Why are video game TV Shows and comics often more successful than video game movies?

[Misterian]

There's something that's been floating over my head lately (though I may be abit tardy on say this).

Video game movies have rarely been done very well (though with the box office success of the Angry Birds Movie, that might hopefully change), And I remember hearing a few people say that video game movies are inherently dead on arrival because the lack of interactivity cuts down on alot of what makes the source material enjoyable.

While I respectfully disagree (especially since I think alot of early video game movie directors kept deviating from the games they've been adapting from to the point of making it seem like they hate the games), something did cross my mind;

If Video Game movies are so prone to fail, why to video game TV shows and comics fare better?

Seriously, The Pokemon anime has been around since 1997 and it's still going strong, and even other video game animes (at least those that didn't get absurdly bad edits and dubbing courtesy of 4Kids Entertainment) have been held in similarly high regard.

You could argue many of those animes tend to have the original creators helping out the project, but the Ratchet and Clank movie had Insomniac Games helping filmmakers out yet it didn't do too well in the box office. So what did those animes do to succeed where the Ratchet and Clank movie failed?

And it's not just anime that's done well, the French produced Wakfu has lasted for 2 seasons with a third season coming soon, same thing with the Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures tv show.

Heck, the Megaman cartoon from 1994 lasted 2 seasons and held high ratings during its lifespan.

There's also comics like the various Legend of Zelda mangas and the Super Mario World comic (which originally appeared in separate chapters in volumes of Nintendo Power Magazines and now have been published with all chapters put into one book), and more recently the Megaman comic series of IDW Comics, and I heard no one complain or criticize those comics like people do the movies, why?

So why do video game tv shows and comics tend to do very well while video game movies seem to struggle so much?

 

[FalloutJack]

More time for pacing and writing than a movie of maybe two hours. It's very hard to properly tell the story of a game in those limited situations. I will say fuck Angry Birds and that the only REAL success was the first Mortal Kombat movie (unless of course people liked the WoW movie). But hey, I use to watch shows like that as a kid, and I think it's the combination of it being easier to entertain people back then crossed with the general cartooning style of the 80s.

 

[Dizchu]

I've always maintained that video games have more in common with TV shows than the do with feature-length films. Feature films are typically a couple of hours long, have a tight structure and are expected to stand on their own. With TV you can establish a continuity, the plot can take more twists and turns and the level of quality isn't expected to be as high as with films. Instead of focusing on one overall plot you can explore multiple smaller plots, which allows you to put more emphasis on characters and world-building.

Look at what happens when you structure narrative-heavy games like TV shows, it's actually a really good format. All this talk of making games more "cinematic" and these publishers overlook what's been obvious for ages. Games have levels, multiple quests, play lengths that often exceed the 2 hours of the average film and require multiple sittings. Just like a TV series!

 

[Saelune]

Angry Birds is not doing video games any favors. Its not going to lead to real games getting movies. But I wont be surprised if Farmville or Candy Crush get a theatrical release. Yuck.

TV shows have more time to work with and don't have to be as serious or compact, so perhaps that is why.

Plus most video game movies just don't do much justice to the source. Hitman shouldn't be an action movie. Really most just fall into awful action movie tropes.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Because it's next to impossible to condense the essence of the average game into a 2-hour movie. Unless it's a fighting game, and even then it's iffy.

Even if you stick with the most basic plot points and necessary cutscenes made much prettier, you still can't successfully capture the breadth of a journey through a sprawling world to glory like the kind taken by most fantasy protagonists. I feel like most modern games these days are already 'cinematic' enough that taking out the game portion to create a movie is superfluous. It already is a movie with game bits placed in between the scenes. That's not the case with Pokemon, or any series that has yet to achieve complete photorealism.

Done episodically whether on a screen or in comics, you can fully realize even the longest of RPGs, and the buildup will be felt by the viewers to heighten the tension instead of having to flesh out and resolve everything so fast. Several of the Tales games got short anime features, maybe make a longer show of whatever the most popular one of those was in America. I'd also be interested in a CGI Castlevania or Maverick Hunter X, but we know that will never happen.

 

[Hawki]

I don't think one medium is inherantly superior to another - if it's a question of length, then that hasn't stopped successful film adaptations of books for instance, even in the knowledge that a lot of the book doesn't make it to the final cut. But if you want specific examples:

-Pokemon: This is long lasting because it effectively hits the reset button with every region, keeping it accessible for new viewers. Also it isn't bound to the games - Ash doesn't capture many Pokemon, but that does work in a storytelling sense in that each one can be given a sense of personality (compare this to Red in the anime - he's a far more successful trainer than Ash, but how many of his pokemon could be called actual 'characters?') Pokemon works because it uses the games as a jumping off point, but isn't a slave to them.

