Games To Film

iregk

There was a debate a while back about games to film notable brought on by the woeful Resident Evil and in discussion Halo.

That was all good then I came across this: http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/doom

Now Doom for its time was a class game that changed everything and you'll be hard pressed to find one person to say a bad word against it. But would doing this to it just destroy some feelings about it?

TheStrandRoads

I think we've all learned our lesson when it comes to movies based on video games by now i.e. Resident Evil like you said. They're simply not as entertaining as the games were when you first played through them.

So I don't think anybody will get their hopes up about Doom. One film I'm trying hard not to look forward to, as I don't want to be disappointed, is Silent Hill

jaggeh

considering they have butchered the storyline for doom i personally dont hold any hopes for it (plus the rock is in it so it auto-sucks)

NeVeR

there was also Tomb Raider, I thought the movie was ok,

Roar

i thought the resi films were ok.. mortal kombat was good enough...looking forward to silent hill, sean bean's in it so thats good enough for me.. how are they going to capture the atmosphere though?.. and there'd better be tons of fog..

max payne movie in the works, that game was pretty much a movie anyway so i cant see how they can fcuk that up.. no cast news yet..

christ i just shuddered just thinking about the Street Fighter film..

I enjoyed Tomb Raider as well, even though to be fair it was just to look at angelina..

ha ha mario brothers...

iregk

Tomb raider was brutal as well. But i agree jaggeh they have butchered the story line and also the rock as a leading cast member it doesn't hold too much credability already.

I dont there has ever been a really good game to film release has there?

Hopeless

Argh. I'm thinking Tomb Raider (useless!!!) and Final Fantasy which wasn't amazing.
Really hope this new one is better.

jaggeh

funnily enough tomb raider has the highest gross of all games>movies. it took in $120m
combined the 2 resi flicks took in $90m and final fantasy a meager $32m

The thing that drove the tombraider franchise was Angelina Jolie, without her and some decent enough supporting actors on the bill it wouldnt have made nearly as much.

The thing is studios are seeing the hits that comic franchises can become and are going to be employing the same model to games>movies, i think doom will be the last of the miserable failures with spy hunter in development aswell. the thing about spy hunter is there was never a real underlying story to the original game. and if they take that approach and write up a new fresh story it could be good.

madrab

Roar wrote:

i thought the resi films were ok.. mortal kombat was good enough...looking forward to silent hill, sean bean's in it so thats good enough for me.. how are they going to capture the atmosphere though?.. and there'd better be tons of fog..

good god sean bean, what a plank! sorry i just dont like him, especially because of every movie he is in, he plays a good guy but then double crosses the rest of the good guys, itw way too predictable, plus he is a plank

i liked the res evil movies, and the fact that yummy mila jovovich was in them didnt hurt

Vokes

Doom is after getting an R rating for the US market. What's that exactly? Over 17s?

RopeDrink

Final Fantasy

In fairness to it, they thankfully stayed well away from trying to remake plots from the games (As far as I know), although Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children (Upcoming Computer Animated Movie) looks bloody amazing, and just happens to be (hence the name) based on Final Fantasy 7.

'Hitman' is to be brought to the big screens. Vin Diesel will be playing the Agent, and is also in league with the Director. Looks like he now fancies himself as a bit of a film maker.

Deadwing

I actually liked FF spirits within, i guess im one of the few who did! I loved resi aswell, silly as it was it was just good fun. Anything directed by ewe boll should be avoided like a syphillitic whore with leprosy

jaggeh

RopeDrink wrote:

'Hitman' is to be brought to the big screens. Vin Diesel will be playing the Agent, and is also in league with the Director. Looks like he now fancies himself as a bit of a film maker.

i take that back doom might not be the last of the stinkers.

GreenHell

What about Alone in the Dark, I heard it smelled of neglect?

