Assassin's Creed, Warcraft etc: The problem with video game movies ISN'T video games

[Waynhim]

These movies are doomed ventures, mainly due to the fact you aren't able to cater to both fans and non-fans.

Only reason I liked Warcraft was due to having played the game. Never played AC and found the movie utter garbage.

[Forogil]

I think the biggest problem in adapting video games to movies is a matter of perspective. In video games, we are the main participants. It is really hard to translate that well to a movie. Even games that are basically interactive movies (such as The Last of Us) would be really hard to do well I think.

Agreed. In a game you are an actor making choices; whereas movie/book/comic/theater/opera have you as a passive audience.

Yes, there is a bit of lore in the background; but when people reminiscence about old WoW they usually mention what they and others participated in - not the background lore.

[Klingers]

The first Mortal Combat movie was good, IMO. It catered to both fans of the series and movie-goers pretty equally. The soundtrack was great too. It was a success in the box office based off the funding it received, even though it wasn't a hit.

I liked the Warcraft movie. My girlfriend was clueless about a lot of the things going on. I whispered to her like every 10 minutes. Heard some guys outside the theater complaining about the lack of night elves. Obviously not lore fans. Think they would have done better starting with Arthas.

I agree with you while-heartedly on the mortal kombat movie. Back the. MK game lore was pretty damn simple: some magic ninjas come to fight on an island to save the world. The movie featured a bunch of magic ninjas fighting on and island to save the world.

I translated well to screen because the producers didn't try to over complicate things. Today's MK lore? That'd be a fucking MESS unless they cut out a lot and went for a core story. That's the key I think.

[Cosmic Janitor]

They tried to do too much with the Warcraft movie that is all. You can't satisfy critics or the average 2-brain-cell movie goer with that, because their attention spann is too short and people already go with the expectation to hate it, because game adaptation. On the other hand people jizzed all over themselves with Star Wars 7: The Rehashening, the cards were simply stacked against them and then they left half of the material on the cutting room floor because they didn't dare to go the full length. At the time of release me personally I was also still in the "fuck orcs, just fuck them, I don't care" mindset and I wouldn't be caught dead watching a warcraft movie in cinema anyway. I think they overestimated how many nerds would really leave their cellars to watch this shit. Add to that, that most movie critics are like restaurant critics, they write their recessions mainly for entertaining the viewer and are desperate to write a tactical nuke for maximum clicks/reads.

People make it out to be the room or some such shit, it certainly wasn't that aweful..

[pateuvasiliu]

Warcraft was a good film doe. Not anything amazing, but it was alright.

[TheCount]

You are trying to condense so much history and lore into such a small time window(90 or so minutes) that you can't fully explore all the characters, locations or problems.
Warcraft was an okay film if you had prior knowledge of the games lore. An example would be when Khad'ger gets introduced he gets called a "spell chucker". If you knew Khad'ger was from Dalaran which most WoW players would know then it makes sense but the average person with no knowledge of the game would be like "wtf is that about".
Its why most video game movies just end up being bad, not enough time to get into all the details that make it understandable for mainstream. Avatar the Last Airbender had the same problem, that one even had the benefit of being in the mainstream it just failed to translate the success of the series into a movie.

[HumbleDuck]

AC is not comparable to Warcraft movie imo. I personally really enjoyed Warcraft as a popcorn flick. AC in the other hand, I think, was just a bad movie.

[xenogear3]

The critics are not mindless fanboys or no life.

They have no interest to "grind" for the ending.

[Techno-Druid]

When I saw the Warcraft trailer I got the impression that it was pushing some immigration, refugee, political message so it turned me off and so I never bothered to actually watch it.

According to popular opinion ...I didn't miss out.

$0.02

But it was literally the plot to the first Warcraft game...only they eventually have Durotan working with the Alliance.

[Al Gorefiend]

You wanna know the problem?

Video games are a more entertaining medium than movies on every possible front. You're used to enjoying the content from the highest possible delivery, then you're expected to sit down for 2 hours listening to talking you can't control and fighting you aren't behind the wheel of when a movie of it releases.

[Blade Wolf]

Warcraft was quite easy to translate tho.

Sadly all video game movies need to be hollywodized (i know it's not a real word but still). They had to add romance with Garona, they had to leave a cliffhangar ending because clearly the original Warcraft ending didn't leave enough stuff for a sequel.

