Movies of games suck because?

[Xannidel]

I want to say it is because if they followed the storyline from the game then they would lack imagination or people might find the movie unoriginal (yes using the title of a video game as the title for your movie is also unoriginal but that's ok by me)

Some people might also like the films because they have not PLAYED the game. For example, I never played any of the Prince of Persia games yet I knew about the concept and I found the movie to be more tolerable then say Silent Hill or Resident Evil.

 

[Zydrate]

Skimming a few posts, none of them are really wrong. There's a mound of reasons as to why these conversions don't work.
One of my theories is that it's an interactive medium being converted into a noninteractive one. See other posts for more details, I just woke up.

The only two successful Game-Movie conversions I've seen were Prince of Persia and Hitman.

Hitman was a bit flawed on its own but it was actually a successful experiment. It alluded to VARIOUS actual in-game mechanics backed by a plausible thriller-story and good actors.

Can't comment on Prince of Persia, didn't play the games. So with that in mind, it was simply a decent, stand-alone film. But I have no idea what it did or didn't do to stay true to the games.

I actually didn't mind the Resident Evil movies, mostly because I knew it was all just going to be a silly zombie slaughterfest. Acting made me cringe though.

Doom was only saved by the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. The First Person sequence was fascinating (I had never seen that before) and the final fight wasn't too bad.

Advent Children, while a tad hard to follow (Even for those who already knew the lore, somehow!) did something right off the gate. It was an extension of the story, rather than a rehash. That's what more of these conversions need to do.

 

[Zhukov]

so I want to ask and to especially ask anyone who has been in the room when the decision to change the plot of a game when making a film WHY?! what is the reason TELL ME!

Because video game plots and characters are boring, worthless, tepid garbage written for children and teenagers that only gets a free pass due to the pitifully low standards of the target audience. Anyone trying to make a decent movie from a game would have to be clinically insane to not change the plot.

At the end of the day. you can't make trifle out of dog turds, no matter how hard you try.

Of course, the fact that nobody really gives a shit is also a factor.

on a game website and hating games... ladies and gentlemen i present to you..... THE MISSING LINK!

I don't hate games. I just despise 99% of game stories.

Bear in mind a game with a shit story can still be enjoyable.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well they usually hit two cardinal sins, they either change too much or change too little.
"Change too much" - every creative director and/or writer has their own ideas they want to put into movies and often game recreations are their time to pounce, so they end up creating something completely different sugar coated with our expectations.

"Change too little" - no matter how hard some people want to believe the mediums are not the same, the elements that make a game great could make a movie bad and that is often ignored for the sake of "staying true to the formula", but it is just bad design.

On the whole they should just stop with direct book/movie/game translations, they simply don't work.
Worse yet we get unrealistic expectations, we want all the franchise creations to capture the same magic but they simply can't, different medium different approach, there can be no other way.
What they should do is follow the grand idea and do something new with it, like the new Batman movies and games, they all run with the Batman theme but are connected by nothing else.

 

[Yopaz]

Some games of movies don't suck. Goldeneye didn't suck. I'm sure there are others but I can't rememberSPIDERMAN 2!

Yeah, that's about it.

Not games based on movies, movies based on games.

I think it's hard to capture what made a gamer enjoy the game in a movie. A game is more personal than a movie. A game is about what we accomplishes, not what someone else does. Games and movies are very different and catching the mood of one media and transferring it to another isn't easy.

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

The game's are made because the movies, tat's the movies only fault. The rest is the game maker's fault for making a crap game.

 

[WanderingFool]

Its already been said, but Ill add my two cents anyway.

I think the reason movies of game series suck is because of one of, or all three, of these reasons:

1. Games and Movies are completely different mediums.
This is a prety simple point, yes? But I think it might very well be the simplist point. Movies are meant to be watched, games are meant to be played.

Lets take a videogame made from a movie. Most will tell you that movie-games suck, primarly because they are made to cash in on the movie in question. But if you think about it, a movie is usually about 90-2 hours long, games are typically about 10 hours long (give or take for some). A lot of the problem with movie-games is that they are making a game about a movie, which means that have only 90 minutes of material to work with. So in many cases, they have to create content for those other 8 or so hours for gameplay.

Game-movies are the opposite problem, you instead have a game about 10 hours long, and you have to cut that down to about 90 minutes; which means in most cases removing alot of the gameplay sections which dont add any story. But with games, one of the most important parts is the gameplay, which does contain in most cases numerous elements of the story. Its most likely, than when directors or producers or whoever decides, "Lets make a movie about a game" will focus on whats in the cutscenes first and formost, cause it likely is the easiest way to get the story.

2. Executive meddeling.
Pretty simple. Whenever Hollywood gets a videogame franchise, they tend to alter said franchise. While some games need to have some story elements changed, alot of changes can also be argued as more in line with makign the movie how the directer wants it. Just look at Doom, the games series basically had the forces of Hell attack space marines on mars. The movie, instead of the forces of Hell, its a gentic anomoly that causes mutations in most people,save (obviously) the one main character who didnt die and wasnt a d-bag (sorry Dwayne).

