Oh Yeah, and Another Thing

While I'm on the topic of video games, there's another tangential point I'd like to mention: movie adaptations. There have been many, many attempts to transfer video games to the big screen, and in the vast majority of cases, it has been an artistic abortion. Here's a few gems that were decent video games, turned horrendous movies:

Super Mario Brothers (1993)
Street Fighter (1994)
Double Dragon (1994)
Alone in the Dark (2005)
Doom (2005)
BloodRayne (2005)
Silent Hill (2006)
Hitman (2007)
Max Payne (2008)


Granted there have been a few commercially successful movies (i.e., Resident Evil, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) but in large part, the teams that attempt to retrofit video games into a pre-established Hollywood formula have overwhelmingly failed. And this doesn't make sense. You think after three or four bad cross-overs, Hollywood would say 'You know what doesn't work? Trying to make movies out of video games.' but 2010's Prince of Persia (starring the very not-Persian Jake Gylllanhal) is a testament to their arrogant ways.

Why not make a video-game based movie true to its source? Assuming the game in question is already popular, you'd have a built-in constituency of loyal geeks, nerds, and asian kids who already like it and ostensibly want to go see it. And more often than not, video game plots are solid stories (e.g., May Payne was an awesome game) so why change what others already spent time writing and editing (e.g., Max Payne was a TERRIBLE movie). It's like buying a well-furnished house, and then stripping it down, and filling it with Thomas Kincades.

One big problem is casting. Everybody likes movie stars (well, come to think of it, no I don't at all) but adding a 'big star' will only a.) take away from the movie's integrity and b.) piss off the fans pre-conceived ideas. (For instance, there is no possible reason why Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson should have been in Doom.) A while back, when they were considering making a movie based off the immensely popular video game franchise Halo (to give perspective: Halo 3 holds the record for highest sales revenue within 24 hours of release) they were thinking of casting the enigmatic and solemn "Master Chief" character (who in the games, never takes off his helmet) as none other than The Pacifier's Vin Deisel. Luckily, the helm was given to Peter Jackson and company, who in a wise decision, decided to scrap the project.

The bottom line is video games can't be treated like other entertainment forms. Books are easy to adapt to movies because they're a media blueprint; people like seeing the theorhetical come to live. Viedo games are a dynamic and visually-based system of media in which a person's ideas and fantasies have already come to life, thus, trying to reinvent them is futile. Rather, try and adapt them into a new perspective. I mean, after all, what's a video games if not a movie you control? Hmm??