
Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie? - tptacek
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/entertainment/video-game-movies/
======
sirmarksalot
So many video game movie projects are missing the simple question, "why?" So
many of these games are inspired by movies in the first place, and their
stories are mostly just cliches based on their source material. It's fine in
the context of the game, because the player is doing something, but when you
put that into a non-interactive medium, the flaws become obvious.

If you take Indiana Jones, turn it into a game with a sexy woman as the main
character[1], and then try to make a movie out of it, then of course the
critical reaction is going to be "Indiana Jones but not as good." Mortal
Kombat is basically Enter the Dragon with a simpler storyline, so why would
you decide to turn it into a movie?

It's an issue that comes up in most adaptation, whether it be a book, or a
comic, or even a song. There needs to be some reason to do it. Some idea that
the source material does that hasn't already been done to death in film. "This
game/movie/book is popular" isn't a good enough reason. It might get a movie
greenlit, and it might even make money. Heck, it might even make a TON of
money, but it won't make the movie good.

[1] Later iterations of Tomb Raider have been much more feminist, but the
original concept was entirely based on sex appeal

~~~
jitix
I think Mass Effect trilogy is fairly original and does away with a lot of the
space sci-fi cliches like humans being the ruling class of the galaxy, or all
species having a united voice, etc. I’d love to see it made into a movie.

~~~
beloch
Movies and games are sufficiently different that the the key to making a good
"video game" movie may be to pick a property that _gives_ more options than it
_takes_ away.

For example, Tomb Raider has to be based on Lara Croft raiding tombs, or it's
not Tomb Raider. You have your main character, type of action, and key plot
points determined before you start, and viewers _will_ compare them to the
games. This is very limiting.

With Mass Effect, you have a rather well realized universe in which you could
set a movie that would be easily recognized as Mass Effect, without
necessarily being forced to use the main characters from the Game or plot
points from the game trilogy. You are given settings, races, ship designs,
factions, conflicts, etc. that can be explored from a different angle.

Create a movie that _coexists_ with game plots rather than trying to sum them
up or replace them and you'll have more freedom to make a movie that's
actually good.

Of course, 95% of everything is crap. Maybe we just haven't seen a good video
game movie yet because there haven't yet been enough made to beat the odds.
Probably a quarter of the number that _have_ been made were directed by Uwe
Boll, and those probably shouldn't be counted as serious attempts at making a
good movie anyways.

~~~
bonesss
> Create a movie that coexists with game plots rather than trying to sum them
> up or replace them and you'll have more freedom to make a movie that's
> actually good.

The challenge with this is that a studio would be alienating fans and making a
large investment into an IP and then throwing most of that in the garbage...

Mass Effect isn't enough of a name to carry an untried, unanchored, narrative
into the mainstream. Most fans of any work have a superficial relationship to
the underlying IP, so most people people who walk into a Batman movie are only
gonna want to see Batman, not some "good story" told about unrelated people in
Batmans world.

If the story is so solid, and it's so exciting you want to put a hundred
million dollars behind it, then why share profits with an unrelated IP owner?
Change the 'universe', keep the money. If you're going to pay for an IP, why
not use it?

Using established IPs is all about risk management. Paying extra for the joy
of increasing the risk is how execs end up not execs ;)

~~~
michaelt

      The challenge with this is that a
      studio would be alienating fans
    

A standalone Boba Fett movie would coexist with Star Wars without much
interaction with the main plot, but still attract fans as he's a cult
character. The studio would benefit from the IP's profitable reputation, but
they'd retain the freedom do new things and attract new audiences.

~~~
bonesss
That's a bit of a tortured example: Boba Fett was highly popular, a named
character, and was featured in literature and promotional materials. Mass
Effect has no character remotely as iconic or well established as Boba Fett,
much less a side character, much less "a different angle".

Star Was illustrates my point quite nicely: after a couple decades of world
building they're already plumbing diminishing returns in one of the worlds
largest and most popular IPs only one or two stories removed from their main
narrative. I have high hopes for the Han Solo prequel, but Disney isn't
putting money behind "alternative" Star Wars narratives until the nostalgia
well is tapped, and even then they're going full-court on a trilogy.

~~~
jonhendry18
"I have high hopes for the Han Solo prequel, but Disney isn't putting money
behind "alternative" Star Wars narratives until the nostalgia well is tapped,
and even then they're going full-court on a trilogy."

Um, Rogue One?

~~~
Digit-Al
Rogue One is not an "alternative" Star Wars narrative - it's linked very
strongly to the original story.

~~~
jonhendry18
Yes, but unless I'm mistaken it's largely new characters.

------
dfxm12
Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for.
Videogames are great at being interactive diversions, but their stories leave
a lot to be desired and are really just thin background dressing for the real
reason we play videogames: for the gameplay.

The most successful videogame movies tend towards genre films like Mortal
Kombat (the film) and Resident Evil (the series).

Of course, let's not forget that it can be hard to make a good movie, period.

~~~
shwetank
I disagree. You have games like The Last of Us, The Uncharted Series, Yakuza
0, and even the latest Wolfenstein game having very well made and engaging
stories which I think can translate well on film.

~~~
goostavos
I'd go back to GP's "why" question.

I thought that The Last of Us was an absolutely fantastic game. Honestly, its
one of the few games I've managed to stay engaged with all the way to the end.
It works as a game. It's wonderful within its medium. A movie can't give you
moral choices (did you guys kill the doctors at the end??), nor the time
required to really get aquainted with the characters.

The narrative works best in the medium it was designed around. As a movie, I
Dunno, what would the medium bring to the table? I suspect it'd just be
another throw away zombie movie

~~~
baby
That's what series are for! I could see The Last Of Us as a series.

~~~
matt_s
All of the repetitive missions in games would work well in a series. I mean
most TV shows follow that formula, you know at a certain time in a cop show
they will figure out whodunnit and proceed to the thematic close of events.

