Games made into movies - why so shoddy?

A-Trak

With Hitman released soon, and getting savaged by the critics, got me thinking about all the games that moviemakers have made into films.

Basically they've all been total sh1t.
The resident evil series, Tomb raider even Mario have all made it onto the big screen and seem to be aimed at 10 - 16 year olds or comic book guy types.

With all the wealth of material out there in games why haven't they managed to make one decent film?

And what games do you reckon would "pwn," the silver screen?

Rhyme

Turok movie... it'd be pretty hard to f*ck it up.

Or Bomberman >_>

"In a world ripped apart by corporations and terrorism a man alone is left to restore the balance. A tragic... uh... cooking accident left him with the inability to walk diagonally and now he takes his rage to the battlefield with an infinite supply of high explosives, a motorcycle helmet and a pair of pink gloves. Join our eponymous hero as he explodes his way to freedom and bombs his way to peace. Coming to your local theatre this December."

eamon234

Just because Critics don't like a movie doesn't automatically make it bad - most mainstream critics don't understand the genre or the franchise involved or indeed the original game, which is why people want to see it in the first place.
Believe or not I have watched and liked movies that critics didn't.

I quite liked the Resident Evil movies although I agree on the others (and don't forget Doom!) - they had a very eerie sense about them which reminded me a little of when I played the game for the first time back in the old PS1 days with the lights off!

I like Silent Hill too - it felt and looked SO like the original game.

Let's not forget that in a lot of cases the original games themselves weren't exactly full of plot, character development and decent voice acting!

I'd like to see a movie of Prey that was a great concept and a brilliant game!

Mr E

Doom wasn't bad (wasn't great either).
I kind of enjoyed the resident evil movies too. Again, not great.

The System Shocks/Bioshock might be pretty good if done right.
I think a Half Life movie would have promise too.

Creamy Goodness

Half life would have to be done really well considering your lead character doesn't have vocal chords.

seraphimvc

Rhyme wrote: »

Turok movie... it'd be pretty hard to f*ck it up.

Or Bomberman >_>

"In a world ripped apart by corporations and terrorism a man alone is left to restore the balance. A tragic... uh... cooking accident left him with the inability to walk diagonally and now he takes his rage to the battlefield with an infinite supply of high explosives, a motorcycle helmet and a pair of pink gloves. Join our eponymous hero as he explodes his way to freedom and bombs his way to peace. Coming to your local theatre this December."

lol rofl jesus,now i really wanna see a bomberman movie!!

tbh,Resident evil 1 is not bad at all.of course a comparative to thousands of sh!t game-to-movies...
ahye,they just wanna make something to squeeze our wallet,no quality controlled at all,i was surprise by mario tho,even nintendo would allow something like that happened:p

Doom made me laugh so hard back to that time,especially when the Rock turn to villain...seriously,why is a movie 's script can be that badly written ?

heard they are making castlevania,kinda exciting,but hope it wont gone too bad.
not expecting any game-to-movie really,all of the 'good' games have everything in the games already,nothing really can be added or expanded,look at MGS series...

Rhyme

Mr E wrote: »

Doom wasn't bad (wasn't great either).

True, kinda stuck with mediocrity really with some nice scenes here and there (the 1st person segment was really well done).

The bit with the BFG proves that a little fanservice can go a long way.

Retr0gamer

It's really just laziness and an unwillingness for studios to invest the money that would make a film that would do the game justice.

So far the best game to film we had was Silent Hill. It got the visuals perfect but the script and storyline were awful and completely missed the whole point and theme of the games.

Tomb Raider and Resident Evil really should have been very easy to do but the studios underestimated the audience they were selling to and what we got were awful juvenile movies for the young teen audience (even they wouldn't have been impressed). Low budgets didn't help either.

It's also got to do with the studios picking the most popular games to turn into films while not the games that would best suit the format. Whoever thought that a Mario movie would be great was eating too many power up mushrooms.

There's very few games with storylines that could neatly fit into a film. Tomb Raider should have been a brilliant indiana jones clone and I'd like for some one to do that some day or with an Uncharted film. Kojimas games have all basically been interactive movies with gameplay in between. Snatcher, Zone of the Enders, Policenauts or Metal Gear should make excellent films if handled well. Even a Halo film would be great if it didn't take itself too seriously which was a major problem with the second and third game.