Ri_Nollaig

i just think the biggest problem is these games are fun but got either a storyline a 12yr old cud write or none at all which doesnt really make much of a film
i heard that deus ex was on the cards and that could change things and NOT directed by uwe boll (but havnt heard anything in awhile might b canned http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365118/)

TerrorFirmer

I've never seen a great game to movie adaption.

Watchable ones yes, crap ones yes, but never a truly good one. Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat - Should have been SO much better...

House of the dead and Street Fighter....ugh, dont even go there...

Necronomicon

GreenHell wrote:

What about Alone in the Dark, I heard it smelled of neglect?

Directed by Uwe Boll, nothing more needs to be said!

I liked the first Resi. While it didn't capture the feel of the game, it was fun to watch I thought. Didn't think too much of the second. I still have a soft-spot for the first Mortal Kombat too.

RopeDrink

Mortal Kombat - Fun to watch, the type of film that I don't think WOULD have succeeded if it tried any other story line. It maintained the games idea of 'The Tournament' had all the main characters slug it out with some corny lines and effects thrown in. Fun, but not one to remember.

Tomb Raider - I absolutely detested all Tomb Raider games, mainly due to the thought of it selling mainly because of it's character - And the size of her... Guns. Same thing applied to the movie, it was the 'character' that sold them. I only saw the first one, and found it painfully uninteresting.

Resident Evil - I liked the first one, even though I was dissapointed that it lacked the main characters of the games - That is, until, they incorporated some of them into Resident Evil 2 which, due to the success of the first, they were able to fork out more money on creating the typical FX'd up action movie. Everything was 'Five minutes of dialogue' then 'Twenty minutes of action' then 'Five minutes of dialogue' etc etc Which is ok if you can stomach it, but I hold little to no hope for Res3.

Doom, well, I had heard it doesn't follow the story of the game specifically, but it has the majority of it's elements. The Rock as a main character leaves it wide open to criticism even before it comes to the screen, however. Funnily enough, I liked quite a few of his films, but Idont think he has the capacity as of yet to hold a truely solid main character, then again the only thing solid about the main character of the doom games was to be able to give and take ridiculous amount of abuse from the enemy

As for house of the dead, the game was purely Resident Evil, without any real characters in it that you'd root for. How they're going to incorporate it to movie, I dont know (I assume they haven't made the movie yet?)

What we have to remember is that gaming now supercedes movies in the money taking stakes, so it's only natural for movie makers (Who most likely play games themselves) to try and blend the two together. Until something knocks gaming off the top spot, be sure that a lot more games will try their hand at the silver screen.

madrab

RopeDrink wrote:

Mortal Kombat - Fun to watch, the type of film that I don't think WOULD have succeeded if it tried any other story line. It maintained the games idea of 'The Tournament' had all the main characters slug it out with some corny lines and effects thrown in. Fun, but not one to remember.

Tomb Raider - I absolutely detested all Tomb Raider games, mainly due to the thought of it selling mainly because of it's character - And the size of her... Guns. Same thing applied to the movie, it was the 'character' that sold them. I only saw the first one, and found it painfully uninteresting.

Resident Evil - I liked the first one, even though I was dissapointed that it lacked the main characters of the games - That is, until, they incorporated some of them into Resident Evil 2 which, due to the success of the first, they were able to fork out more money on creating the typical FX'd up action movie. Everything was 'Five minutes of dialogue' then 'Twenty minutes of action' then 'Five minutes of dialogue' etc etc Which is ok if you can stomach it, but I hold little to no hope for Res3.

Doom, well, I had heard it doesn't follow the story of the game specifically, but it has the majority of it's elements. The Rock as a main character leaves it wide open to criticism even before it comes to the screen, however. Funnily enough, I liked quite a few of his films, but Idont think he has the capacity as of yet to hold a truely solid main character, then again the only thing solid about the main character of the doom games was to be able to give and take ridiculous amount of abuse from the enemy

As for house of the dead, the game was purely Resident Evil, without any real characters in it that you'd root for. How they're going to incorporate it to movie, I dont know (I assume they haven't made the movie yet?)