------
larrik
It's funny that Assassin's Creed was mentioned as being too close to the game,
but I thought it managed to miss most of the major points of the game series
(which wasn't super complicated to begin with).

I mean, it doesn't even succeed at convincing the audience they should root
for the Assassins instead of the Templars.

It's like they assumed everyone who was watching who didn't already know the
story would be too stupid to understand it.

~~~
storafrid
I felt there was so much potential for that movie! The plot in e.g. AC2 is
intricate. It's easy to stand on the sideline of course — I understand that
this stuff is really hard to get right. It obviously is. But in my opinion, an
actually great movie, movie series or series based on the plot lines in AC is
still a good idea.

------
CM30
I don't think the reasons are too complicated here, I think they really just
come down to a mixture of the following:

1\. Most games are created as interactive experiences, and the storytelling
reflects that. For example, look at something like the Metroid Prime series.
Almost all the lore is found in logs and in universe worldbuilding, not in the
form of a linear narrative. That's hard to adapt into a non interactive
medium, because you have tell such a story in a completely different way.

2\. Many successful games either have poorly thought out or non existent
stories because they focus on the mechanics and gameplay. See for example the
Mario platformers (the RPGs might work better here), the Pokemon series,
Sonic, any puzzle game like Tetris, Minecraft etc.

(It's also worth pointing out that much of what's needed for a fun game would
be seen as bad writing in any other medium, since a realistic hero likely
wouldn't be able to handle the challenges in many games. Most video game
protagonists would likely be seen as Mary Sues/wish fulfilment in a non
interactive medium).

3\. Hollywood has a tendency of going after popular franchises regardless of
whether they have a story that works in film form. This means being stuck
trying to adapt games that simply don't work well in the format rather than
ones like adventure games or visual novels which would adapt pretty well. The
recently announced Tetris movie trilogy is a good example of this, since the
source material has basically nothing you can adapt into a non interactive
film.

Video games are just difficult to adapt by virtue of the medium and what's
needed to succeed in it.

------
avar
The 2016 Warcraft movie doesn't count? It got a 77% audience score, and a 27%
critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed almost half a billion, and is the
highest grossing video game movie of all time[1].

I watched it out of a sheer morbid curiosity, and haven't played any Warcraft
title newer than II: Tides of Darkness. I thought the movie was crap.

But maybe I and critics just aren't the audience for these movies. Seems most
people who saw it liked it. Doesn't that make it at least "Good"?

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games)

~~~
stale2002
It is a cliche to say this, but the movie really was made for fans and not for
the general "Normie" audience.

They would just name drop locations and people, expecting you to know what
they were. It was just mostly a fan service, "here is your movie, loyal fans!"
types.

It still wasn't "great" even if you were a fan, but I can't imagine how bad a
lot of it would have come off as if you didn't follow things pretty closely to
begin with.

~~~
gitgud
This is exactly how It felt to me.

I've only got pop culture knowledge of World Of Warcraft, and the way they
explained most parts of the movie was really hard to follow. They needed:

\- More world-building, geography was hard to follow, jumping around too much.

\- Better character introduction, characters would just appear, banking on
fans recognising them.

\- Less assumed knowledge...

The whole movie came off a bit amateurish in how the story was told...

------
mwexler
Actually, in some ways, Hardcore Henry
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3072482/))
was a great video game movie. It has lots of problems, but it captures both
the feel of a video game with the power of film. While not based on a specific
game, it's easy to see many gaming cliches (intentionally) in the film.

~~~
humanrebar
I'd say Scott Pilgrim, Jumanji, and Edge of Tomorrow are better video game
movies in that sense.

~~~
ralfd
⌘F Edge

"Edge of Tomorrow" is a fantastic video game movie in spirit. The Groundhog-
Day-Formula is not new, but it nails the game experience of having a
"savepoint" and getting better and better until you master the bullet hell
level.

------
adpirz
I still have hope. It took many decades before we entered the golden age of
comic book movies, and while I don't think the wait will be as long, I think
we're still not quite there yet with video games. What makes a good video game
movie is what makes any movie good: when the creative team behind the endeavor
believes in it and is tied to the source material. Read some of Nolan's early
interviews before Batman Begins comes out and you'll get a sense of that.

I would love to see a Bioshock movie done right, or honestly a proper Metal
Gear film. But if the filmmakers don't relate to the material or see it as
more than just another narrative engine, we'll get the dime-a-dozen action
flicks that try to hype up a few moments without capturing what makes so many
VG experiences special.

~~~
defen
> a proper Metal Gear film

They're working on that (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, guy who did _Kong: Skull Island_
). I have no idea how you could possibly turn Metal Gear into a movie that is
appealing to people who haven't played the games, but he seems to be a huge
fan of the series, and has claimed to have "cracked the code" about how to
make an appealing movie based on a video game, in the same way that Hollywood
has cracked the code for making comic book movies. He's also working with
Hideo Kojima. I'm cautiously optimistic.

~~~
Apocryphon
Mulling over the concept, I think the only way to direct a quality Metal Gear
film is to ditch the idea of mass appeal and intentionally attempt to create a
cult classic that captures the spirit and story of the original, not unlike
Dredd or the new Blade Runner film. And with the correct marketing and angle,
hopefully crossover into mainstream appeal like Mad Max: Fury Road. Tricky,
but there's a first time for everything.

Alternatively, they could go The Shining/2001: A Space Odyssey route and just
make a very good film that doesn't resemble the original work very much. But
Vogt-Roberts is not the Kubrick for that, nor does he seem like the type to
piss off original authors.

~~~
defen
Here is the reddit AMA where he talks about it a bit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5y9y4o/i_am_jordan_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5y9y4o/i_am_jordan_vogtroberts_director_of_the_film_kong/deoj1nl/?context=1)

------
jakebasile
There have been good video game movies, but the number is vanishingly small.
Many are "so bad it's good" such as anything Uwe Boll makes, but there are a
couple that seem to be created by directors who genuinely love the source
material and take it in interesting directions (e.g. the first Silent Hill
film, the first Resident Evil film, arguably Final Fantasy: The Sprits
Within).

