Discussion: Game to Film Adaptation

[Thaius]

One of the more interesting examples of adaptation from video games to film recently was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Mainly in that it was generally agreed to be a decent action flick (a rare dignity for a film based on a video game) despite taking very little of its plot from the game on which it is theoretically based.

This is a common happening in the world of adaptation from video games; for one reason or another, the plot of the source material is given little to no consideration. Some characters, concepts, or locations may be used, but that's generally the extent of it. In the best case, the film tells a completely different story within the established universe of the game. There are a few exceptions, such as Advent Children (a direct sequel to Final Fantasy VII) or one of the many anime shows based on visual novels, but they're all Japanese and very specific to a few examples.

Regardless of the question of quality, something is off about this. Books don't get that treatment, nor do stageplays. When it was announced that Peter Jackson would be making a film based on The Lord of the Rings, no one thought, "Maybe he'll tell a new, original story taking place in Middle Earth!" Of course not, because that wouldn't even be an adaptation. That would have been stupid. Nor would anyone expect an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V to actually be a story from Falstaff's childhood. And yet in video games this is common, if not simply the established way of doing things. That's not okay, and if we want good films based on video games, we need to fix this attitude. But what attitude is it, exactly?

I think I've figured it out. The strongest illustration is a statement by Jordan Mechner regarding the aforementioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time:

"Rather than do a straight beat-for-beat adaptation of the new videogame, we're taking some cool elements from the game and using them to craft a new story - much as 'Pirates' [of the Caribbean] did with the theme park ride."

Note the active comparison here. Based on this statement, the video game inspiration for the film is similar to a theme park ride. Theme park rides, of course, have little to no story, instead focusing simply on delivering an exciting experience through visuals, sound, and movement.

So in the case of this film, the filmmakers were not adapting a story, they were adapting a game. And that was certainly evidenced by the film itself; the Prince's acrobatic skill came into play quite often. The movie embraced the gameplay concepts of the game, but only took a few key elements of the story, which did not include even the basic plot.

But I think this is the problem that is generally faced with films based on video games; they are not perceived as artworks and stories, but as games and rides. And unfortunately, this has caused a lot of people to needlessly give up on the idea that these adaptations can even be any good at all. It can; there's no question about that. But I don't think it will happen until people start actually trying to adapt the story of a game instead of taking some gameplay concepts and a few plot devices and slapping a trademarked name on their original creation.

TL;DR - I think the biggest problem faced by game-to-film adaptation is the attitude that the source material is a game rather than a story told through gameplay.

Any thoughts? Is this a valid observation? What do you think is the biggest problem facing films based on video games?

EDIT: Let's specify something. I'm not saying all films based on video games should be direct adaptations of the game's story, though it would be nice to see more of that (I'm psyched for the Phoenix Wright film for that reason). I am saying that a movie based on a video game should be made out of respect for the source material as an artwork instead of just making a movie based around the game's basic concepts as though it were just a themed plaything.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Well books and plays thats all they can do, we know exactly what Gandalf did, we know how the Hobbits got to Mordor, etc. Its very straightforward, its similar to films, the story is the focus, so its not to hard to translate words on page into film.
Games are tricky though because their method of storytelling is different, in a lot of games we learn crucial information during gameplay so there's no way of telling what the player would have been doing. Unless the adaption is something like Heavy Rain then a full on story adaption isnt possible (Or shouldnt be) simply because the player character on screen could be nothing like "our" player character

 

[sean360h]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

This is actually why the Silent Hill movie was fairly decent, as far as game-to-movie adaptations go. It was only very loosely based on the first game.

It's a very divisive film for fans of the games (some love it, some hate it, you know how it goes...the reason for both opinions almost always being how different it was from the game), but as a film standing on its own two feet, it wasn't bad at all.

Trying to adapt something interactive into something not interactive is very difficult. Which is why it's almost always best to not adapt it at all, but instead to be inspired by it.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

The Fight Club movie is almost universally considered to be better than the book it was based on.

 

[Shirastro]

I think one of the problems is the fact that most of the things we consider "normal" in games are just ridiculous in a movie.

I'm looking at you Mario movie.

Also i think directors make one of these two mistakes.
They either try to duplicate the game world to much and end up with something really silly, or they stray too much so that the end result has little to do with the game.

 

[sean360h]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

The Fight Club movie is almost universally considered to be better than the book it was based on.

I have never see it so I cant really say anything about it but then i avoid most adaptations just in case they spoil original for me (I am looking at you halo the fall of reach)

 

[Thaius]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

Someone already brought up Fight Club, and now I'm going to bring out that Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made, is based on a pretty crappy and never-performed stageplay.

 

[sean360h]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

Someone already brought up Fight Club, and now I'm going to bring out that Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made, is based on a pretty crappy and never-performed stageplay.

