Gaming FTW

Have you ever played a game and thought “This would make a great movie”? Well over the years several respectable (and other, not so reputable) directors, writers and actors have thought the same thing and created said movies.

From big budget affairs like the upcoming Bruckheimer produced Prince of Persia right down to the sort of low budget crapfests Uwe Boll has been known to create, game to film adaptations have always had a fair bit of stick, but why? Well in the case of Uwe Boll’s movies, it’s because he is a horrible writer and director, taking a film that shouldn’t even work as a movie and then writing a god awful script for it.

Don't worry Mr Boll, this won't hurt one bit. Honest

The problem with most game to film adaptations is that the game in question has a plot thinner than an anorexic cheerleader so no matter how faithful a rendition, there’s never enough  to keep the average movie goer interested. Take Mortal Kombat for instance. As much as I hate Paul WS Anderson for a) making so many inferior movies and b) for being the man who got to impregnate Mila Jovovich, his adaptation of Mortal Kombat was one of the closest translations I’ve seen. Including the complete lack of plot. Movie rating aggregate site rottentomatoes.com gave Mortal Kombat 24%, with comments such as;

Cheesy with no nutrients. But hey, anything’s better than Street Fighter.
Widgett Walls
Needcoffee.com

Like watching a lot of sweaty fist fights while trapped in the world’s loudest night club.
Scott Weinberg
eFilmCritic.com

Likely to satisfy only the core audience already hooked on video and arcade games, and even that’s not a sure thing
Richard Harrington
Washington Post

Why?!

Yet everyone I know who loved the games thought the film was a brilliant translation, so what do you do with a computer game that’s lacking a story worthy of the silver screen? Add your own spin surely. Wrong. Again, Paul Anderson is my target but this time with his Resident Evil series. The first film fit very loosely into the canon of the games, set in the infamous Spencer Mansion and introducing a new character to the series; Alice. On the whole, reviewers and fans alike gave the film a lukewarm response, some saying that the overall feel of the film was very true to the games while others thought the addition of Alice ruined the experience. Despite the lack of enthusiasm, the film raked in £8.72 million in its opening weekend and Anderson was allowed to make a sequel. This time, not only was he content with ruining the overall feel of the game, he actually decided to re-tell Resident Evil 3 by adding Jill Valentine, Carlos Olivera and Nemesis into Alice’s story arc. With disastrous results. Resident Evil: Apocalypse got a poor reception all round, but still it managed to pull a higher box office figure of £11.33 million in it’s opening weekend. As a result, Anderson was allowed to make his third (but unfortunately not final) Resident Evil Film, subtitled Extinction. This time, not only was Anderson content to piss all over the story of two more Resident Evil characters (Albert Wesker and Claire Redfield), Anderson also decides that he’s going to set the film in Las Vegas, a short time after the virus has spread worldwide, killing almost everyone. Extinction received pretty much the same reviews as Apocalypse but by this point most fans of the games had just given up hope for a decent remake.

Even a soaking wet Mila Jovovich can't save your movies Paul

The problem is, despite every game to film translation I’ve seen being average at best, I still find myself hooked. Disappointment after disappointment should’ve taught me not to bother watching any more but still I go ahead hoping that maybe one day, a game will have an excellent film based on it and with plenty of remakes coming in the next 3 years, surely one of them will be worth watching. I shall be keeping a close eye on the Cliff Bleszinski supervised Gears of War adaptation and Bioshock especially.

Here’s a list of all the game to films IMDB.com lists as being released in the next 3 years