Also, Mortal Kombat (1995) is a good film.

~~~
ebbv
Kinda cheating to call the Spirits Within a video game movie. It was titled
Final Fantasy but was a wholly unique story and new characters and everything.

~~~
jakebasile
I did say "arguably". I know it's not a direct translation but to be fair many
video game movies don't directly translate the source game either.

For another example, see Final Fantasy: Advent Children which is a sequel to
Final Fantasy 7. It's pretty enjoyable.

~~~
CM30
Most video game movies probably shouldn't directly translate the source game,
since what works in a game and what works in a movie are so different.

And to be fair, most films based on other media don't directly translate their
source material either. Oh sure, novel based films do, but most comic book
movies seem to have plots written specifically for the movie, with elements
from various comic issues mixed in. And most based on TV series usually have
new stories too.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I guess I'll be the odd ball who thought that Mortal Kombat was a decent
movie. The fact that it seemed to use existing martial arts movies (Enter the
Dragon and Game of Death, in particular) as a template rather than the game
itself seemed to help.

~~~
Skunkleton
I was pretty young when I saw that movie for the first time, but I still re-
watch it from time to time and enjoy it. There is something charming about how
hyper serious it is, while being absolutely ridiculous.

------
matt_s
The same reasons why adaptations of books aren't better than the book,
usually. The medium is different, books can go into much more detail and
leaves many things up to the readers imagination which is based on their own
worldview, perceptions, knowledge, etc.

A movie glances over many details and doesn't leave much to the imagination of
the viewer.

Movies and books are both scripted stories. Video games involve choices by the
player which can't be done in movie medium. I used to love Choose Your Own
Adventure books as a kid, which are an exception to that medium being
scripted.

Hollywood makes them the same reason why there are WordPress or Salesforce
plugins: a proven market of people with interest and willing to spend money.

~~~
kungtotte
I think the audience is being unfair and have flawed expectations if they go
into a movie adaptation of a book and expect it to be "better".

They're fundamentally different, and as long as the creators and the audience
are on board with that fact you can absolutely make quality movie adaptations
from books as long as you play to the strengths of the medium.

You can't make a movie with as much depth and breadth as a book. You can't
cram as much exploration and detail in and hope it'll come out even halfway
decent. What you can do however is show beautiful and breathtaking imagery,
and offer action and thrill-rides the likes of which you can't hope to match
with the written word.

Reading Lord of the Rings makes me appreciate just how special it is that
Legolas and Gimli become friends, because there's more room to explain the
relationship between dwarves and elves. I get to feel what Frodo feels when he
leaves his home behind.

But when I saw Rivendell or the Mines of Moria for the first time in the
movies it overshadowed what the books had told me about those places. And I
still to this day get goosebumps whenever I see the charge of the Rohirrim.
Something I never experienced in the books.

Is one set of experiences better than the other? Or are they just different.

------
mistersquid
In 1982, Hollywood did make a good video game movie. The title of that movie
is _Tron_. [0]

It's just that it was about a video game that didn't exist at the time the
film was made; the Tron video game

> is based on an early draft of the film's script [1]

[0]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(video_game)#Differences_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_\(video_game\)#Differences_from_the_film)

EDIT: convert HTML tags to markdown-compatible glyphs.

------
jccalhoun
Good by what standards? I think Resident Evil is pretty good. Doom was fun. So
was Mortal Kombat. The first Tomb Raider was fine. It is too bad it doesn't
seem that the recent one did well because Alicia Vikander is good.

~~~
elcritch
Of any of the action movies I’ve seen in a long time, Alicia Vikander did a
great job making her character feel like she was a real person struggling
through a crazy situation. There were weak moments but overall there was a
degree of empathy which most superhero movies lack. Well except for Iron Man;
who doesn’t empathize with being a genius billionaire jerk?!

But given my take of the flick I almost didn’t go as I thought “eh, game
movie”.

------
ntw1103
I actually really liked Prince Of Persia. I don't know that it compares to the
game, but I liked it.

~~~
larrik
I thought it was better than than the trailers made it look like it would be.
It's probably better without the game, though since, it simultaneously makes
no sense within the game's universe and yet leads right into the beginning of
the game version of Sands of Time.

~~~
ken
I've never played the game or seen the movie, but the trailer looks pretty bad
to me.

If _I_ were making a movie about that subject (and maybe this will make it
clear why I'm not a producer), I'd go for more of an "Adaptation" style film.
Viewers can't control time? Play it up, by (visually) admitting that the game
powers like "rewind" are done on film through multiple takes, and stunt men,
and editing. That's how you translate game to film, and this game mechanic
provides the perfect opportunity.

So you've got a normal action film for the first X minutes, and then there's a
fight scene, and Jake trips and flubs it, and we hear someone call "cut!", and
you see everything freezes while the crew rush in to reset everything to 10
seconds earlier, and they run it again. The first time this happens, it's
super quick, so the audience is left wondering if they really saw it or not.
As the film goes on, it happens more often, and more extensively. Maybe
sometimes the actor tries several times and then gives up and runs off stage,
and a stunt man runs in. Maybe sometimes you expand and see that the whole
thing is happening on an editing workstation, and they move clips around to
make it look like everything worked, and then they hit "play" and you're back
in the story.

Then at the very end, it zooms out to show the filmmakers watching what we
just saw, and they say "Nah, nobody would ever believe that it all just worked
out perfectly the first time like this". Fin.