Ok I think you got me with that one I never knew it was a play wow

 

[Thaius]

Well books and plays thats all they can do, we know exactly what Gandalf did, we know how the Hobbits got to Mordor, etc. Its very straightforward, its similar to films, the story is the focus, so its not to hard to translate words on page into film.
Games are tricky though because their method of storytelling is different, in a lot of games we learn crucial information during gameplay so there's no way of telling what the player would have been doing. Unless the adaption is something like Heavy Rain then a full on story adaption isnt possible (Or shouldnt be) simply because the player character on screen could be nothing like "our" player character

I'd disagree with that. I don't see what about the storytelling style of video games makes the stories impossible to adapt. All film does is eliminate the element of gameplay, but there's nothing that Cortana says during Halo that couldn't be said in the action scene representative of that gameplay segment. The element of interactivity would be eliminated, but that does not eliminate the ability to portray the events the player went through.

Am I missing something in what you said?

 

[ResonanceGames]

This interview talks a lot about what needs to be done to make a good adaptation:
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-interviews-9-guillermo-del-toro-part-1/

I think the main problem right now is the same one that faces adaptations of anything (except maybe novels), which is that movie executives see the IPs as a chance to score easy cash with a built-in audience. There is little thought put in to what made a game franchise good, instead they just take enough basic elements from a game to make it recognizable and drop it into a generic action movie template.

It's not even a tough problem to crack, it's just that no one in Hollywood has bothered to try.

 

[Sixcess]

I think that part of the problem is that most video games don't have a good story to begin with. Good writing perhaps, but that's a different thing.

Games are also paced drastically differently from films. Look at Aliens, an undisputed classic sci-fi action movie which, in game terms has 3 shoot outs and a boss fight throughout its entire two and a half hour duration. Most games would outdo that by the end of the tutorial level.

And any game that might have a valid claim to having a good, original story and good writing is either way too long to be adapted without hacking it to bits (see every 20+ hour RPG ever made) or essentially a movie already (see Metal Gear Solid among others.)

I can entirely understand why adaptations take the good stuff (strong visuals, iconic characters, big concepts) and jettison the rest.

Personally I consider Tomb Raider one of the most faithful adaptations. It does follow the structure of the original games (level, plot cutscene, level, plot cutscene etc) and if it doesn't follow a specific plot it does at least distill those plots to their essentials (exotic location, skulking around ancient ruins, supernatural relic, Lara in tight shorts) while skipping all the item collecting and animal murder.

 

[octafish]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

Someone already brought up Fight Club, and now I'm going to bring out that Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made, is based on a pretty crappy and never-performed stageplay.

A play re-written by about a dozen different screen-writers. It makes you wonder how much of the original is left, I think Rick was a lawyer, and Ilsa was an American, there was a Sam but I doubt any of the dialogue is from the play.

"I am making out the report now. We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape."

Let's just accept that all film adaptations of Video games are doomed to fail and move on. Maybe then Wallace Shawn will get funding to make a sequel to My Dinner with Andre.

 

[Cpu46]

I think one of the problems is the fact that most of the things we consider "normal" in games are just ridiculous in a movie.

I'm looking at you Mario movie.

Also i think directors make one of these two mistakes.
They either try to duplicate the game world to much and end up with something really silly, or they stray too much so that the end result has little to do with the game.

I'm beginning to think I am one of the only people who enjoyed the Mario Bros movie. But I think you also hit the nail on the head. It is hard to find the balance between it being more grounded than the game and not destroying what identifies it with the game in the first place.

 

[Phuctifyno]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

Someone already brought up Fight Club, and now I'm going to bring out that Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made, is based on a pretty crappy and never-performed stageplay.

Hey guess what else was written for the stage... "The Room". Not that the transition had anything to do with it's crap factor... I mean gold factor. LALZ.

On Topic: This is a valid look at the just one of the problems with adapting game to film, but there are many. I actually think an adaptation's loyalty to the source material's plot is incidental. To quote MovieBob, you can make a good movie out of anything, which means the actual story itself is up to any amount of manipulation.

One other thing to consider is that most of the video games we love are very heavily influenced by films that already exist. It's not true of every game, of course, but games do have a tendancy to rely on tropes we're familiar with from film.

examples - Could you make a Deus Ex movie without it being written off by film critics as a Matrix look-alike?
Or Grand Theft Auto to Scarface (among many other gangster films)?
L.A. Noire to Chinatown (among many other film noirs)?
Elder Scrolls to Lord Of The Rings?
Uncharted to Indiana Jones (oh they're doing that? dear god.)
Metroid to Aliens.
Halo to Aliens.
Gears of War to Aliens.
Alien vs. Predator to Midnight Cowboy.

Sure, the plots will vary, but the package as a whole will appear derivative. But that's just an obstacle to be overcome, and can be done successfully.