3. Fan expectations.
This isnt Hollywoods fault, this is our fault. The most likely target auidince four videogame movies are the fans of said videogame. So you can expect the obvious level of expectation for a film from series fans.

 

[Saltyk]

I'd say a huge factor is that there is a built in fan base for movies based on video games. That is only people who play or at least know about the game will want to watch a movie based on it. Do you think a theatrical release of Advent Children would have done well? I doubt it as my parents couldn't have cared less about the game. The Resident Evil movies have a chance since they are pretty much zombie movies, but most of the people I know that have seen them are gamers.

Therein is lies the problem. They want to change the story to appeal to people who don't know the background, but this ends up alienating the long time fans. Why is Marcus Phoenix a truck driver in 2022 New York? Since when is Dr. Wily a geneticist? Why does Nathan Drake have a British accent? Mario's last name is Mario!? So now you have people that have no interest in the film and others who you are pissing off by changing everything about established characters. So no one is happy and everyone loses.

On top of that, even the best video game plots aren't going to be Academy Award winning master pieces. Especially if you have to compress the 20 hour plus campaign's huge sprawling narrative into a two hour film.

With all of these factors taken into account I doubt studios are throwing money at the productions. Which is kinda a self fulfilling prophecy. The films don't even have a chance.

That being said, there are some games that I think could be made into huge epic movies. Like Mass Effect. ***** and moan about Bioware and EA all you want, but the story of the game does lend itself to a sprawling space epic along the lines of Star Wars. The biggest problem would be compressing the plot of the games.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Video games require active participation from the audience. You have control of your character's pacing, movement, and goals.

Movies require a passive audience. You have no control over anything on screen.

This means Video games have a completely different set of mechanics for telling a story. Scarce ammo in Resident Evil builds tension and isolation, regenerating shields and health in Halo, COD, Battlefield series builds impression of invincibility, etc.

Movie directors often try to understand the medium through their own perspectives and don't pick up on story methods told through gameplay. Hence why you get Resident Evil movies that are similar to Call of Duty running and gunning. Director sees plot as one person against horde of zombies = action movie.

 

[Loonyyy]

OK so I have watched a few films of games and they all suck and what really got to me was the main reason why. they change the plot and sometimes the characters. now since the reason you make a movie out of something like say, prince of Persia is so fans of the game will watch it, its clearly a bad idea to change the plot, after all if you change the plot of a game, ITS A DIFFERENT PRODUCT!

so I want to ask and to especially ask anyone who has been in the room when the decision to change the plot of a game when making a film WHY?! what is the reason TELL ME!

Because games have uninteresting plots in the context of movies. Games are about goals and accomplishing them, and usually, their stories are ancilliary to this. Now, of course, some break the mold, but in the end, games are about the accumulation of short term goals, which doesn't usually make a very good arc.

Movies are about the plot and characters exclusively, and don't have to worry about letting the player loose to have some fun.

Also, once you cut down the action from the games, their stories really don't tend to extend particularly far.

I can't think of many games which have plots that would make a decent movie. That's neither a good nor a bad thing. It just is. Some mediums just don't mix. We don't write a novel of a painting, and we shouldn't need a movie of a game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Because the simple fact that it's a movie means you can't "play" it.

The reason we like videogame settings and stories is because we get to experience them first hand through play. This why game-to-movie adaptations will never work, because you're subtracting the one element that makes it all go; Gameplay.

Why would I want to watch Silent Hill, Resident Evil, or Prince of Persia when I can experience it in the medium that it was intended for?

 

[WanderingFool]

The lara croft movies aren't too bad.

And according to rotten tomatoes the best videogame adaptation in a movie is:

The spirits within.

Must be some pretty low fucking standards.

 

[Mayhemski]

I think others have covered most of the points - the big one being the different way stories are told between the two mediums, means that fans of the game probably won't like the changes or dropped plot elements and viewers who know nothing about the background will then judge a movie based on what's on the screen - and 9 times out 10 it seems to be a cheap attempt at a cash-in based off the numbers for the fan base of said game and therefore the script budget wouldn't cover a frothy mocha-latachino...as you're supposed to just be grateful a movie has been made of your favourite franchise - and it shows to anyone misfortunate to have to watch said dirge.

Also Michael Bay

The best film I've seen that came from video games is "King of Kong" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/) and thats a documentary about players not the game.

 

[zombieshark6666]

They just don't try very hard. A few names people will recognize, some plot with an evil guy and random action. That's what gamers like, right?

 

[Wil213]

This is the question that the last year of my Uni' Film degree is based on. I would go into it deeply but I'd end up being very boring.
In summery, it's small part the film industry, part the people who make the films having no idea what they are doing [most of the time anyway. Thank christ for Edger Wright... sort of] and partly that they are just bad film genraly.
Either way, games are interactive and films are cinematic. Two seprate things that don't usualy mix