If the whole point of PoP:SoT is the protagonist's ability to control time,
film already has a way to do that. Don't try to just embed an old mechanic in
the new medium. That's like building an interpreter for C, and calling it a
day. You've got a native JMP here, so use it.

~~~
r00fus
Exposing the deus ex machina as a mundane studio recording effort is an
interesting idea, but detracts from the immersiveness and suspension-of-
disbelief.

Great humor potential, though it'd get stale and instead become the story.

~~~
ken
I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a film.

For example, I can't stand musicals, because I think characters breaking out
into song and dance every 5 minutes destroys any attempt at immersiveness or
believability. But lots of people love them, and don't find this incongruity
problematic. So I don't think breaking from the flow of the main story
_necessarily_ breaks the story.

Did the structure of "Adaptation" detract from its 'immersiveness'? I'd say
it's the wrong question to ask.

My purpose was not humor, but to pull back the curtain and show the absurdity
inherent in all action movies, and the work involved. Satire can be humorous,
but that's not really the goal. I'd still love watching Jackie Chan outtakes
even if his movies weren't comedic.

I have no use for yet another (whitewashed) action movie. Then again, as I
said, there's probably a reason I'm not a Hollywood filmmaker.

~~~
r00fus
Honestly I really liked Adaptation, but then again I liked Stranger than
Fiction, and many other existentialist flicks (Run Lola Run? hell yes).

I know a bunch of folks who walked out feeling cheated or confused.

I think most of the issue is that people want a) a story b) to be entertained
and c) to forget about the outside world for a bit.

Anything that fills these boxes is good for mass consumption (from Hollywood
producer/ purely dollars point of view). Enlightening the subject or shocking
them with with new points of view are entirely stretch goals.

~~~
ken
That's believable. Also, my idea is a single movie. It doesn't easily generate
other movies. Hollywood today wants franchises, i.e., mass _production_ , too.

------
BosunoB
Hot take: 95% of major releases are bad. So if we get up to 20 video game
movies and there still isn't a good one, then maybe we can let ourselves think
there's a problem.

~~~
this_user
The reality of the situation is that the big studios are not trying to make
good movies, they are trying to make movies that make the most money. As a
result, scripts are created by committee and according to what market
researchers say will maximise the potential audience. In the end, you have
have an endless stream of incredibly formulaic blockbusters. Take the Marvel
MCU as an example: Most of these movies are pretty run-of-the-mill, but they
are printing money. Same goes for the latest Star Wars movies. None of those
were terribly inspired, but they were never meant to be. Disney played it
safe, because they knew they would make a ton of money that way.

At the other end of the spectrum you have something like "Blade Runner 2049",
which was a great movie with a large budget, but it basically bombed at the
box office. It's easy to see why studios are hesitant to take risks with
projects like that.

------
ebbv
This is an easy answer I’m sure I’ve given on here before; when you adapt a
book to a movie you have an excess of story and character development. You
boil it down to its essential ingredients. Sometimes it still turns out bad
but this is why book adaptations are far more successful than video hames.

Video games get away with a lot less plot and character development because of
their interactive nature and because they are graded on a curve. Many classic
games have basically no character development at all.

People think adapting a game into a movie should be a natural transition but
it isn’t at all. They are totally different forms.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
If this were the case, Warcraft would've knocked it out of the park. It's lore
covers many hundreds of hours of gameplay content and a decent number of full
books.

~~~
jandrese
Again, having lots of content doesn't necessarily mean it is good.

------
megaman22
I recently spent a lazy Sunday morning watching the Doom movie. It was a lot
better than it had any right to be, in my book - I haven't played Doom 3, but
by the standards of action-sci/fi-horror movies starring The Rock, it was
excellent.

I also thought the WarCraft movie was very good, but there I did grow up
playing the hell out of WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, and reading and re-reading
the manual with the backstory covered by the movie (not to mention the lovely
concept art). Bit of a shame that it didn't do quite well enough to continue
the story.

~~~
__david__
Doom could have better. They gratuitously changed the plot, which is funny
because Doom has practically zero plot at all. And they managed to change it
without improving it in the slightest—for the purposes of the movie, they
could have easily gone with the "opened a portal to hell" and the rest of the
movie would have been the same. Their changes were really dumb _and_
completely pointless which was really frustrating.

Also the first person part at the end was unnecessary and just wasn't good
cinema (compare to Hard Core Henry which was 1st person but it worked because
they really committed to it).

~~~
unethical_ban
The first person part was harmless and was a call out to the game. It was fun.

~~~
__david__
I thought it was embarrassing, poorly done, and not fun at all. And I _love_
first person shooters.

------
drawkbox
> _Why Can 't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?_

Short answer, because they have hard dates, and games are usually on Valve
time [1].

Forcing creativity and creating fun usually ends badly, the creativity and fun
come through research, prototyping and play testing.

Creativity like John Cleese said is an open mode, but you have to be in closed
mode to ship [2]. Forced hard dates lead to more closed mode than open mode
and the creativity and fun are compressed to times where it just doesn't work
out right.

> _We 've become fascinated by the fact that we can usually describe the way
> in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed._

> _So what i can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed
> mode._

Sometimes games for events or product releases like movies can be good,
usually it is because most of the fun and systems are from existing, already
successful games or formulas. So the other problem movie games run into is
they are usually just a re-skinning, but those are usually more fun and better
built for fun and performance.

[1]
[https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time)

[2] [https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-
annotat...](https://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotated)

------
wpdev_63
They have, silent hill. All the other bad game movies, doom, the later
resident evils, and super mario bros really didn't tap in on what made those
games great in the movies. They just parroted the story and hope it would
translate well.

------
baby
I started making a list

* Super Mario Bros * Silent Hill

And then realized that I couldn't add more to it... It's insane. There are so
many good stories in video game. I'd argue that The Last Of Us is the most
beautiful entertainment story every created be it a movie, video game, comic,
book, ...

Anime have the same issues, they have insane stories and they either end up
being ignored or worse, being shit on by directors. See Dragon Ball Evolution
or Netflix Death Note...

