AC movie trailer and video game based movies

[Soul of Cinder]

Ranting:
After watching the Trailer for the Assassins Creed Movie Im still upset. The trailer looks horrible, the dialogue in it was atrocious, the whole trailer looked like one of these forgettable B-movies that flood cinemas nowadays.

Which brings me to the topic of movies based on videogames.
Im pretty sure that they are part of why videogames are often looked down on by people that don?t play, with good reason: I have so far not seen one acceptable movie video game adaptation.
You just can?t bring across the story/character that a videogame tells in 10, 20, 50 or even 100 hours of gameplay. If you want to squeeze all of this into 2-3h, you are inevitably going to get something thats a filtrate lacking of all what made the game great.
You take away story development, the players bond to the character and the fun of the gameplay. Or of just messing around in open-world games (Which AC is great at).

Movies based on old and established franchises such as Tomb Raider, resident Evil and Prince of Persia (or wasnt there even a Halo movie?) just play on selling due to the popularity and "nostalgia" among gamers. But they don?t seem to aim to actually make bearable movies.
I hope that sooner or later directors will realise that butchering games through movie adaptations is a shame.
Both types of media can be great if you let them, and they are so distinctive that basing one on the other usually just produces (in the best case) something mediocre.*
Now all I as a fan of story driven games can hope for is that my favourites will stay games and get the chance to shine with sequels instead of desperately trying to become somethoing else.
Enough upset rant for today.
*Videogames based on movies are often hardly any better...

EDIT: I want to clarify that I do not deem AC as the pinnacle of storytelling, however it had potential to become really good if they hadn?t released AC3-Syndicate (and origins)....

 

[Diablo2000]

Looked OK to me.

I mean, the music was awful (seriously, what were they thinking?) and it didn't show much of the past plot aside from a few parkour and action scenes. But the visuals are amazing and the action that they showed looked good, if someone edited the trailer with "generic epic music 198#" instead of rap we got it would improve the trailer 200%.

 

[Soul of Cinder]

Looked OK to me.

I mean, the music was awful (seriously, what were they thinking?) and it didn't show much of the past plot aside from a few parkour and action scenes. But the visuals are amazing and the action that they showed looked good, if someone edited the trailer with "generic epic music 198#" instead of rap we got it would improve the trailer 200%.

That is true, the music was a horrible choice xD However i also feel like the movie will be composed of 89% action scens, one sex scene and some "introduction" to the story line read aloud from a sheet of paper. And what happened to the animus? Was that a giant arm?!

 

[Zhukov]

The trailer looks horrible, the dialogue in it was atrocious, the whole trailer looked like one of these forgettable B-movies that flood cinemas nowadays.

Considering that the vast majority of video games, including Assassin's Creed, look like forgettable B-movies at best, I'd say they just about nailed it.

You just can?t bring across the story/character that a videogame tells in 10, 20, 50 or even 100 hours of gameplay. If you want to squeeze all of this into 2-3h, you are inevitably going to get something thats a filtrate lacking of all what made the game great.
You take away story development, the players bond to the character and the fun of the gameplay. Or of just messing around in open-world games (Which AC is great at).

How many games have 10-100 hours of storytelling though? I can think of a few, but they're rare.

Most games have maybe 4 hours of shit dialogue and stilted cutscenes smothered in repetitive action and busywork. And then the Mighty Nonspecific Savior of Legend stabbed another wolf for 11 damage. The wolf died and the mighty savior got 5XP and a wolf skin! Meanwhile Bland Herioc Soldierman shot another Russian! Storytelling!

There's nothing stopping a good screenwriter from taking the core of a good game story and putting it on the big screen. Except the core story of most games is shit, so there's nothing there for our theoretical screenwriter to use.

A lot of game stories are already simplistic imitations of crappy movies. So when you take that and try to turn it back into a movie it shouldn't come as a surprise when you end up with a pile of corny, unimaginative garbage.

 

[Soul of Cinder]

@Zhukov
Well, indeed, AC has really run downhill after Reveleations... 4 was ok but the rest not. However the first few games weren?t half bad and the conflict in them could have developed into something really interesting. I?m just saying that the trailer looks a hundred times worse than the franchise ever was.

I love your descriptiopn there, its really nails a the approach to "storytelling" of many games.

But a lot of RPGs are quite expansive, take long to finish and have atleast "good" stories. I?m playing through The Witcher 3 at the moment, and the thought of someone trying to make a movie out of it ... shudders. There are those games that are shining examples of storytelling as they are, and I think it?s just sad when the few good to excellent ones are turned into a bubling pile of movie muck.
This is what I hope won?t happen.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Looked OK to me.

I mean, the music was awful (seriously, what were they thinking?) and it didn't show much of the past plot aside from a few parkour and action scenes. But the visuals are amazing and the action that they showed looked good, if someone edited the trailer with "generic epic music 198#" instead of rap we got it would improve the trailer 200%.

That is true, the music was a horrible choice xD However i also feel like the movie will be composed of 89% action scens, one sex scene and some "introduction" to the story line read aloud from a sheet of paper. And what happened to the animus? Was that a giant arm?!

