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

[vqkatsuko]

meh bias reporting. they said it made only 46.6m in america... google shows 433.5million worldwide (updated figure not one 6months old) even if true, over1/10 of its total in USA alone is not a failure. also the production had a budget of 160million. there was a lot of money made of this movie but the way its work in china they get paid only 25% cause they are a foreign investor (imagine that). now that it is owned by chinese they will receive 43% of the box office. they movie was no where near a flop, but people are money hungry and if it dont bank 1billion its not a blockbuster.

the 160million figure is from production, these figures never include marketing, and if you remember the studio thought it was wise to have an useless huge marketing campaign. It is rumored that the total cost of the movie was around 450 to 500 million including the marketing

[Usernameforforums]

The problem is video games already have a narrative/lore/action. In movies you can only put so much of each. These video games take hours to finish and understand whats going on. In movies they have to fit the same stuff within 2 hours vs the 11(or so) for AC or 100+ for WoW(possibly more just to understand lore)

[OrcsRLame]

Video games are uniquely challenging to adapt into movies imo. Really sit down and think about specific video games that have good stories. Now remove every gameplay element including any player choice from those games. Does the story still stand on its own?

I think more often than not, the answer is no. There are some notable exceptions, but I think part of what makes a game's story compelling for gamers is the immersion factor. Take a game like Baldur's Gate 2 for example. If you think critically about it there's not really a lot of interesting parts to it. Most of the game's narrative could fit in a 50 page story. As far as hate-able villains go Irenicus would not even be that notable if all the bad things he did were not done directly to the player. Would you really care as much if he imprisoned some movie protagonist?

The only video game story I've ever personally seen that I think can stand on even footing with any book, movie, TV show, etc, is Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. A lot of what made that game great would be unrecognizable as a movie though.

[Garnier Fructis]

I may be the only person in my guild that didn't like it, but the Warcraft movie was terrible. The plot was rushed. Many of the character actions were confusing if you didn't know about them before hand. And as the first movie in what is presumably going to be a franchise, there's no excuse for relying on prior material, especially if marketed to a wider audience outside of players. And it was marketed to a wider audience, considering one of the marketing campaigns was a 1 month free starter for the game.

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.

Have you played narrative driven games? The story in games like Last of Us or Life is Strange is amazing. As far as I know, the Last of Us movie has evaporated, but if it ever gets revived then it would basically take someone on the level of Uwe Boll to be able to fuck it up.

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Not everything in life is a political message...

Granted, I also didn't go see it because the trailer looked like garbage and suggested it would be a generic action/adventure movie in a watered down high fantasy setting that had annoying deviations from canon (ie bland with no redeeming features).

And you would be spot on.

[Baconeggcheese]

That's how it happened in the games, though. In Warcraft I we didn't know about the demon blood, Draenor, the draenei, Kil'Jaedin and Archimonde, any of that. It was a complicated story that got fleshed out over time. You try to dump all that into an average length movie and unless you already know all of it there is a lot to absorb. Save making the Orcs look good till at least Warcraft II.

Speaking of Warcraft II, if they go that route it will be a doozy to make. Quel'thelas, Lordaeron, Draenor, Deathwing...

How things happened in the games wasn't exactly the best storytelling and what have you. So much shit has been retconned or just ignored over the years.

Frankly I think they would have been better off jumping right into wc3, as that's a much better story for the masses than the lead up to it. Which shouldn't really be surprising, considering blizzard had time with the franchise by then. I'm honestly hoping the movies do well enough to actually get to the wc3 storylines, because those are the ones I really want to see.

[Krigaren]

Not everything in life is a political message...

Granted, I also didn't go see it because the trailer looked like garbage and suggested it would be a generic action/adventure movie in a watered down high fantasy setting that had annoying deviations from canon (ie bland with no redeeming features).

Video game comes out in 1994 about orcs invading another world. No one ascribes a political message to it then, nor in the 22 years that follow.

Movie comes out in 2016 about 1994 video game about orcs invading another world. "It's a liberal sjw beta cuck movie pushing a political agenda about immigration, won't see!"

The times we live in.

[zEmini]

I think the overal quality of movies in general also contribute to this. Too much CGI, too little content/story.

[Mad_Murdock]

Video games are uniquely challenging to adapt into movies imo. Really sit down and think about specific video games that have good stories. Now remove every gameplay element including any player choice from those games. Does the story still stand on its own?

I think if you could get a Steven Spielberg, J.J Abrams or Peter Jackson to do Warcraft, they could make it pretty good. J.J. Abrams had the best attitude when taking over the Star Trek series. Make a movie for people that like movies, fill in the rest with the franchise material. The latest Star Treks may not have been super awesome, but I think they were far superior to the last 3-5 Star Trek movies.