[Al Gorefiend]

But it was literally the plot to the first Warcraft game...only they eventually have Durotan working with the Alliance.

Yeah the story Warcraft told with all the xenophobia, slavery, prejudice was the solid basis of the original games. It's hard to tell slavery and bigotry stories without drawing real world parallels.

- - - Updated - - -

Sadly all video game movies need to be hollywodized (i know it's not a real word but still). They had to add romance with Garona, they had to leave a cliffhangar ending because clearly the original Warcraft ending didn't leave enough stuff for a sequel.

Sadly the hollywoodizing is becoming so bland and predictable it hinders plots more than it helps. The moment you see a skinny actress on set you just know there's gonna be a romance subplot. Happened in every Marvel movie this decade too.

[Techno-Druid]

Yeah the story Warcraft told with all the xenophobia, slavery, prejudice was the solid basis of the original games. It's hard to tell slavery and bigotry stories without drawing real world parallels.

Not just that, but the orcs have always come off as being conquerors way more than immigrants. Less Syrian refugee and more Hun or Mongol.

[vqkatsuko]

I feel the difference is that Warcraft was made for Warcraft fans, and it serviced that fan base pretty well imho.

AC was just a terrible movie with terrible writing and terrible "fake" science fiction that would never be possible, the animus scenes were all just stupid. Also them doing hard forced transitions to the 1400/1500's to present day and watching michael fassbender doing parkour a robot arm was just stupid.

Even if you do not per se like Warcraft you can tell that the production team actually liked the Warcraft franchise and tried to do it justice.

AC on the other hand seemed like a barely lit cash grab that is going to fail epically.

Though I also would not be surprised that when Warcraft II gets green lit, they will retool the film for China and just tell the USA to fuck off tbh

[Al Gorefiend]

Not just that, but the orcs have always come off as being conquerors way more than immigrants. Less Syrian refugee and more Hun or Mongol.

If anything, the movie further drew parallels to real life more than the games, to captivate an audience unfamiliar with the games to give them a reference of what the Orcs are experiencing

[Grimbold21]

I haven't watched it yet, but one common thing I've heard is that with a rich story that AC has the movie went somewhat offtracks and created its own story.

I mean Altair and Ezzio's arcs are quite pleasant

[minteK917]

Gaming movies are destined to fail because any game plot is by default lame.

Hats off to any insane writer trying to make a movie out of source material that is already garbage while trying to appease an audience that likes that garbage.

The stigma is even worse. Hollywood seems incapable of sticking to one story and have to cramp as much as possible or disregard original story entirely. Look at the doom movie, how do you fuck that up? All you had to do was make a movie about a space marine kicking ass on mars and hell as cheesy as possible. Instead you have a movie about a disease devoided of humour with half of it being technobabble PG13.

Comic books movies also have that problem, til smart people showed the way. You still have dumb people trying to shove 3 books or 50 hours of video game into one cough WB cough. Plently of games would make outstanding tv series or movie series.

[SirBeef]

When I saw the Warcraft trailer I got the impression that it was pushing some immigration, refugee, political message so it turned me off and so I never bothered to actually watch it.

According to popular opinion ...I didn't miss out.

$0.02

That's you, and there was no message in the movie. But then again, we shouldn't have expected any form of cognition from you.

[Bumbasta]

If you just put all the cutscenes/trailers of the warcraft series and wow together you basically have a beautiful movie, at least better than the warcraft movie.

[SirBeef]

The stigma is even worse. Hollywood seems incapable of sticking to one story and have to cramp as much as possible or disregard original story entirely. Look at the doom movie, how do you fuck that up? All you had to do was make a movie about a space marine kicking ass on mars and hell as cheesy as possible. Instead you have a movie about a disease devoided of humour with half of it being technobabble PG13.

Comic books movies also have that problem, til smart people showed the way. You still have dumb people trying to shove 3 books or 50 hours of video game into one cough WB cough. Plently of games would make outstanding tv series or movie series.

Part of the problem is the media change. It's hard to go from one form to another without losing something in translation.

- - - Updated - - -

If you just put all the cutscenes/trailers of the warcraft series and wow together you basically have a beautiful movie, at least better than the warcraft movie.

I wish people and the movie would drop the 1.5-2 hour max for movies crap. If a move needs to be three hours then let it be three hours. They can even have an intermission in the middle like they do with live theater.