie was neither good enough nor bad enough to qualify as a "Cult Classic." The creepiest things in it were the female lead's eyes.
And the PotC success makes me wonder if less is more generally, and therefore Joust has a lot more potential than we might think . . . .
What about Silent Hill? I mean, there were some things that I think they could have done a bit differently, but I thought the acting was great and I thought that the visuals were very intricate. Now, I can understand someone being upset that they modified the story line to fill in parts of all of the games, but that doesn't automatically make it bad.
My biggest problem with Hollywood is that they tend to take great games/books and try to dumb them down for an audience. I really wish that the Halo movie wasn't so dead right now, because the short videos the director had made were awesome! But making a good movie involves having a good plot/script/actors. I think that the only way they could do Halo would to have Steve Downes do the voice of Master Chief even if he's not the guy in the suit (that's the glory of stunt men in helmets...you don't need to see their faces). I think that if Hollywood just tried to not treat us like like we all have a collective IQ of 70, we'd be fine!