A bigger worry I have is the stereotypical perception of gamers that influences Hollywood's decisons when adapting. Often the atmosphere, ideals, or maybe even the entire point of a game will be lost because the film makers are making a movie for "gamers, they like shooting shit and splosions, right?"... see Hitman (don't).

TL;DR - What you've said is true, but there's oh so much more that needs fixing before it can really be done right.

 

[boag]

I dont know why most of the movies try to haphazardly cram concepts and stories from videogames into a 1 hour movie.

I would much rather they use the Movie to expand the Background and world of the Videogame.

Dont make a Mass Effect Movie starring Shepard and his crew, make a movie about how the Illusive man got to where he is.

Dont make a Halo movie about Recapping the last games, make a movie about Humanities first contact with the Covenant.

Dont make a Mario Bros movie. EVER!

The Movie makers seem to forget that one of the main appeals of the Videogames is the INTERACTIVITY, something that cannot be translated into a Film, sometimes we let some really horrible plots get away with themselves, because the player is the one living them.

 

[Sixcess]

Metroid to Aliens.
Halo to Aliens.
Gears of War to Aliens.
Alien vs. Predator to Midnight Cowboy.

Epic.

Actually I picked up AvP on Steam almost a year ago and never played it... and yet now suddenly I want to.

 

[Thaius]

any conversion from one medium can never be as good as it source material/medium its nearly a fact I'd say at this point.
Honestly I cant even think of one good one (maybe the halo books but that a big maybe)

Someone already brought up Fight Club, and now I'm going to bring out that Casablanca, one of the greatest films ever made, is based on a pretty crappy and never-performed stageplay.

Ok I think you got me with that one I never knew it was a play wow

Well and the other thing to consider is that the art of adaptation is in fact and art in and of itself. I took a class on Shakespeare adaptation a couple semesters ago, and it's actually very interesting how the adapter's take on the story can shape their presentation of it. And sometimes the value can be even more simple.

The Lord of the Rings films are a good example. Tolkien was a brilliant creator of worlds and had an incredible imagination, but was awful at pacing an actual story. The characters could barely take a step without an anecdote on Middle Earth history or a long stay for tea and discussion at a stranger's house. The movie understandably does away with a lot of things, but in doing so makes it more about the story. In the books, the story is a framing device for the exploration of Middle Earth; in the movies, Middle Earth is a framing device for the story. It's a different take, and many (including myself) would argue better for it.

All that to say, there is something to be said for the artistic value of adaptation even outside of seeing how a story can be told in another medium, which in and of itself is enough to make it worthwhile.

 

[krytorii]

The problem is games are interactive. Books, films and so on are not. This makes the whole game -> film process a pain (and we've all seen rather forced film -> game adaptations).

I cant remember who said it, but they made a good point. In a film or book, the protagonist is always one down, they have to be losing right until the end otherwise the tension dies. Now look at games; the only way they mirror this is through the cutscenes, where the antagonist gets there before you. At all other times you're backflipping off walls, gunning down legions of enemies, you're always winning.

Also, in games, a lot of the sympathy for the characters and generally building our images of them is done through the gameplay. Placing them in a film means you can't do the same repetitive combos that give you a feel of the character.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Well books and plays thats all they can do, we know exactly what Gandalf did, we know how the Hobbits got to Mordor, etc. Its very straightforward, its similar to films, the story is the focus, so its not to hard to translate words on page into film.
Games are tricky though because their method of storytelling is different, in a lot of games we learn crucial information during gameplay so there's no way of telling what the player would have been doing. Unless the adaption is something like Heavy Rain then a full on story adaption isnt possible (Or shouldnt be) simply because the player character on screen could be nothing like "our" player character

I'd disagree with that. I don't see what about the storytelling style of video games makes the stories impossible to adapt. All film does is eliminate the element of gameplay, but there's nothing that Cortana says during Halo that couldn't be said in the action scene representative of that gameplay segment. The element of interactivity would be eliminated, but that does not eliminate the ability to portray the events the player went through.

Am I missing something in what you said?

Well remember a lot of these games they try to adapt are 10-15+ hour long experiences, theres so much more time in the game to give information and to show off characters than there is in a 2-3 hour film.
Sure it could work maybe if they made maybe if they made the film into 2 or 3 parts but thats never going to happen. Depending on the game, theres just so much content to get through that not all of it can be relayed effectively or at all, to cut down on run time you have to get rid of many events that, while not important on their own, all contribute to the overall story or the conclusion
Book adaptions can work well because the story is the experience, and seeing a film of that is a good way to relive the experience in a shorter time, and to see how others interpreted the experience, but with games, the experience is split between gameplay and story.
Sure if the story was good enough then it could be recieved well critically, but commercially it would probably still fail since it would be marketed to gamers, gamers who would much rather play said game than watch it.