Add another one to the "trailer was alright, music choice could have been better" pile.
And yeah, it was a giant robot arm, I thought it was for training but the editing of the trailer makes it seem like it's the animus. Someone in the comments said that in the game, the bleeding effect was explained to us through exposition, this robot arm is a nice visual way to explain how he can learn through the animus, I didn't think about it that way at first, I like that.

Anyway.

Like I said, it looked alright. My friend's going to see it because he's a hug Michael Fassbender fan but he's never played an Assassin's Creed game in his life and I'm a weary but still chuggin' AC fan with really no strong feelings for Fassbender; I feel like we're going to enjoy and dislike different things about this movie.

I like the Spanish Inquisition setting, it's not just a re-hash of the game, they have the freedom to tell their own story, I think that's a good thing.

I kinda hope the present-day story follows the same sort of story flow as the first Assassin's Creed. You knew the guys who have you aren't good dudes but the reveal that they're Templars, a literally ancient organization that generations of your bloodline has fought to end, that was a pretty intense reveal. And the slow realization that you're not going to be leaving when they're done with you, and they're slowly getting less and less subtle about it, I thought it was good story-telling, I wouldn't mind seeing it in movie form.

Last thoughts, oh my goodness, the comments are hilarious.
"I'll wait till they fix the bugs and glitches before i watch this movie."
"knowing i have to go through Uplay for this dampens the mood."

That's good stuff.

 

[The Purple Grape]

So the generic AAA gaming industry makes a generic movie. I want it to be good as AssCreed has the best plot device for a film set in the universe with the Animus. That said the medieval look so generic considering they could go anywhere in history. But since Marvel are still making films generic is the thing. Still don't get why people want film adaptations of games but each to their own.

Best film adaptation is Ace Attorney although not accurate, the judge has hair, so still room for improvement. Better than Law & Order as it has Phoenix hadouken the hologram of the evidence at Gumshoe. And Edgeworth.

Also hope Warcraft is good but it could go either way at the mo.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Movies based on games suck because the stories of most games suck. Very few game devs value story as a major part of their game design, and the game based movies that get made tend to be based on popular games, rather than games with great stories. There are games with great stories that could carry a movie, but they tend not to be the high profile ones.

 

[Soul of Cinder]

Movies based on games suck because the stories of most games suck. Very few game devs value story as a major part of their game design, and the game based movies that get made tend to be based on popular games, rather than games with great stories. There are games with great stories that could carry a movie, but they tend not to be the high profile ones.

I think this is a really important point, too.

Last thoughts, oh my goodness, the comments are hilarious.
"I'll wait till they fix the bugs and glitches before i watch this movie."
"knowing i have to go through Uplay for this dampens the mood."

That's good stuff.

I saw something along the lines of "will we see the protagonist collect animus fragments for hours on end" aswell xD The comments are pretty hilarious, what a movie that would be to watch



Well i have to agree that atleast they try to

 

[Saelune]

I like that its its own new plot supposedly set in the game's universe. I think more game movies should do that instead. A good Hitman movie should be another mission or missions of 47...though they should be thrillers not action movies.

I doubt I will see this, but its better than them botching AC1's plot.

 

[Kyrian007]

It can be done. But traditional movie houses can't make them, and production companies won't throw much money at one (not much more than getting the license really.) But we know it can be done. The way to do it is take a game's world and tell a tangent story, away from the plotline of the game. Because (as has been discussed) the pacing and story structure is completely different for a game and a movie. I guess that means a sequel or prequel with the main characters could work too. If you do the main plot, you have to change it quite a lot... while making sure you are staying true to the spirit of what the story is (and that's the difficult part.)

Hollywood's never done it right, but I've seen it done well online. There Will be Brawl, the first season of Mortal Kombat Rebirth, Fallout Nuka Break, Street Fighter Assassin's Fist... it can be done right.

 

[CritialGaming]

I think the biggest problem with most video game adaptations, is that they are made by people and filmmakers simply trying to capitalize on the branding. They don't know the source material and they don't care about the source material, often learning just enough to kinda make a movie story around it.

In order for a big video game movie film to be good, it needs a core group of people that really care and know about the source material. Namely the director, writer, and producers all need to really know the game and what makes it tick. Only then can they come together and make a movie that is a good representation of the game it comes from.

That is exactly why a lot of the internet series and fan made things are so good. THEY'RE FANS! They know these games inside and out and they have pour hours into a game that they love. In return, they know what would make a good film adaptation, because they know what and how they would want to see these games brought to life.

Hollywood doesn't give a shit. They just want to make a quick buck of a identifiable license.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Positives: It looked genuine, the scenery, the acting, the weapons, the parkour, and the famous Assassin leap of faith being delivered on a cliffhanger. Whoever is behind of this definitely knows the game, unlike Uwe Boll and the other directors of video game movies.
Negatives: They had to set up the entire premise completely in exposition, AC is not hard to follow, but they used a few sentences too many 'show, don't tell'. The music was atrocious, not because it's Kanye West or it's a bad song, it's because in a history setting, things like this break the immersion, BUT that also hapenned in the Peanuts movie, where they got music just for the trailer, maybe it's the case, but we'll see.