I'd really like to see some longer games turned into TV series. Panzer Dragoon Saga has the strongest story of any videogame I've ever played and could be a really good TV series in conjunction with a talented special effects team that was just cutting there teeth in the industry. The only problem would be the wonderful ending that can only be as effective when told through the medium of videogames. Panzer Dragoon Orta is another wonderful story that would be easily tapped for a second series.

A few Final Fantasy games could easily be adapted in to decent TV series. FFVI has a very strong plot and the journey in FFX would be excellent since it deals with a lot of themes like racism and friendship and has a wonderful cast of brilliant characters. FFVII is too much of a mess to be turned into a TV series.

johnny_ultimate

Ive pretty much given up hoping for a good one. Silent Hill had its moments, but disappeared up it's own ass after the first half or so. What followed was indicipherable nonsense. Which was a shame, as the opening hour was extremely well handled.

All the others Ive seen have been vile stinkfests that generally have polluted my brain for hours after the respective closing credits rolled.

Prince of Persia is the only upcoming one that may be good. Stress on the may. It at least has a somewhat competent director (Mike Newell whose Goblet of Fire adaptation was at least passable if unspectacular) who seems to realise that all game movies thus far have been wretched puddles of vomit.

But yeah, that is the faintest of hopes, and as long as Hollywood executives continue to require masses of dollar bills to sniff cocaine off of and/or through, then the rubbish will continue to overflow, and the good reputations of our favourite games will continue to be soured.

conzy

I think shoddy movies being made into even shoddier games is worse !!!

Retr0gamer

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Prince of Persia is the only upcoming one that may be good. Stress on the may. It at least has a somewhat competent director (Mike Newell whose Goblet of Fire adaptation was at least passable if unspectacular) who seems to realise that all game movies thus far have been wretched puddles of vomit.

One of my mates also says he admits to never playing a game in his life. He has a PA playing it for him and relaying what it's about. Would it kill him to invest 8 hours into the work he is adopting. I'm sure he read Goblet of Fire before making it into a film.

I hope PoP is great. Sands of Time was a wonderful fairytale style growing up story that would really suit a film. I just hope he doesn't take any influence from warrior within.

Bubs101

Mortal Kombat is savage

projectmayhem

the main issue is that it's hard to re-write complete and utter crap. most game stories are absolute sh1te... but the gameplay and mechanics make up for it. you can't make up for a bad story by having cool puzzles and gunfights in a movie.

so when a script is written, the source material's usually drivel, so the film script is awful, because no respected screen writers are writing game adaptations. books is where the money is. on top of that, "good" game stories like half life and the like won't be made into film because the companies behind the games have a shred of respect for themselves.

even if you get a good script, the history of film adaptations of games is so bad you're unlikely to get a good director, DP and cast together. part of that is because studios don't really make much money off them so they won't pump money into the things.

Retr0gamer

Bubs101 wrote: »

Mortal Kombat is savage

And by savage you mean terrible.

Actually the Mortal Kombat film was decent enough. It was true to the original game. The Mortal Kombat series has always been a pretty poor fighting series that relied on the laughable gore to sell. A laughable story line and some very impressive fight sequences was all I really asked from it.

Ivan

Resident Evil 1 was very, very good.

But to answer the original question, I think it is safe to say that it is because the whole idea behind video game to movie conversions is to catch into a premade audience. As a result they dont see the need to invest large amounts of time, money and talent into developing the movie.

On top of this, producers/etc. tend to try to replicate what made the video game successful often failing miserably.

And doom... doom was just a joke

monkeyfudge

'Tron' and 'The Last Starfighter' are only decent video game movies... and they weren't even based on actual video games.

superfly

Right time to make a list of all the games that were made into films
i'll add
Mario Brothers
Alone in the dark
Dead or Alive
Dungeon Siege
Bloodrayne
Final Fantasy
House of the dead

seraphimvc

Rhyme wrote: »

True, kinda stuck with mediocrity really with some nice scenes here and there (the 1st person segment was really well done).