What we have to remember is that gaming now supercedes movies in the money taking stakes, so it's only natural for movie makers (Who most likely play games themselves) to try and blend the two together. Until something knocks gaming off the top spot, be sure that a lot more games will try their hand at the silver screen.

the rock isnt the main character of doom, which i think we can all agree is a good move (not that i dont enjoy the rocks movies, walking tall was fun)

dont mention house of the dead movie, its like mentioning diakatana in a crowd of people that enjoy computer games!

jaggeh

KILL HIM HE SAID THE D WORD!!!!!!

the rock has a cameo as Sarge........... sigh.

1huge1

loved the first resident evil movie and the 2nd one was ok, my fave video game movie was probably street fighter and i loved the mario bros film when i was younger

jaggeh

1huge1 wrote:

loved the first resident evil movie and the 2nd one was ok, my fave video game movie was probably street fighter and i loved the mario bros film when i was younger

one of two things are possible
1. you are young and havent formed any real opinions yet.
2. you are crazy in which case what you say cant be trusted.

street fighter was a travesty and mario brothers?????? wtf

Hercule

I thought Street Fighter was dire - The makers obviously decided to go without a plot so they could get all these outlandish characters into the one film - Try the Street Fighter anime if you want a decent taste of a Street Fighter Film action.

As I mentioned in the "Mortal Kombat geting a sequel!" topic. Mortal Kombat was also piss-poor but was saved by one of the greatest theme songs ever. I recommend playing mortal kombat games emulated with the soundtrack on full blast - it improves the gameplay tenfold when playing with a crazyass house beat in the background.

RopeDrink

The rock playing a cameo as Sarge... I honestly don't know what to say in response to that...

The Mortal Kombat sequel movie was utterly disasterous, regardless of how you compare it to the first one. It was made in B-Movie style, with B-Movie actors and can often be seen amidst the other collection of B-Movies played on the Sci-Fi channel. Even if it remained remotely similar to the first, with a little more effort, it might have been ok at best, but once I saw the stop frame animation on Liu-Kang v Shao Khan I started retching.

Without going into a Van Damme bash, there's few films out there starring him that are much good. Its a matter of taste, like Arnie's One Man Army films, or Stallones similar style coupled with his invincible Rocky movies...

Street Fighter film, naff, Street Fighter animated movie, well worth seeing.

Resident Evil is solely for the fans, and that certainly doesn't bode well for the hardcore Resident Evil players, because the films are also 'OK' at best.

We will one day (I sincerely hope) come across a game converted movie that will awe us all because, at this point in time, game converted into movies are going to be reletively common until gaming (as I said) is knocked off the big takers list (Which will never happen).

steviec

My money's on Advent Children to be the first great video game movie, if that counts. I hope they don't mess it up anyway!

What other games would people like to see made into a movie? Off the top of my head I can think of Broken Sword, Fallout, Suikoden(ok so thats already based off a book I think). Oh and Worms

Dont be at yourself

RopeDrink wrote:

'Hitman' is to be brought to the big screens. Vin Diesel will be playing the Agent, and is also in league with the Director. Looks like he now fancies himself as a bit of a film maker.

Vin Diesel has written, directed, produced and starred in films as far back as 1997. He's not the musclebound moron he's ofen portrayed as. Still looks like the wrong choice for Agent 47 though.

As for people moaning about The Rock having the lead role in Doom? It's going to be a dumb action film, based on a dumb action game. He's perfect for it.

Hercule

I think Metal Gear Solid or Max Payne would be quite well done as films considering how much like films they already are but id say a LOTR style Warcraft film would be the best bet for actually being good I heard rumours about counter-strike and wolfenstein films a long time ago but i doubt that these will:
a.ever happen.
b.be good.

oh and i think the ultimate game-to-film conversion would be a monty python scripted or a spaced scripted MONKEY ISLAND! (or maybe space quest?)

Pugsley

MobileInfantry wrote:

I've never seen a great game to movie adaption.

