Gincairn said:
achilleas.k said:
Max Payne movie that is the same as the game.
EDIT: I mean, the game itself was designed to resemble a movie plot and style. How the fuck can you go wrong with that?
Easy, you get Mark Wahlberg playing the title role, you get some numpty to write the script and then some a-hole director to make it in his "vision".
I'm still worried about the Prince of Persia movie for the simple reason that the director refused to play the games but had his assistant play them and describe the game to him. Ugh
Exactly my point. They had to TRY to make it bad. It's like they deliberately made the worst choices. Amazing, innit?
I lost faith in video game films after Max Payne. I think the only VG film that was good (as a film on its own, not necessarily as an adaptation of the game) was the first Resident Evil. So my expectations are pretty much as low as they can get that there will ever be a decent film adaptation of a game plot.
------------------ EDIT ------------------
Here's the thing. I have nothing against changing certain plot elements to adapt a game to another medium. It's expected. It's basically enforced by the switch to another medium. There are other things to consider and different ways of providing information and emotion. The same goes for film adaptations of books.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a radio show, book, TV series, video game and a film and Douglas Adams himself worked on all of them (except for the film which he started but died half way through :-( ) and made the changes himself. That is to say, the creator of the fictional universe himself kept the feeling and the character, even though the plot would change quite a bit.
Of course a film adaptation of a book will have less depth. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have endless information provided by hundreds of pages of text condensed into 3 hours, let alone 100 minutes which is the average film length.
So this is what we're asking for basically. Give us the feeling. Give us the world as we imagine it. Give us a plot that's comparable in awesomeness to the game. It doesn't have to be as involved or as deep. It doesn't have to have all the characters identically. It DOES have to relate to the original game as more than just a nod in its direction, making one-liner references to moments in the game that only the fans will catch. It should be a good film as a self contained entity.
It's all about balance. Keep the things you need to keep to relate it to the game. Dismiss the things that work in games but don't fit in films. Know the content, but don't try to jam it all in the film. Most adaptations try to please the fans of the game by throwing game symbols and names around and just forget about the rest. If you're trying to please the game fans, just copy the damn thing. If you're trying to please the common, non-game-fan film viewer, go nuts. Do anything you like. Hell, you can even name it something else and give it a "based on the story 'GAME TITLE X' written by 'STORY WRITER OF GAME X'" in the credits. If it would allow you to make a good film worth watching, I'd be fine with that. They fail so much at balancing this that they end up making a bad film experience for the common viewer and a bad adaptation that the game fan hates as well.
I don't know if the perfect balance is even possible. Evidence suggests that it probably isn't. I had so much faith in Max Payne before it came out; I knew I was being naive. To be perfectly honest, I liked how they adapted the main plot. It wasn't the same, but it was similar enough. The bits about the Valkyrie drug and his wife's murder made sense, even though they didn't need to change. But it's like they read the plot of the game, changed it a bit to justify the screenplay writer's salary and added bullet time all over the place (that scene where he falls backwards with the shotgun made me want to throw up). It had none of the atmosphere, nothing to resemble what Max's monologues made you feel like when playing the game.
I think I said the same thing 15 times in this big edit, so I'll leave it here. I think I made my point. Thanks for reading if you did.