~~~
xutopia
The Last Of Us was brilliant in that the game mechanics were just something
great around a wonderful storyline. Come to think about it some of the Final
Fantasy games were really great stories too but the translation to screen was
such a washed down version that it failed at what mattered: making us feel
something.

On screen today we have shows like Game of Thrones that really deliver at
making us feel things and keeping us surprised. Before there was Game of
Thrones though I reckon that the death of Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy
7 was one of those twists that TV shows and movies shied away from until
recently.

------
probably_wrong
They did make a good video game movie: it's called "Pirates of the Caribbean",
and it's an adaptation of Monkey Island.

I know, I know, it's the other way around. But it should be proof that a good
videogame movie is at least possible - you would have to change surprisingly
little.

~~~
badloginagain
Actually its an adaptation of the Pirates of the Caribbean disney ride.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkl1eGmxTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkl1eGmxTM)

~~~
Thimothy
Actually, both Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean are inspired by the
same attraction.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_(series)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_\(series\))

------
p3llin0r3
The Super Mario Bros movie is a treasure of a terrible film.

Even reading the production retrospectives is hilarious. And the fact that
Dennis Hopper is in the movie is priceless.

~~~
abledon
I'd like a startup kinda like airbnb but it just gets a bunch of nerds on HN
together to watch bad films and have a group discussion afterwards at a rented
apartment LOL.

------
chvid
Wreck-it Ralph is a good movie. And so was the first Resident Evil movie.

~~~
fmj
I think calling Wreck-It Ralph a video game movie (at least in the context of
this discussion) is a bit of a stretch.

~~~
VikingCoder
I don't think it's a stretch.

They even made an actual arcade game for the movie:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvErIWbwZI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvErIWbwZI)

And the way it shows other characters, especially Q-Bert and Zangief, was
hilarious.

------
electrichead
I just wanted to say that this article displayed quite nicely on my phone and
was nice to read through.

On the topic, I do believe that there are worthy stories in video games that
can be translated to the screen not just for those who don't play games, but
also for gamers who want to relive some of the story without the tedious bits
in between (like farming for XP or upgrading).

The new tomb raider was probably the closest so far. I liked the tie-ins with
the game and the actress did a great job of bringing the game character to
life. The few things I didn't like were some of the acting and one-dimensional
supporting characters. Also some scenes were just contrived, but I suppose
that creeps in according to budget and timing.

------
Tistel
They are different things with only a very superficial overlap. Yes they all
may have: writing, 2D/3D art, acting and audio etc. But, only games have an
interactive _mechanic_. You can tell if a game will be fun without any of the
aesthetics. Just a controller, the code and simple geometry (debug/collision
boxes) for the avatars and the map. Once you have found a fun mechanic all the
art merely enhances a bit. Don't get me wrong, there are lots a bad games (bad
mechanics!) that try to be movies with beautiful art and no real fun. But a
great game is like nothing else we know of so far.

~~~
shkkmo
>You can tell if a game will be fun without any of the aesthetics. Just a
controller, the code and simple geometry (debug/collision boxes) for the
avatars and the map. Once you have found a fun mechanic all the art merely
enhances a bit

This is only true for a limited subsection of games. (granted, this subsection
of games is pretty much exclusively the source of Video Game Movies).

There are many games where mechanics are just a delivery mechanism for the
art, story and overall experience.

------
bananarepdev
To quote Andrzej Sapkowski, author of the Witcher books, "I don't think
different media van converge". Each medium has unique properties that enable a
story to be told in a certain way that may not be reproducible in another
medium.

Take Dark Souls for example. The game's story and mythology are blended with
the game world, hidden in little details and item descriptions. If you take
its bits and pieces and assemble them linearly, it's nothing special, it could
never serve as the plot for a good movie. However, if you experience it
properly, by being immersed in the game world, it gets way better.

------
umjames
Not just video game movies, but also movies based on books about video games.

Having read Ready Player One and then seeing the movie, it's like they didn't
even try to capture what made the book successful. The book had clues that
were hard for the characters to figure out, but in the movie, it was basically
trivial for them.

They should have done 3 movies, each one focusing on obtaining a single key
and opening its respective gate. It would have left plenty of room for
character development and the underlying love story that are in the book. They
could have been Netflix movies too.

~~~
krapp
I think the incentives behind mainstream film-making would make that
impossible. Studios are risk averse, they would rather focus on what makes a
book marketable and palatable to the masses than successful, especially when
dealing with a property without a guaranteed audience. No studio in their
right mind would fund a trilogy based on a book few people would have heard of
prior to the first film adaptation.

It might work on an alternative platform like Netflix, but not out of the
studio system.

------
halis
I'm a huge RPG fan, so don't get me wrong, I love video games...but let's be
honest, the stories only go skin deep. They are mostly shallow and the
characters are mostly stereotypes that belong in a D-list movie at best (think
Billy Baldwin).

My opinion is stop making super hero movies and video game movies. They may be
somewhat fun, but they provide no sustenance, it's like eating Ramen.

Make some movies from the DragonLance books. There are some fantasy
stereotypes in there, but the stories are awesome overall.

------
1011_1101
Storywise I think a lot games would make a good source for good movies. My
personal problems with the ones we're getting is, that they are so similar to
the original that they are basically just remakes.

Take the recent Tomb Raider movie, after I've seen the trailer I had no desire
at all to go watch it. Why would I watch something that I've experienced for
over 20 hours in depth and on my own pace already. I don't know, maybe a lot
of people got excited when they saw her with the plane: "Hey, look, it's
exactly like the game!" For me it was just boring.

Instead focus on a character that isn't the main one in video games, use the
setting etc. F.e. as a Dark Souls fan I would love for a movie to add some
backstory for Solaire. Scrap any stupid references to the game like putting a
white sign on the ground to summon somebody, instead just let Solaire meet
another traveller (at a bonfire ;D) or anybody dying and then respawning.
There you have it: (A already beloved character, ) a man of faith looking for
divinity (or whatever) while travelling to faraway lands (supernatural or not)
is confronted with the unbearable evils of this world to have a crisis of
faith which he either overcomes or goes mad over.

------
jdtang13
This article makes it seem like it's almost inevitable for video game movies
to be bad, almost as if there's some objective formula which dooms video game
movies to failure. For example, the author mentions something like: "stray too
far from the original and you get weird movies that alienate fans, but stick
too closely to the original and you get something boring and overly game-
like." Seems like a false dichotomy to me.

There's definitely a way to create a highly-compelling side story that
"fulfills" the promise of an original series without being overly constrained
by it. For example, Tell Tale Studios is a game company that is quite famous
for making good side stories that latch onto existing franchises, and their
Walking Dead video game is one of the best video game storylines I've ever
played through. It seems like it's quite possible to turn good movies and good
tv shows into compelling video games; surely this is possible in reverse as
well! It's also really easy for me to imagine an alternate universe where
video game adaptations are like comic-book or novel adaptations, which are
capable of performing quite well.

I do think that making good movies that are entertaining and have artistic
merit is always hard, and since the problem of making good movies is already
not easy, adding additional constraints from a video game premise probably
makes it more difficult, especially since film types are probably more likely
to be passionate lovers of comics and books than they are to be passionate
gamers. There's probably also a problem with the prestige of video game titles
that makes it difficult to find good writing talent.

------
squozzer
The only thing worse than a video game based on a movie is a movie based on a
video game.

Maybe if someone makes a movie based on Zork - basically 3 hours of Star Wars
"crawl"?