Watchable ones yes, crap ones yes, but never a truly good one. Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat - Should have been SO much better...

House of the dead and Street Fighter....ugh, dont even go there...

To be fair, the Street Fighter animated movie was simply brilliant, the Sreet Fighter Alpha film was also very much worth seeing. The Final Fight film wasnt too shabby either. Granted all 3 mentioned were anime, but good games films do exsist!

RopeDrink

I had read that Vin Diesel (From his Saving Private Ryan profile) had been working on projects and small films, and I certainly didn't portray him as a muscle bound idiot. My point is, his talent aside, that I really don't think he's the right bloke for the Hitman Film.

Advent Children

I've watched, and re-watched, it's trailer. It ends with the infamous Sephiroth wading through a wall of flame, just like the game. I was immediately captured by that 5 second scene, and HAVE to see it. I didn't think the first Final Fantasy movie was all that bad, it just felt as if these 'Spirits' weren't really threatening (Regardless of the fact they do kill people) they had no personality or anything, just this floating goop spirit rubbish that took peoples souls. It wasn't as intriguing as any of the Final Fantasy stories go.

As for Advent Children, I'm going to give it a wide birth and an open mind. Afterall, if they even try to convert portions of the FF7 game plotline, they're going to need their socks pulled up to pull it off, even in animation. Hope it turns out well, had the trailer for ages now and still not a mention of how it's going.

sprinkles

He was great in Equilibrium. He's a good actor imo and I loved him in LOTR, although I just loved the character.

Game films.....I'm looking forward to Halo, just because there is a lot of money invloved and potentially a lot of sequels if they get it right, Doom looks good and I quite like the Rock. He's def the best action hero out there at the moment although to be fait I can't think of another one so he hasn't got much competition.

Mario stank. Resi 1 was ok but could have been a lot better. Final Fantasy was ok. Tomb Raider was kak except for the shower scene :-)

Can't wait for "Monkey Ball: the movie".....if only

IceHawk

I'd normally hate any film the rock is in, but he's pretty perfect for the Doom role. Apparrently the change to the storyline is that instead of coming from Hell, the invaders come from another dimension, so as not to upset touchy religious types. Anyway, the doom games always tried to minimise plot in favour of gameplay, so the plot shouldn't be a huge part of the film. I'd expect to see many more huge action sequences than touching scenes on the futility of war.

johnny_ultimate

Best video game film : Resi Evil for that scene where ye man gets chopped up by the laser grid thingie. Which bumped the film in my books from a 1/10 to a 2/10 ;-)

But i remember thouroughly enjoying Final Fantasy as a young lad, mainly because i worshipped the series. Dont know if id have the same experience watching it today... Advent Children should be good. SHOULD.

And the games that COULD make good films : Max Payne, deffo. Kinda like Sin City id say. A good Zelda film is imaginable. But mostly, games dont belong in Hollywood.

Waltons

At least for Hitman we get to see Vin Diesel with a barcode on his head. That's got to be worth something?
I was kinda hoping that the Doom film would be more of a horror type than a blast em all action type but my hopes for that were dashed when I saw the trailers. Ah well, maybe Advent Children will make up for them all.

Prior Of Taize

RopeDrink wrote:

'Hitman' is to be brought to the big screens. Vin Diesel will be playing the Agent.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Sand

Game to movies suck balls cos games have frick all plot. Theyre effectively designed for juveniles who are more interested in game mechanics and graphics than plot development. Even Deus Ex had a frankly ridiculous B movie plot. At best you get a cut scene explaining what you have to do, your plonked in a level with a variety of AI moving targets and a maybe a platformer puzzle or two and thats it. No character interaction or development, little in the way of moral undertone other than "Big guns solve all lifes problems!"

