Are Video Game Movies a Lost Cause?

With ‘Pixels’ doing fairly disastrously with critics (for my full review follow this link, http://criticalfilmsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/pixels.html) I can’t help but wonder, why was the movie so bad? It should have been great, shouldn’t it? When you think about it, movies that try to incorporate video games into their central story, whether they be based on them or just borrowing elements from them, they always seem to fail. So are they a lost cause?

First I have to ask the question, is there such a thing as a good video game movie? Even the ones that you can find enjoyable rely more on your love of the game than your love of the film itself. Look at ‘Mortal Kombat’, as well as being the most enjoyably 90s movie ever made, it also takes a handful of liberties with its source material. In any other circumstance this movie would be ridiculed, but because it holds that connection to the video game anyone who loves that film tolerates these imperfections. There’s also that theme music to add to it, because it’s awesome.

Putting that aside you have decent ones like ‘Silent Hill’ but they deviate even more from the source material, putting two video games into one story. ‘Tomb Raider’ is decent as well, but only really as a film that tries to find a connection to playing the video game. You can’t really hold one movie high and say ‘That is the best video game movie ever made’.

The reason is simply because, the best video game movie hasn’t been made yet. There is not definitive choice for the best one, either you have one that sticks too closely to the source material and can’t appeal to the mass audience to work as a movie on its own, or it does away with the source material and merely uses the title to attract audiences.

A description like that brings you onto some of the worst video game movies. Not only are they likely to aggravate fans of the game because they were linked to the game only in story, but they also disappoint fans of movies in general as they simply are not good. Uwe Boll is a director that has done this so many times, making movies that are terrible adaptations and terrible films. ‘House of the Dead’, ‘In the Name of the King’ and ‘Alone in the Dark’ are all, really, really bad films. None of them really capture any elements of the video games they are based on beyond the title.

One of the worst crimes against a classic game has to be the movie adaptation of ‘Super Mario Bros’. When you watch this film you find it hard to believe that anyone involved had ever played or heard anything about the game. We all know the basic outline of the game right? An Italian plumber runs along and jumps on mushrooms to squash them on his way to rescue a captured princess. The film rants on about alternate dimensions, dinosaurs and is set in New York for some reason. It’s pretty easy to guess what happened, some failed script for a kids movie was shelved and then when the production company got the rights to make a ‘Super Mario Bros’ movie, they saved time writing a script by wiping the dust off of this one and went straight into production.

Just imagine for a second, what the cinema industry would be like today if ‘Super Mario Bros’ had been a great film. The science fiction action craze of the 90s could have been video game oriented instead, or one could compare such a possibility to the superhero renaissance we have today. But of course that hasn’t happened, and instead Nintendo abandoned any hope of future game adaptations.

Another opportunity came from the Disney film ‘Prince of Persia: Sands of Time’. It’s certainly the closest a video game film has gotten to being a genuine contender in terms of budget and casting (including Jake Gyllenhaal and Ben Kingsley). It was highly important as if it was a success for Disney they would have proven that this format and concept works, and that they can do more of them. So ‘Prince of Persia’ had to be good, and while it was visually and aesthetically impressive and far from a terrible action movie, it was mediocre at best

So the question remains, does it even make sense to make video game movies anymore? Maybe, but it all comes down to who is making them, and the manner in which they do it. For a start you can never hope to make a movie that will live up to the audience’s expectation from playing upwards of 50 hours of gaming, and every gamer will have built up their own perception, opinions and views of the characters and story. So you’ll have to make a movie that serves as a spinoff to the main game itself, sort of like how the ‘Akira’ movie is merely a small part of the massive comic book saga it is based upon.

More so, you need it to be adapted by someone who both loves and respects the source material. Other forms of storytelling such as books and comics are treated with great respect and the makers do their best only to deviate from the source material when they feel it is necessary. Video games aren’t seen in the same light and therefore no serious writer will take one on willingly. We may have to wait one more generation for a great video game movie, when a writer who grew up playing the game and therefore is willing and ready to honour it steps up to the task.