~~~
jmgao
There's at least one example of something that's even worse. Street Fighter:
The Game: The Movie: The Game is as horrible as it sounds:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UdQVYkCZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4UdQVYkCZg)

------
oh-kumudo
TBH, Hollywood is not sending their best for making a game adapted movie
either..

------
DonHopkins
The Sims dodged the bullet (so far) -- it would have been just so horrible:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims#Film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims#Film)

Film

A live action drama film based upon The Sims was announced in 2007. [15] On
May 25, 2007, it was announced that The Sims film rights had been purchased by
20th Century Fox. [16] It was to be written by Brian Lynch and produced by
John Davis. [17] [18]

[15] "The Sims Coming to the Big Screen". ComingSoon. May 25, 2007. Retrieved
October 31, 2007. [http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/20635-the-sims-
coming-...](http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/20635-the-sims-coming-to-
the-big-screen)

[16] ""The Sims" to move from PC screen to silver screen". Reuters. May 28,
2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
electronicarts-thesims/th...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
electronicarts-thesims/the-sims-to-move-from-pc-screen-to-silver-screen-
idUSN2519868120070528)

[17] "Producer John Davis Gives Updates on THE SIMS Movie, the Aliens vs.
Predator Movies and Jason and the Argonauts! | Collider". 2008-09-21.
Retrieved 2016-08-09. [http://collider.com/producer-john-davis-gives-updates-
on-the...](http://collider.com/producer-john-davis-gives-updates-on-the-sims-
movie-the-aliens-vs-predator-movies-and-jason-and-the-argonauts/)

[18] "The Sims movie planned". Retrieved 2016-08-09.
[https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-movie-
planned/110...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-movie-
planned/1100-6171544/)

------
somethingreen
You can probably make a pretty good movie adaptation of Bioshock. It's
setting, music, world and character designs, even it's action would translate
quite nicely. But can you keep it's "would you kindly" aspect without it
sticking out right away? And would it be worth it making a movie without it?

------
sli
I always figured it was an issue with turning an inherently interactive form
of media into a form that's taken passively. That seems like a rather
difficult transition to make, hence movies about video games _in general_
doing better than movies based on a _specific game._

------
vlunkr
There are lots of good comments here and I don't know where my response
belongs, but I still think a good movie is possible.

I know it was a commercial disaster, but Final Fantasy is the closest we've
come IMO. The series has a great aesthetic and style that doesn't feel too
derivative of anything else, and it's known for having great plots and
characters (by video game standards). If anything, they strayed too far from
the source. Make it about a group of adventurers in a weird cyberpunk/fantasy
universe with outrageous haircuts fighting an insane demigod and I think it
can work. Obviously that works in the games.

What you have to do is take games that have strong styles already and adapt
the feeling and personality, not the mechanics.

------
ino
Not even Half Life, the best movie-game would be a good movie. But it was damn
great as a game.

~~~
abledon
Put christopher nolan in a chair and say he has to write a good script or the
universe will end, and i think it wouldn't be a bad movie...

------
justinsaccount
"The Last of Us" would be a blockbuster.

~~~
umjames
I don't want that story to be ruined by directors/producers/writers taking
creative liberties.

Some things just shouldn't be live-action movies. Look at all the anime movie
failures. They were perfectly fine in their original animated format. No need
for live action, except to keep people in the movie industry employed.

~~~
bpicolo
It's also just a way longer story than fits in a movie yeah?

~~~
baby
That's what series are for! But it would need a good budget to honor TLOU

------
paulie_a
I honestly liked the original Hitman movie. Timothy olypheant nailed the
character of agent 47. The sequel basically said "hey you know everything that
game is about... Let's do the opposite"

------
lostgame
This is incredibly obvious.

Games are not films for a reason, usually because the interactivity is tightly
interwoven with the story, otherwise the artists would’ve picked a different
medium.

Take away the game elements and you may have something that has a high
percentage of not translating well.

If it was meant to be a movie, it would’ve been one to start. If that’s not
the case, it’s an exception to the rule.