-Comics: I don't know if the mangas/Nintendo Power stuff counts, since the former is on a 'by adaptation' basis, the latter is in a magazine designed to promote the material the comic is based on. But I would point to Sonic the Hedgehog as the gold standard for ongoing comics based on a game, and it works for the same reasons. While Archie and Fleetaway adapted the material in different ways, they were never constrained by it, and Archieverse Sonic is still going strong. Stopped reading it for various reasons, but you could easily read the comic from start to finish and, bar the odd exception (e.g. when it adapted Sonic Adventure), read it and understand it without any knowledge of the games. Most comics are tie-in media for games, but it's telling that the longest lasting is the one that managed to be the most self-sufficient.

-Cartoons: Well, this is varied. Legend of Zelda is absolutely terrible, even if you view it on its own merits, and not as an adaptation. Apart from that, I can only really comment on the 5 Sonic cartoons (yes, I know X is an anime) - it's telling that, for me at least, the best version (SatAM) has little to do with the games, while the worst (SU) also has little to do with the games. Difference being that the former is actually good, while the latter...isn't.

So, if there's something to take away from this, it's "be a good work first, be loyal second." There's plenty of adaptations that succeed in being good works, if poor adaptations (Starship Troopers, Neverending Story, Hal's Moving Castle, The Shining, etc.). Looking at the best, if not "good" VG-based movies out there (Prince of Persia, Resident Evil (the first), Mortal Kombat), they succeed on their own, if not being that 'good.' Even Warcraft, while a film I enjoyed, was still plagued by the need to set up an ongoing storyline rather than making it a self-contained work that had to succeed on its own merits.

Angry Birds is not doing video games any favors. Its not going to lead to real games getting movies. But I wont be surprised if Farmville or Candy Crush get a theatrical release. Yuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

This is someone who despises the Angry Birds Movie on the basis that it's a bad movie (IMO, of course). The source material doesn't matter.

 

[Saelune]

Angry Birds is not doing video games any favors. Its not going to lead to real games getting movies. But I wont be surprised if Farmville or Candy Crush get a theatrical release. Yuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

This is someone who despises the Angry Birds Movie on the basis that it's a bad movie (IMO, of course). The source material doesn't matter.

I don't know if you're criticizing me, complimenting me, or just pointing something out. My response kind of depends on which.

 

[Hawki]

Angry Birds is not doing video games any favors. Its not going to lead to real games getting movies. But I wont be surprised if Farmville or Candy Crush get a theatrical release. Yuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

This is someone who despises the Angry Birds Movie on the basis that it's a bad movie (IMO, of course). The source material doesn't matter.

I don't know if you're criticizing me, complimenting me, or just pointing something out. My response kind of depends on which.

Eh, "critizing" I guess. If we're applying the analogy to the subject, it would be:

A: "You don't play games."

B: "I play Angry Birds."

A: "Yes, but that's not a REAL game."

I think it's rich to deem some things to not be 'real' examples of their medium. It's fine not to like it, but that's an entirely different matter. If we compare, say, cricket vs. soccer, the latter is a far less complex game that's far more accessible and is far easier to play. You wouldn't say soccer isn't a "real" sport though.

But the rub is that while I think Angry Birds (the game) is quite fun, Angry Birds (the movie) is terrible, but that has nothing to do with its subject matter. If anything, the part where it imitates its subject matter in the third act is what gives the film some manner of redemption after the second act.

 

[Saelune]

Angry Birds is not doing video games any favors. Its not going to lead to real games getting movies. But I wont be surprised if Farmville or Candy Crush get a theatrical release. Yuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

This is someone who despises the Angry Birds Movie on the basis that it's a bad movie (IMO, of course). The source material doesn't matter.

I don't know if you're criticizing me, complimenting me, or just pointing something out. My response kind of depends on which.

Eh, "critizing" I guess. If we're applying the analogy to the subject, it would be:

A: "You don't play games."

B: "I play Angry Birds."

A: "Yes, but that's not a REAL game."

I think it's rich to deem some things to not be 'real' examples of their medium. It's fine not to like it, but that's an entirely different matter. If we compare, say, cricket vs. soccer, the latter is a far less complex game that's far more accessible and is far easier to play. You wouldn't say soccer isn't a "real" sport though.

