well what do you guys think? my opinion is that they just dont follow the story lines like they should. for some reason they think they can make classic games even better by destroying the game then adding crappy hollywood writing and acting.
Movies are very visual - hence the natural tie in with games. But games are interactive - and movies are not. The bestest game you ever played simply doesnt equal sitting in a theater not doing anything. Also, games have no plot, or very little - so translating no story, no plot (because games are _played_ ) doesnt help you make a good movie. The movie makers try and jump on the making a movie out of game idea because of the popularity of certain games/\.
There are several reasons for this, but I'm not going to write an editorial. One of the biggest faults is simply the transition between two mediums that appear similar on the surface, but in reality are very different. Turning a novel into a screenplay is a fairly straightforward thing to do, whereas transforming a game, with pre-existing visuals and direct experiences into a non-interactive medium is difficult at best. A less artsy reason is simply the Hollywood machine that crunches up games along with classic TV shows, movies, books and comics into a pop culture paste for public consumption.
I think the Mortal Kombat movie (the first one) is quite good. A main reason why games don't make good movies is that games just don't have quality plotlines. It's interactive, which rather naturally limits the storytelling. And if it manages to get passed that hurdle, then there's fact that these game-movies aren't the ones to get very high production values anyway.
because almost all the games the adapt have bad stories. the best (imo) movie based off of a game is Silent Hill, y'know why it's the best one? because Silent Hill has a good story, and they didn't change to much around.
Aside from other reasons pointed out above, I think one of the problems why we haven't really seen a good video game movie is because most games with good storylines don't sell as much. Sure, you'll point out Final Fantasy, but most best-sellers are stuff like Mario, Madden and The Sims, which don't lend themselves so well to film format.
Of course, a movie based on Double Dragon is going to suck, that's a given. But give me a well-directed movie based on Indigo Prophecy? Maybe the tide turns.
In my opinion, the only good, acceptable video game movies are Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil.
I'm hoping that Gears of War, Diablo, and World of Warcraft are made into good movies. Since each movie will be overseen by the companies that made the game. I'm very sure that Epic and Blizzard don't want Hollywood to ruin their francises.
And if those movies turn out to be good or great, heres hoping for a Starcraft movie. Starcraft has a great storyline and action that is begging to be made into a great summer blockbuster movie.
Personally, I believe the reason is mostly economics in action.
The movie studio buys the rights to a film adaption of a video game. From here, they just have to decide how good to make the movie to maximize their profits. The sad truth is that they can turn out a horrible movie but many fans will still flock to the theaters or rental store and see it. Sadly, many of these fans will even be satisfied. If only I had a dollar for every person who claimed Silent Hill, Doom, or Advent Children was really good.
Sure, an awesomemovie is waiting beneath many games. It's just that there is no financial incentive to make a video game movie that aspires to anything greater than to take up 2 hours of your time.
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