Remember the days when playing a video game was just simply popping a quarter into a machine and trying to finish a level? Whether it was playing Donkey Kong, Spy Hunter or Arknoid, people had fun with arcade games before it moved in the home with Pac Man, Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog leading the way. Let's just say things have evolved since then. Now video games are well-written narratives that engross their player into a story -where some even evoke an emotional response- all tuned to music from a full orchestra written by the same guys that write the scores for blockbuster motion pictures. Hollywood is trying to get more video games on bigger screens than your flat screen at home. However, these stories haven't been able to be adapted to the big screen. Why? Were their casts not good enough? Did they not have top notch directors? What went wrong?
For starters, look at the facts. Despite making about $678 million worldwide during it's series, the Resident Evil movies have been mediocre at best. Their Rotten Tomatoes score never broke 34% so critics and audiences didn't like it too much despite what box office grosses have to say. Part of the problem to the hardcore RE fans is that the addition of Alice changed the story completely. The RE game was about a special OPs team that was dropped into a strange situation, only to discover that one of their own agents assisted in creating the ultimate biological weapon. The movie... went another way. It begins with the incident and turns into a bizarre retelling of "Alice in Wonderland". Does that sound like the same story? Of course not, but somehow this spawned THREE more movies and a fifth coming in September. In spite of low quality of these films, it keeps making money. Guess that proves movies don't have to be good, just slapped with a brand name.
The fundamental part of the video game storytelling is gone when put on screen. Plug in your console and pop in a random action game. Usual formula now is cinema scene (tutorial maybe) and then a task that leads to the expanding story. A film needs to introduce the character and have an inciting incident to draw the viewer in. A video game already has the viewer and the experience expands the story, whereas a film has to tell the story. Hence why a game like "F.E.A.R." works well, but if made into a film wouldn't using the exact same formula would be dreadful. Take "Gears of War" (always rumored in production) uses a 5 act structure. There's only three acts in a movie. So right away there's two acts that needs to be removed and that's not including that the original Gears game focused on Marcus Fenix without explaining E-Day. It wasn't until the second story that Gears developed Dom's story and the history of the War. "Gears of War" cannot do that if they make a film, especially if the producers want the trilogy.
Part of the problem with video game films is that the player is meant to be in a game for several hours. A film is meant to hold you for 2 hours. Now, how do you just remove bits of story without hurting the overall experience your audience has already enjoyed? Take "Super Mario Bros" -the first video game movie- which made up a story about plumbers who travelled to another dimension to take on Koopa, who is a crime boss and not a giant turtle-like creature. This film was doomed from the start. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Italian plumbers? Really? None of the film embodied it's more successful namesake and what's worse is that it proved what not to do with a video-game-movie. At least "Double Dragon" didn't make the same mistake... oh wait.
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The other way around is true as well, look at "Street Fighter" and "Mortal Kombat" which were two games that had minimal story and yet were expanded to make 90 minute movies. The result was two films with weak storylines and characters you weren't sure if you wanted to root for them in the first place. A fighting game doesn't really have a hero. It has heroes. So there's no clear person to root for and what if your favorite characters was Ryu and Johnny Cage and the film centers around Guile and Liu Kang. Seriously, did anyone think Raiden was a good guy?
Now, it is possible to make a good video game movie. If you consider "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" as one. Instead of making a film about their highly successful "Final Fantasy VII", Square Soft told another story with new characters. This film featured the voices of Ming Na, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, Steve Buscemi and James Woods. It was the highest rated video-based film... that was not based of a game. "Silent Hill" and "Prince of Persia" focused on their stories a little bit more and lead to a better product, but there still hasn't been a "Citizen Kane" for video game films. There were rumors of John Woo being attached to "Metroid", but there still hasn't been any activity from Nintendo with rumors that "The Legend of Zelda" will never find it's way to the big screen. One good thing came from the failure to make "Halo", Peter Jackson ended up using Neil Blomkamp to make "District 9" when they couldn't get a script for the game.
Maybe Hollywood gets it right sometime soon. They're going to have plenty of opportunities coming up. Internet rumors have up 20 games being optioned to become features, but will they ever be the same quality as the comic book films that have come out in the last decade. Hard to tell, but don't let this ruin you from popping back in your favorite game and playing it again.
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