Most game plots are basically ripped off from bad movies to begin with. Evil scientists/the man/whoever in a dystoian dark future are up to no good, everythings gone to hell and now a one man army is looking for justice/veangence/blah. The Doom series - One man, a lot of guns and demons from hell doesnt exactly translate into something as significant as Schindlers List. Its going to be one of those generic "elite squad versus numberous baddies, everyone dies except our hero", if youve seen Aliens, John Carpenters Ghosts of Mars or even Resident Evil then youve seen the Doom movie. All that will change is the actors involved.

Even games that might translate into a half decent movie - like GTA for example are ripoffs of various gangster movies. RPGs might actually offer a semi decent plot, like Baldurs Gate, but they dont have the name recognition.

Cravez

madrab wrote:

the rock isnt the main character of doom, which i think we can all agree is a good move (not that i dont enjoy the rocks movies, walking tall was fun)

I think the main character for the DOOM movie is the character who plays Eomer in Lord of the Rings ( Nephew of Theodan ), he is also in the Chronicles of Riddick movie and the Bourne Supremecy. I think his name is Karl Uban

Prior Of Taize

they should have used Bruce Campbell

humanji

And there's a Splinter Cell film in the works. Weird actually, the script was bought a couple of days ago, yet there is a teaser trailer on the Chaos Theory dvd!

And brace yourselves for the crapfest that will be Uwe Bolls renditions of Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning, Fear Effect, Dungeon Seige and Bloodrayne. Maybe he actually hates computer games, and he's trying to put us off them the only way he can?

johnny_ultimate

Prior Of Taize wrote:

they should have used Bruce Campbell

They should use Bruce Campbell for everything

madrab

sprinkles wrote:

He was great in Equilibrium. He's a good actor imo and I loved him in LOTR, although I just loved the character.

still a type cast, boring plank though

RopeDrink

Best video game film : Resi Evil for that scene where ye man gets chopped up by the laser grid thingie. Which bumped the film in my books from a 1/10 to a 2/10 ;-)

And it happened to be a scene ripped off from an earlier, and far superior film, named 'Cube' my utmost favourite. Fair enough, they weren't laser beams, but it was certainly a dicey scene indeed (Excuse the pun)

Game to movies suck balls cos games have frick all plot. Theyre effectively designed for juveniles who are more interested in game mechanics and graphics than plot development. Even Deus Ex had a frankly ridiculous B movie plot. At best you get a cut scene explaining what you have to do, your plonked in a level with a variety of AI moving targets and a maybe a platformer puzzle or two and thats it. No character interaction or development, little in the way of moral undertone other than "Big guns solve all lifes problems!"

Even games that might translate into a half decent movie - like GTA for example are ripoffs of various gangster movies

First you rant about how most games & game related movies have absolutely no plot line, then you state that a game like GTA (One of the most fabled for having **** all plot line mainly because it's pointless, seeing as the player is most likely going to simply mow people over for the length of time they play it) is more worthy of a film. Thats laughable. If you honestly think all game plots are the same... Well, I don't know what to say to you.

There are only so many genre's of games out there, and the same can be said about films, so dont bias your opinion against games when film suffers the exact same fate as games. Not all 'movies' are different either, the majority of them contain the exact same elements as those listed in your rant against games.

Games are made for entertainment, just like films, although games allows you to control the action, so why would anyone want to make a game that you just watch when you can take the main character and throw his/her/it's weight around? There are quite a few games out there that manage to do this along with gripping plot lines. You obviously haven't come across any yet.

This is one of the problems with Games to Movies. If you are a fan of the game you can almost be assured that whomever decided to recreate the game into the film will attempt to add their little touches to it, rather than sticking to the plot line of the game. In the first Resident Evil, I loved the whole mansion thing, and none of the characters (bar a bit of related dialogue at the end) had any real idea about the Umbrella Corporation. In the film, however, therein exists a 'Hive' (Not present in the first game) where a bunch of non-game related characters had to go searching through, which also just happened to become swamped by this virus.

Now, what I hated was the fact that they didn't bother with any of the game characters until they racked up cash from the success of the first one. If they had made the first film based properly on the first game, they would have raked in a lot more, and would have probably come up with an overall more entertaining film which would please the fans.