On the subject of video game movies I'll get the two most recent examples: Ratchet & Clank and Angry Birds.
Angry Birds was a little more successful because it was marketed to those people who like Despicable Me or those Blue Sky Studios movies, people who like a 7/10 movie to not get so invested by getting a few laughs, but have some genuine good moments. And even thought it's 4 years too late, the movie still captures the premise of Birds v Pigs: Dawn of Slingshot that was exactly what many were expecting to see fans and not fans.
Ratchet & Clank's marketing was poor, I remember seeing a trailer for it a few months ago, but never heard of it again (thought it was a concept that made its way onto a trailer like Sly Cooper), the only reason I remembered was when the game was already out and many movie critics reviewed it, but since I thought they were refering to the game as they have the same name, I skipped those because I do not mind R&C at all. Then onto the movie itself, that usually applies to most Video game movies, that universe has an entire lore and characters that need to be estabilished, but unlike a VG there is a limited time for those things to happen, it's not trading on imagery and referenes only the fans will get, it's creating something the non fans can relate. That's usually the biggest obstacle, make it relatable to everyone, without looking like the blandest story ever.

 

[happyninja42]

Looked OK to me.

I mean, the music was awful (seriously, what were they thinking?) and it didn't show much of the past plot aside from a few parkour and action scenes. But the visuals are amazing and the action that they showed looked good, if someone edited the trailer with "generic epic music 198#" instead of rap we got it would improve the trailer 200%.

That is true, the music was a horrible choice xD However i also feel like the movie will be composed of 89% action scens, one sex scene and some "introduction" to the story line read aloud from a sheet of paper. And what happened to the animus? Was that a giant arm?!

Yeah, the music was blech, but the trailer was decent. As to the Animus, I kind of like the change. I think they are going more for a brain/body synergy system, instead of just having him laying there like a lump. Most likely, because they are going to end the movie with how they started AC 2, with him escaping. And they're going to use the justifcation of "he's actually been replicating the Assassin moves and attacks in real life, so he's going to be prepared to escape on his own."

Sort of a muscle memory thing. "You put me into this Assassin simulator for 5 months, working me day and night to synchronize with my ancestors combat abilities..." *breaks out of restraints, stabs guards to either side of him, parkours over the desk and grabs the Abstergo agent by the throat* "It worked..." *stabs them with wrist blade, and then runs off through the facility in tense escape scene* I mean hell, they actually put wrist blades on him in the simulator. You just KNOW he's going to actually use those on Abstergo at some point.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Looking back, I don't think there's been a single good video game movie. Resident Evil 1 and 2 were so bad they were fun to watch, but they're terrible films with only the thinnest, wettest, most-see-through flimsy table cloth veneer of having anything to do with the games. All the others were absolute garbage when they came out, and now they're rotting festering decade old garbage.

But maybe that's the problem? Video Game stories are two or three times the length of a normal movie, so you have to cut almost all of it to fit the 15-20 mins of wise old mentor explaining the plot of the movie an hour in we get in B action movies.
And try explaining Bioshock Infinite in a satisfying way to its rabid fans in less than 5 hours.

Wing Commander was pretty good I guess...

 

[Chanticoblues]

I don't know if I buy the length argument. Films have been successfully adapting novels for ages; which are comparative to the length of time video games occupy. Not only this, but a lot of novels are far denser in a storytelling sense than any game I can think of. If Proust and Joyce has been successfully adapted I see no reason why any popular game property couldn't be.

I think the problem comes down to the creative forces behind these video game adaptations. Most of the time they aren't very talented because the brand recognition is enough to get people into the theaters. Even if there are halfway talented people working on these films (like Jones or Kurzel), I would be surprised if they were behind it for any reason other than a fat paycheck. These aren't passion projects.

 

[Zombie Proof]

The Scott Pilgrim movie stands in stark contrast to the OP's point of why videogame movies fail. It was brilliant. Not only did it stand on it's own two feet, but it was one of the few movies to use videogame storytelling vernacular in a way that enhanced the narrative beats instead of feeling shoehorned in.

Videogame's are still our youngest storytelling medium and as such there are very few directors and screenwriters who understand how to translate the essence of what makes games great into a competent movie (the scott pilgrim director obviously gets it). I don't know what the timeline would be like for when directors who grew up on games will start making more movies but the timeline for quality comic book movies would probably make for a great reference. Comic book movies were atrocious until the filmakers who grew up on the source material started getting behind the camera. I have no reason to believe that games won't work the same way.

Chill and wait for more hotness to come along the lines of what Scott Pilgrim was able to deliver or jumpstart the process by lending your own storytelling abilities towards the medium OP.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Wasn't Scott Pilgrim a comic book first before it was a game or a movie?

 

[Zombie Proof]

Yup, It was a comic first, then a game, then a flick.