NiGHTS Into Dreams...(Saturn) is a fantastic game that IMO would make a shitty
movie I dare say even if Miyazaki himself gave it a shot.

~~~
kenning
I basically agree, but I do think it's possible to make a narrative from a
game. The pokemon tv show and movies were very successful and widely enjoyed
by the audience.

------
tareqak
'tptacek: Thanks for linking that article. It was relatively short, but the
interactivity made it feel even shorter to the point of painless (even
slightly enjoyable). In addition, it also didn't take too long for my Firefox
to load (I do use adblockers though). If traditional media tried to
restructure their bread-and-butter long-form articles in a similar manner, we
wouldn't be talking about their eventual demise as often, if at all.

------
mmgutz
I'm suprised more movies haven't been made around League, DotA and other video
games. I know some have been made but none with the big budgets like Avengers
or Iron Man. The younger generation identify with video games not superheroes
created in the 50s and 60s yet DC Comics and Marvel dominate this movie genre.
It's a big opportunity waiting to be exploited.

------
pinebox
This headline is clickbait. Everyone knows that the first good feature film
licensed from a video game was Resident Evil (2002).

------
chaosbutters314
They're always missing the superior siege weapon in superior games. GoT uses
them and you see how well that does

------
partycoder
I would say the west has failed to make good video game movies, or proper
adaptations of an anime.

e.g: street fighter? mario bros? dragonball evolution? death note? ghost in
the shell?

You need to be extremely creative to ruin those.

The reverse has also been true: bad game adaptations from good movies. e.g:
ET, back to the future, etc.

------
strictnein
Max Payne was pretty good. They had something there with the norse mythology
stuff that was interesting.

~~~
umjames
Couldn't sit through the whole thing. I just don't buy Mark Wahlberg as Max
Payne. He's a little too clean-shaven in that movie. Was he at least using
pain killers to fight past his injuries?

------
SuperNinKenDo
I have to say that reading this was great fun. I normally loathe attempts to
get fancy like this, but the experience was purely positive and actually
served the content of the article, although it got a little tiresome toward
the end. Really cool reading experience.

------
ordinaryperson
Top 5 Video Game Movies That Aren't That Bad:

1\. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010)

2\. Resident Evil (2002)

3\. Doom (2005)

4\. Mortal Kombat (1995)

5\. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2003)

------
raddarexternal
my personal feeling with Hollywood today is that they probably can't show
something new.

It seems that every corner in this medium has been covered and faded it
shine(?)

I'm afraid that knowing this, they seeked to explore new grounds like games
and comics books, nevermind that it basically the same story but utilizing the
special effects to attract young audience.

So i think it's not just video game movies, imo it's the whole medium
struggling to stay relevant.

knowing this, i keep my eyes on the black and white movies. they don't try to
impress, they're simple and easy to follow and the actors are really great.

one of my favorites is Buster keaton, the greatest stuntman ever imo.

------
m3kw9
Most video games story pacing isn’t made for movies. Converting it to a movie
they add all kinds of fillers and patches to remove game elements that makes
game fun but movies not so fun to watch and nobody has been able to do this
well.

------
ChuckMcM
I am one of those people who can enjoy a video game inspired movie, but only
if I've played the game. I believe that is because the movie reminds me of
game play that I enjoyed so it gets that extra bonus feeling. If I haven't
played the game the movie is definitely less engaging. This can be true for
movies adapted from books like the Lord of the Rings, I enjoyed reading the
books and the movie reminded me of that enjoyment.

But given that, it seems it can go the other way as well. I saw Ready Player
One (and have read the book) and the differences between the book and the
movie, while understandable, interfered with me enjoying the movie.

There are also fairly formulaic movies that unroll just like a video game.
With early levels, a mini boss, more levels, another boss, a few more levels
and then the big boss. Watching Kong skull island was like that.

------
timavr
I feel like making a deal between game publisher and movie studio is not an
easy process and creatively game publisher would like to have sign off on
pretty much everything.

Negotiating split and who puts money upfront would be a nightmare.

------
samlevine
It's hard to make something you don't like.

For example, Ready Player One focused on movies in large part because
_Spielberg really loves movies_. You can tell they move him, whereas the video
game parts are largely gags.

------
debacle
Can anyone tell me why the Warcraft movie was so awful? I felt like, out of
all of them, that one would at least be pretty good, but it felt worse than a
Warcraft 3 cutscene.

~~~
vkou
Too many characters, too much plot armor, too much name dropping, moves too
quickly.

The cutscenes in WC3 worked because they were paced well (Due to gameplay in
between them), and each one established a few basic facts about the world, or
one of its characters. If you were to sit and watch through all the cutscenes
back-to-back, they would not hold up well.

The film sucked for the same reason that Lord of the Rings would have sucked
as a two hour movie. It would just be a dumb, disjointed montage of action and
scenery.

------
auntienomen
To be fair, Hollywood is improving. Their first attempt was the Super Mario
Brothers movie, which was so bad that it's difficult to understand how they
finished it.

~~~
baby
Super Mario Bros was fucking awesome

~~~
auntienomen
Try telling that to Dennis Hopper.

------
220V_USKettle
The Wizard with Fred Savage.

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/)

So, maybe 30 years?

------
Waterluvian
Good video games are good because they make good use of the unique aspects of
the medium. In my opinion, the better a game is, the worse it would be as a
movie.

------
TheMagicHorsey
This article illustrates why. Some things don't cross over well. Like this
article for instance. They should not have made it into a fucking video game.

------
smrtinsert
I thought Children of Men was basically a HL2 episode.

~~~
webkike
No way. What made HL2 was the inter-dimensional space politics/warfare

~~~
selimthegrim
To say nothing of Garry's Mod and the resulting fanfiction equivalent culture.

------
ggm
Just to invert the model, Why is it that some movies turn out to make good
scenarios for video games, but not the other way round?

------
evo_9
If they pick a game worthy of making it into a movie, that would be a good
start.

Halo would have made a great movie but MS messed that one up and the guy they
hired went on to make District 9.

There are plenty of games worthy of movie treatments. Dark Souls, SkyRim,
Zelda, Mass Effect, Ico, Last Guardian, just to name a few.

If you start with Rampage or Mortal Kombat than you end up with equally
shallow movies. There just isn't enough 'story' to make it worthwhile.