When they did incorporate any of the game characters (ie Res 2) it was in a souped up, money wasted, FX fest that gave no depth to any of the characters and focused of beat down, which tainted my view of the films.

Resident Evil, despite the amount of action it had, was not an Action game, it was a horror, and thats something that the film makers seem to have forgotten, or ignored, in the process of tolling in how much cash they made from the franchise.

This, sadly, in some shape or form, will most likely be the case for most game to movies, mainly because, at the end of the day, games and films are made to make money, not to stay true to the origins.

jaggeh

johnny_ultimate wrote:

They should use Bruce Campbell for everything

Bruce cambell for god!!!!

Retr0gamer

I think that they are making the wrong games into films. Games to be made into films are choosen on how popular they are even though they all had ridiculous plots to begin with. However not all games have cliche stories. RPG's usually have excellent stories. However some are quite abstract and wouldn't lend themselves well to the big screen. Most audiences wouldn't get the meaning behind something like Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears. They are also quite long. Something like Panzer Dragoon Saga or Orta would be great for a mini series. Suikoden 2 has an excellent story with plenty of large scale battles and could easily be a successful series as well. There are also a lot of action games that focus on plot as much as action that would make excellent action films. Hideo Kojimas work such as Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid would be easy to make a film of since they are almost imteractive films. Max Payne would also translate well into a film if some of the cliche story elements were taken out.

I think Hollywood is waiting for the first successful Game to Film adaptation just like it did with the comic book adaptations before it will commit. Before that happens we will have have numerous Paul W.S. 'bad film' Anderson and Uwe Boll abominations.

Deadwing

Retr0gamer wrote:

I think that they are making the wrong games into films. Games to be made into films are choosen on how popular they are even though they all had ridiculous plots to begin with. However not all games have cliche stories. RPG's usually have excellent stories. However some are quite abstract and wouldn't lend themselves well to the big screen. Most audiences wouldn't get the meaning behind something like Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears. They are also quite long. Something like Panzer Dragoon Saga or Orta would be great for a mini series. Suikoden 2 has an excellent story with plenty of large scale battles and could easily be a successful series as well. There are also a lot of action games that focus on plot as much as action that would make excellent action films. Hideo Kojimas work such as Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid would be easy to make a film of since they are almost imteractive films. Max Payne would also translate well into a film if some of the cliche story elements were taken out.

I think Hollywood is waiting for the first successful Game to Film adaptation just like it did with the comic book adaptations before it will commit. Before that happens we will have have numerous Paul W.S. 'bad film' Anderson and Uwe Boll abominations.

Intreresting fact: Uwe Boll has some kind of legal loophole whereby he still gets paid big bucks for making a flop movie. This is actually true. Its explained better in his wiki entry, which is a surprisingly entertaining read, probably the only entertaining thing ever connected with him.

Retr0gamer

I read that as well. He has a book published on how to exploit it, something like 'How to make a movie in Germany'.

Cravez

Prior Of Taize wrote:

they should have used Bruce Campbell

I was actually just thinking that!

Bruce Campbell in Bubba ho-tep wrote:

Whats he doing writing Egyptian on the **** house wall?

Classic!

Necronomicon

Deadwing wrote:

Intreresting fact: Uwe Boll has some kind of legal loophole whereby he still gets paid big bucks for making a flop movie. This is actually true. Its explained better in his wiki entry, which is a surprisingly entertaining read, probably the only entertaining thing ever connected with him.

:eek: If that's the case he must be a multi-billionare by now!

CiDeRmAn

I reckon Manic Miner, hell you already have 2 sequels, Jet Set Willy and Jet Set Willy 2, you could make it an adult feature with Ron Jeremy as Miner Willy, or should that be Minor Willy, Ha Ha.

Mums right, I really should go out more!

Wouldn't mind seeing Eternal Darkness from the GC being made into a movie, that was pretty good, with a decent Lovecraft style plot.