But the rub is that while I think Angry Birds (the game) is quite fun, Angry Birds (the movie) is terrible, but that has nothing to do with its subject matter. If anything, the part where it imitates its subject matter in the third act is what gives the film some manner of redemption after the second act.

Well, I wont go into why mobile games are complete garbage and a plague to real games, but my point stands.

The success of the Angry Birds movie isn't going to lead to "real" games getting movies. Anyone looking at the Angry Birds movie and hoping to copy its success will look at other mobile games.

 

[Zhukov]

a) Those things are much cheaper to make and thus don't need to be as successful to be, well, a success.

b) Those things are often aimed at kids who will like just about anything so long as you put Pikachu in it.

 

[Hawki]

I'm a conspiracy theorist in this regard.
I think that the american movie industry has more than enough reasons to hate video games, and they fight claw and tooth to see video game movies fail. That and the general contempt for the video games as a source material.
I also assume that people who make shows and comics do not wield as much power and do not feel that much rivalry from the video games, so they let it slip.
I mean, look at Warcraft. It was panned by the critis in the USA specifically and then it flopped in the USA specifically. And in other countries it kind of didn't. Looks fishy to me.

Few problems with this:

-It makes little sense for the movie industry to want VG movies to fail. If they succeed, they get a pre-existing fanbase who'll flock to see their movies. This is true of any adaptation, whether it be books (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games), comics (MCU, DCEU), or stageplays (Shakespeare, Les Miserables, etc.). I don't doubt there's contempt for VG's as a medium, but that doesn't stop someone from using that to make a profit.

-I can't really comment on other countries, but in Oz, Warcraft came and went with a whimper, and what reviews I did read in local publications lambasted it.

-None of this touches on Warcraft's quality, or lack of it. Course quality is somewhat subjective, but there's a reason why hesitate in including it with actual decent VG movies. Warcraft, for me, is an enjoyable film, but heavily flawed. And I'm in the audience for Warcraft. I wanted it to succeed, wanted it to be good. But, well, I can't say it's good, and given its flaws, I can't say I'm surprised it failed.

 

[DeimosMasque]

I'm a conspiracy theorist in this regard.
I think that the american movie industry has more than enough reasons to hate video games, and they fight claw and tooth to see video game movies fail. That and the general contempt for the video games as a source material.
I also assume that people who make shows and comics do not wield as much power and do not feel that much rivalry from the video games, so they let it slip.
I mean, look at Warcraft. It was panned by the critis in the USA specifically and then it flopped in the USA specifically. And in other countries it kind of didn't. Looks fishy to me.

No one is going to invest millions of dollars into a project while planning for it to fail. Well maybe Uwe Boll but he was exploiting his country's tax code to make sure he would profit even if the movie was a loss.

Hollywood needs a return on its investment. No money is made on a failed venture. And in the end its all about the money

 

[Hawki]

If you get gamers to go to the movies, you'll get their money, but then they will return to gaming.
If you get movie goers to game, they might not return, because games give them more exploding helicopters for less money.
Games, like movies, are highly visual and they're cheaper.
Also, think about it. There's a bunch of IPs, you're spending a whole lot of money, buying them left and right, hoping to control market and make profitsm but then someone comes along and trows a whole lot of other IPs into the mix, somewhat devaluing your investments. Would you like it?

More flaws:

-You're assuming that engaging in one media is to the exclusion of all others (or one other).

-Games aren't cheaper. Maybe cheaper to produce, but certainly not cheaper to purchase, and generally require a larger time investment on the part of the consumer.

-Competition between IP's isn't dependent on the source of the IPs. This generally comes up when you purchase the rights to a property, but that's about it. The Wheel of Time for instance has been in IP limbo for awhile.

-I can't really comment on other countries, but in Oz, Warcraft came and went with a whimper, and what reviews I did read in local publications lambasted it.

That's still English, right?

Yes.

It scored the biggest opening day of all time in Ukraine ($233,000), the biggest of 2016 in Germany ($2.2 million), the second biggest in Russia ($2.8 million), behind Deadpool, and Universal's third biggest opening day ever in Sweden ($539,000), behind only Fifty Shades of Grey and Furious 7.[/i]None of these countries speak mostly English and it shields them from the American critics. That's something to consider.

"Shields them from American critics." Huh.

Let's be generous and not bring up how action films that are critically savaged in the West (Transformers, ID: R, etc.) tend to do well in non-English speaking territories (well, China at least). Or...actually, I might as well bring that up, because I can't think of a good reason for it besides that. Warcraft is an American IP based on tropes that originate from Western Europe, and developed in the United Kingdom. If anything, in terms of story/lore, the US and UK should be more reciprocal.

