Back in the time of water fights, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and all night, lolly-fueled gaming sessions on rented NES’s, the internet was still just a pipe dream of some lonely nerd receiving too many atomic wedgies. Because of the lack of readily available information at the click of a button, as a kid the first I knew that one of my favourite vdeogames was being turned into a film was actually seeing the VHS tape sitting on the video-store shelf. I would immediately grab it (there would be only one copy, which should have been a hint as to its quality) and beg for my parents to let me get it, puh-lease! It seemed simple. A great game could only become a great movie, how could it be any other way? On paper, it made perfect sense. But to make paper, you have to kill trees. And so it seems that to make a movie of a great game, you have to kill the hopes and dreams of innocent rainbow-chasing children.
Ok, so I’m being a bit dramatic, but I do clearly remember watching Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Super Mario Brothers and wondering how someone who had played these games could have come up with such horrendous films. However, I’ve now come to the realisation that movies and films are very different beasts, and that games are almost impossible to convert into great movies, and that the production of all game-based movies should stop immediately. Let me give you a couple of reasons why.
Newsflash: Street Fighter 2 already in production with unknown director.
That guy isn’t you
While games and movies both share some similar storytelling conventions, including the use of scripted dialogue and cinematic events, the most memorable games give you something that a movie can’t: the sense that you’re in control and it’s actually you that’s saving the world. As a game, Doom 3 was hardly the pinnacles of storytelling, but most players still felt a close connection to their character battling the forces of hell, alone, in the dark, and with only a few billion rounds of ammo to help you out. Now consider the movie version of Doom (but don’t do it for too long or your brain will bleed). As soon as you begin watching it, you will feel a sense that it has let you down because the main character is all wrong. No, I’m not bagging out the acting chops of The Rock, even though I think an actual lump of sediment would put in a better performance. And I’m not saying that <insert your favourite actor> wouldn’t make it a slightly better viewing experience. What I am saying is that the main character in every game-to-movie adaptation is wrong because – unlike the games – the main character in the movie isn’t being played by you. That is unless Vin Diesel is reading this, and if so, give me the hour and a half of my life back that I spent playing The Wheelman.
What I’m flapping on about here is that playing a game is obviously an interactive experience. You control the main character and guide him/her around the gaming universe. Even if the character isn’t customisable, most players will still put a bit of yourself and your beliefs into the situations they face. Even if you have a pretty fleshed out character like Nico from Grand Theft Auto 4, you still put yourself in his shoes and you are still free to use your own initiative to go where you want to and play how you want to. Even in the most linear games, you’re still the ‘director’ of the game, because it is you choosing the ‘camera’ angles, whether you go down the left or the right hand side of the corridor, whether you run or walk, how long it takes you to get there, and whether or not you want to stare at that poster on the wall for 10 minutes or to shoot at the lights above your head to see if they go out. In a movie you don’t have any control, so your experience with a movie can never, ever be that personal. Games like Fable 2, Bioshock, Fallout 3 and Knights of the Old Republic also up the ante to make their games even more individual to each player, forcing them to make morale choices and to make decisions about what abilities to upgrade based on how they play they game. This means that the game will be different from person to person. A movie is a static experience, and personal tastes aside, is experienced by each person the same way. Movies are more a shared experience than a personal one.
Two of the all time great actors.
Mine is longer than yours
The length of the game and its story also draws you further in. The fact that you spend eight hours or more with a game, and only two hours with a movie (unless you’re watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy all in a row, you Hobbit-lovin’ freak) also generally leads to further immersion in the experience. The story length is also a big factor here. While the cut-scenes of a lot of games don’t seem to take more than half-an-hour if you were to put them all together, many of them use non-verbal and exploration-related techniques to further immerse you through the interactive nature of the experience. This includes finding audio files and notes in games like Dark Space, Bioshock and Resident Evil. While much of this type of information is not necessary to work out what is going on, it does flesh out the story further and make it more personal to you, because you had to find it and had to decide whether read/listen to it or ignore it. Even tried to read a long letter in a movie? It’s boring because it’s not as personal to you. You didn’t find it, the person in the movie did.
There are also verbal techniques that add to game stories, especially in a lot of sandbox and shooting games where some of the narrative is told to you as you are moving along in a car or by someone talking to you through a headpiece. There are also many other story devices, such as the overheard chatter of non-playable characters in games like Fable and The Godfather who often reveal tidbits of information or let you know how you are impacting on the gaming world. In reality, the majority of games actually give you more story than a movie, even if that story isn’t very good.
Make it up as you go along
I don’t know about you, but when I’m playing a game, I involuntarily make up a lot of back-story as I go along. For example, when I enter a room and the game doesn’t give me any back-story for the characters I’m with, then I make some of it up for them. Fallout 3 was a prime example for me. A lot of the characters in that game had long and full stories. However, some didn’t. Consider the raiders that set up camp around the place. Did you ever wonder where they were born, what their parents did before the bombs were dropped, how have they survived, or what made them turn bad? Maybe you don’t go that far, but when you are playing a sporting game where you’re building your character up and taking him/her to the top, do you create a narrative in your head as you go along? I do. I often imagine it’s me winning the games in real life., and how I would react to the situation, how I would speak to the media in the press conferences, and how I would cope with the fame and fortune. In movies, every character is usually justified with their own story, and there is far less room for your imagination to run wild. It makes it a less personal experience.
Uwe salutes his fans.
Ignore the fans
The problem with a lot of game-to-movie adaptations is that they cater too much to fan service and miss the point that they need to make a good film first. For example, what was the point in Doom of taking a first-person perspective for part of the film, other than to give a big wink to the audience which seemed to say, “Yeah, this movie is based on a first person shooting game. We’re hip to you gamers.” Or in Street Fighter where the control panel for Bison's levitating desk is the joystick and buttons to a Street Fighter II arcade game, and after he finishes using them, he says "Game over!" Lame. I’m also sick of reading about a director who says, “We made this movie for fans of the game.” Well let me tell you pal, whether the movie is good or not, the fans will see it. If you make a good film, most of the fans will appreciate the need to make changes to make it a good movie, and those who don’t will complain no matter what you do, so don’t listen to them. How about making it a decent movie first, not an in-joke for gamers.
Hollywood has no respect for game-to-movie adaptations
Okay, let’s be honest here. The majority of game-to-movie adaptations seem to have been made by hacks who flunked year 12 production class and nothing will save them. Uwe Bell and his terrible disservice to videogames immediately springs to mind. BloodRayne, House of the Dead and Postal are some of the worst movies ever made. So I guess what that means is that Hollywood doesn't respect games as storytelling devices, giving them only limited resources and sub-substandard directors and actors who wouldn’t cut it as extras in Home and Away.
Before their delays and problems, the movie versions of Bioshock and Halo seemed to be turning that around, but whether we'll actually ever see a finished product is another matter. While there is the odd passable adaptation from time-to-time, on the whole watching a game-to-movie adaptation is a bit like getting through the security to touch Scarlett Johansson. Sure, it will give you some pleasure for the first few seconds, but for the next two hours you’ll be pounded on and will end up in the gutter with most of your teeth missing. Metaphorically speaking.
Please Hollywood, from a gamer and former rainbow-chaser, cut your losses and never make another movie based on a game ever again.
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