~~~
ansible
> _Halo would have made a great movie but MS messed that one up and the guy
> they hired went on to make District 9._

Indeed. Ten years ago, Microsoft could have just taking the existing plot of
Halo-1 (Combat Evolved) and turned it into a movie. They could have just cast
Steve Downes, Jen Taylor and the other voice actors to play their own roles.
And just use the original musical score too. They would have had audiences
jumping to their feet and cheering.

I'm not saying it would have been easy, making a truly great movie (or at
least a truly great action movie) is never easy, but it would have been
straightforward and easily successful.

~~~
evo_9
I remember seeing some of the art work they'd developed and it looked
fantastic. It would seem like one of the easier game-to-movie adaptation out
there.

For anyone interested, the script was leaked at some point. You can read it
here (I have not yet):
[http://www.spumonte.com/files/pdfs/Halo%20Movie%20Script%20-...](http://www.spumonte.com/files/pdfs/Halo%20Movie%20Script%20-%20Garland%20Alex%20\(2-6-2005\).pdf)

~~~
ansible
I haven't read all of it yet. It's not bad, but I think elements like the
conflict with Major Silva takes away the focus from the main storyline. A lot
of that is: What is Halo? What do the Covenant want (other than killing
humans)? And what is the Flood and how do we stop it? That's plenty of story
for a 2-hour movie, I wouldn't spend a lot of screen time on much else.

------
emodendroket
Street Fighter may have disappointed fans of the series, but as an action
movie I think it's pretty enjoyable.

------
occamrazor
I liked Resident Evil, both as a movie its own merits, and specifically as an
adaptation of the video game.

------
tr4cefl0w
This makes me wonder what a game based on a Kusturica movie like Underground
would actually look like.

------
hyperpallium
_Tomb Raider_ was pretty good, and crucial crucial to Angelina Jolie where she
is now.

------
exabrial
I thought the real life Halo short films were pretty incredible. I think the
problem is Hollywood insists sex, gory violence, and pretty actors are the
only motivators for people to watch movies. Story, character development,
convincing dialog, non-cgi graphics all come second to making sure the sequel
is setup.

------
rado
Because Takashi Miike did it with "Yakuza" (2007). It's perfect.

------
alphabettsy
Video games plots don’t seem like they would generally lends themselves well
to movies since they seem to only exist for the purpose of gameplay.

I think movies would do better converted to games like Golden Eye. I would
love to check out Gone in 60 Seconds as a game, similar to GTA.

~~~
baby
All successful movies have video games associated to them (to some extent).

------
lihes
It's very simple: those two are not the same media. A movie, a book are made
to tell a story. A video game is made for playing, not for telling a story.
They should stop adapting video games, it's pointless.

~~~
jandrese
I remember back in the day the Final Fantasy 7 trailers had a voiceover that
went something like: "Dozens of characters, hundreds of locations, a plot
spanning 40 hours, they said it couldn't be done in a movie, they were right."

Lots of games tell stories these days. There's no fundamental reason those
stories couldn't be adopted to the silver screen. Of course many of these
stories aren't really very good, but the same can also be said of any medium.
There are elements that might not translate, but that's true of any
adaptation. For instance Bioshock's infamous "Would you kindly" plot point
won't come though the same way in a movie.

~~~
PeterisP
The quote "Dozens of characters, hundreds of locations, a plot spanning 40
hours" (and the much larger numbers for some modern games) by itself is a
fundamental reason those stories are hard to adopt to the silver screen.

A movie needs a couple hours of _focused_ plot, and a limited number of in-
depth characters whose motivations can reasonably be covered in this short
time. A blockbuster game generally involves a much larger cast of characters,
and a much, much longer/wider plot story to cover the hours.

If you leave the story as-is and just cut the "sidequests", then the movie
will be full of characters who are barely introduced and whose motivations
make no sense to those who haven't played the game and don't know the
backstory; and if you cut the story to be "movie-sized", then it will have
little resemblance to the original, as key points will need to be drastically
altered.

~~~
fmj
>If you leave the story as-is and just cut the "sidequests", then the movie
will be full of characters who are barely introduced and whose motivations
make no sense to those who haven't played the game and don't know the
backstory

FFVII: Advent Children is a great example of this. Half the characters from
the original game just come stumbling into the plot with no introduction or
explanation.

------
tytytytytytytyt
Maybe we need Ewe Boll to do more video game movies.

------
LoSboccacc
because a video game movie can rarely evoke the emotions as felt in the video
game medium.

what I think is that they tried so far to adapt games with a protagonist,
which just fall flats when you are not in control. a war movie inspired to
some strategy franchise where they set up the scene to the game events would
fare much much better because the audience would already care about the world
as opposed as to a single non interactive character.

------
coldtea
I'll just leave this here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs)

------
jdlyga
Too short. Make a video game tv series.

------
wemdyjreichert
Quit killing me, you jerks.

------
intrasight
Because there are no good video game movie ideas

------
otakucode
Videogames have garbage stories. They're pablum. Because of the aggressive
censorship in the videogame medium (aided and abetted by gamers), no videogame
features a film-worthy story. At their most "extreme", videogames verge on
PG-13 garbage action movie territory. Keep in mind videogames feature animated
characters, not people. Ratings are different for animated media.

Good movies push people. They bring intense experience to the table. Insight.
Important things. Videogames literally avoid all of those like the plague. Out
of an infantile fear of government-led censorship that has been proven wrong
over and over and over since the 1980s, gamers defend a system of far-more-
perniscious censorship by private companies. And so they get what they have
worked so hard for. Milquetoast garbage in terms of emotional content in
games.