Warcraft isn't an outlier here. Its saving grace that it's nowhere near as the likes of Revenge of the Fallen, and I'd still rank it above ID: R, but, yeah. Same pattern, same ascribable reasons.

Spending money to make something look worse than what you want to sell is fairly reasonable.

Except who's supposedly spending that money? Are you suggesting that Blizzard would spend money to make the film bad so people would think how much better the game was? Would Legendary? The only time I can recall companies indirectly undermining each other is the Coke/Pepsi rivalry.

 

[Elijin]

I mean your examples of tv shows are all from the eighties and nineties. The bar for success was lower due to how the market worked, and the internet/cable/streaming services had yet to destroy traditional TV models, so competition was trivial compared to the current market.

So yeah, a product didn't have to be high quality to be successful, and the lack of options meant audiences settled a lot easier back then.

 

[Hawki]

You're referencing something without naming it. Come on, spill the beans. This will be fun.
I'm expecting something ugly, along the lines of "we're just better than those uncivilised savages and that's why we can really judge them movies".

That's a rediculous assertion. 'Judging movies' isn't an ability that's dependent on nationality or race. Again, I can only say that action movies that are critically lambasted in the West (e.g. Transformers, ID: R), tend to do well in overseas markets (or at least China). That doesn't exclude them from doing well financially here though (again, Transformers). Warcraft fits a pre-established pattern. I could just as easily insinuate that you're suggesting that "oh, you Westerners, you only listen to critics, you're too ignorant to know what makes a good movie."

I can only guess is that it's because action is a universal language, whereas any translation is going to lose something along the way. DBZ and Power Rangers (Japanese properties) are big hits in the West after all, even though you'd get few people defending them for their plots or characters.

I don't know. Someone who got critics to pan the movie. Unlike most of the VG movies this one's good. And it got so much hate I'm almost sure this did not happen accidentally. Someone did not want it to succeed.

Few points:

-The old "critics are paid off" argument. No-one takes it seriously. No-one. It ranks up there with the "critics are biaised against DC" argument you get with every DCEU release, or "you only like/dislike Ghostbusters 2016 because it has women in it." (both arguments being just as stupid). Most tellingly, it only comes up when consensus is against a user's view. If Warcraft had been paid off for critics to give it favorable reviews, would you be complaining?

-I disagree with your assertion that Warcraft is good, as do many other people. Neither of us have the authority on a film's quality of course. But maybe it's less a conspiracy and more the idea that hey, maybe people genuinely didn't like it? Because goodness knows there's plenty of films I like where I'm in the minority. That doesn't mean I feel the need to make up a conspiracy to justify that.

 

[jademunky]

I think a big reason video game movies will always tend to suck is that the people creating video games (good ones at least) are not starting with a story in mind. Instead, they start with a mechanic and build the story around that. Whether that mechanic is platforming, menu-based combat, fps, etc. Story will always take a back seat.

This is in contrast to novels and comics where, like film, story is central. My opinion as a gamer, we should stop wanting Hollywoo to make a decent video game adaptation because it will NEVER happen.

On the other hand, films that borrow some of the tropes of video games without being shackled to a specific game itself (think Edge of Tomorrow, Scott Pilgrim) are actually pretty good.

 

[Hawki]

I think a big reason video game movies will always tend to suck is that the people creating video games (good ones at least) are not starting with a story in mind. Instead, they start with a mechanic and build the story around that. Whether that mechanic is platforming, menu-based combat, fps, etc. Story will always take a back seat.

This is in contrast to novels and comics where, like film, story is central. My opinion as a gamer, we should stop wanting Hollywoo to make a decent video game adaptation because it will NEVER happen.

On the other hand, films that borrow some of the tropes of video games without being shackled to a specific game itself (think Edge of Tomorrow, Scott Pilgrim) are actually pretty good.

Since I'm in the process of nitpicking posts:

-Many games may start with mechanics in mind, but there's exceptions. Telltale sells its products based on story. I think I read that BioWare usually starts with story, then weaves in mechanics. Speaking personally, I usually only bother with games now if there's a strong narrative component. I can forgive a lot of gameplay blunders if the story picks up the slack (and vice versa).

-I'd argue that there's plenty of decent VG movies, but it's the elusive "good" one that I'm after. If we're counting in EU material, then I'd argue that Paragon Lost does count as "good," if only just.

-Does Edge of Tomorrow count? Being caught in a time loop goes at least as far back as Groundhog Day (almost certainly pre-dates it), and I know that Stargate ran an episode based on that concept.