The bit with the BFG proves that a little fanservice can go a long way.

ahyes!although i think doom is a so so movie ,but love that FPS part!:D

reminds me of Final Fantasy Spirit Within...at least they show us just a sec of that yellow bird or piggy mouse?not even the crystal theme music...jesus!!!

Saruman

Well if there ever was to be a good one, it would have to be one of the good RPG games that have a solid story like Baldurs Gate, Planescape:Torment. Then again, how they would translate as a movie is anyone's guess... They would need to be Lord of the Rings Quality to work.

po0k

Cannon Fodder
BattleTech
C&C

Gingervitis

I think the simplest reason that film adaptations of games suck is that games are interactive, and the consumer can control (to a certain degree) what's going on. When you take that away from them, and just make them a passive spectator, so you're obviously gonna lose the fundamental reason that people bought the game in the first place! You don't interact with a book, so the transition is smoother.

CiDeRmAn

The Last Starfighter, man that was a great movie!
The first Resi Evil movie was great, the Tomb Raider films were awful, but then they themselves were based on a game that was itself a pale copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the control issues of Prince of Persia thrown in for good measure.
Silent Hill was, at least, a movie that tried to include as much of the feel of the games in its direction and photography, I would have rather seen a Sean Bean led version of Silent Hill 2 though, much better.
I suppose Metal Gear Solid would make a good movie, once they ditch the endless warbling of the games own cutscenes.
Wing Commander, there's a game with notions of cinema grandeur then made into a movie made of excrement, go fiigure.

A Katamari Damacy movie, nice!

Bioshock would make a cracking movie too.

Half Life 2, nope, bad movie, too much in the games to compress into 90 minutes, and Gordon talking? Why that'd be like Judge Dredd taking his helmet off..... Oh, feck, he did!

L31mr0d

I thought the Final Fantasy movie, advent children, was alright actually.

Also, I believe there is plans to make a Halo movie. I personally think Halo would make for a good movie as its storyline is so weak it work well condensed into 90 minutes.

Here's a good wiki page anyway for people looking to refresh their memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games

Kold

Well the average game has at least 12 hours of storyline in it. Movies are 1 1/2 hours. Then again some books have been made into incredible movies.. actually I can't think of any of my favourite movies being based on books... Bleh, format-crossing is a bit **** anyway, you're always going to lose something.

the Bomberman movie. Reminds me of someone's answer to a suggestion that bomberman would be in SSBBrawl "What would his moves be? B - lay bomb, Across B - lay bomb, Up B - Lay bomb, Final Smash - Lay huge bomb"

Hypnotoad

I hope they don't **** up metal gear solid.

seraphimvc

L31mr0d wrote: »

I thought the Final Fantasy movie, advent children, was alright actually.

Also, I believe there is plans to make a Halo movie. I personally think Halo would make for a good movie as its storyline is so weak it work well condensed into 90 minutes.

Here's a good wiki page anyway for people looking to refresh their memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games

ah,the paper men(the way they jump and fly completely break the rules in physic world)fighting movie?love that,very entertaining indeed!:Dand most importantly the very fanbased concept of that movie made me pay the bill.my Aeris,3 screen shots of you would be make the dvd worthy enough!:)

but Advent children is not a 'movie' really,kinda 'seriously made' for the FF anniversary thing i remember?and it is not showing in cinema.it is not an official so called film as Spirit Within.:cool:if they make advent children at that time instead of spirit within...

Retr0gamer

L31mr0d wrote: »

I thought the Final Fantasy movie, advent children, was alright actually.

Avent Children was an absolute disgrace. Rubbish storyline, characters changed completely, dead characters brought back for no reason other than being fan favourites and some visual gorgeous but utterly ridiculous battle sequences. Pure muck.

Varkov

I liked the mario movie.......:(

Anywho, the "Legacy of Kain" series would make a fantastic series of movies. Such a fantastic, deep story line, some of the most intresting, human characters (even though they're vampires), amazing voice acting, imagery, setting, lore.
Its basicly a movie mascquerading as a bloody great action adventure game,

Rhyme

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Avent Children <snip> Pure muck.

But polished to a mirror shine