Personally I think Warcraft (or Starcraft or Diablo) needs the Peter Jackson LOTR treatment. It needs to be a 3 movie deal to begin.

[OrcsRLame]

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.

Why? /10char

[Sky High]

Why? /10char

in warcraft's case I find that even harder to believe. WCIII is imo a pinnacle in video game story telling.

[OrcsRLame]

in warcraft's case I find that even harder to believe. WCIII is imo a pinnacle in video game story telling.

I'll be honest, I only asked him that question because I'm curious what could possibly lead someone to make such an insanely stupid statement and I want to know what kind of reasoning he uses to defend that insane point. 50 Bucks that if he responds at all he answers my question with another question.

Like, I would even accept a statement like, "most video game stories are lame" or "all video games I've ever played or heard about have lame stories" but to claim in an absolute sense that video games cannot have good stories is totally insane.

Just imagine, we prove the existence of a multiverse and spatial dimensions higher than 3. In all universes and dimensions video games exist. Throughout all time, all universes, all dimensions, no one is ever able to make a decent video game story, despite Graham's Number ^ Graham's Number of attempts to do so.

The very idea is so ludicrous that the only option is to laugh at it.

[TrumpIsPresident]

Why are you on a forum that mostly revolves around WoW if you don't have even a passing familiarity with the lore of Warcraft?

I've been a Warcraft fan since WC1 and a WoW subscriber since day 1. Never really paid that much attention to he lore but I always thought it would have been fun to make a lvl 1 char and just take it real slow absorbing the story. Seems now that the world has changed so much through the expansions that I've missed out.

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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.

Of course "that's me" the very mention of "$0.02" indicates thats MY opinion. You might want to run that through your "cognition" filter.

I got 13 replies in my inbox this morning. Yours was the most triggered, IMO.

[Deleted]

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

Well it didn't. I think. It was entertaining to be sure and taught us that fel magic is kinda bad.. maybe it's me but I didnt really find a political message or real world connection in it.

[OrcsRLame]

I've been a Warcraft fan since WC1 and a WoW subscriber since day 1. Never really paid that much attention to he lore but I always thought it would have been fun to make a lvl 1 char and just take it real slow absorbing the story. Seems now that the world has changed so much through the expansions that I've missed out.

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Of course "that's me" the very mention of "$0.02" indicates thats MY opinion. You might want to run that through your "cognition" filter.

I got 13 replies in my inbox this morning. Yours was the most triggered, IMO.

Opinions can be objectively wrong. The Warcraft movie is pretty damn close to WC1's story just with added context from wow. All of this predates the migrant crisis by well over 10 years, and the general framework by over 20. It's literally not possible for it to be commentary on the migrant crisis.

That would be like saying that Stalin was inspired by Obama or something. Time physically does not work that way.

[TrumpIsPresident]

Opinions can be objectively wrong. The Warcraft movie is pretty damn close to WC1's story just with added context from wow.

I never once said it wasn't though. People are just getting triggered because I poked two of their pressure points. Fact is the story had coincidences with the current events occurring during its release. So what?

[OrcsRLame]

I never once said it wasn't though. People are just getting triggered because I poked two of their pressure points. Fact is the story had coincidences with the current events occurring during its release. So what?

"When I saw the Warcraft trailer I got the impression that it was pushing some immigration, refugee, political message"

That's a pretty direct assertion.

It'd be like if you said, "I got the impression that the Earth is flat and there's a giant worldwide conspiracy to cover it up" then everyone else goes, "lawl, look at this retard that thinks the Earth is flat" now you're going, "Gotcha! I never ACTUALLY said the Earth is flat. People are so triggered!"

That's you right now.

I voted for Trump. Please stop this stupid ass insanity. It makes the rest of us look retarded. It's ridiculous and cringey.

[TrumpIsPresident]

"When I saw the Warcraft trailer I got the impression that it was pushing some immigration, refugee, political message"

That's a pretty direct assertion.

It'd be like if you said, "I got the impression that the Earth is flat and there's a giant worldwide conspiracy to cover it up" then everyone else goes, "lawl, look at this retard that thinks the Earth is flat" now you're going, "Gotcha! I never ACTUALLY said the Earth is flat. People are so triggered!"

That's you right now.

I voted for Trump. Please stop this stupid ass insanity. It makes the rest of us look retarded. It's ridiculous and cringey.

The triggering continues. You people might want to run the word "impression" through dictionary.com and then you might see why I chose to use that word.

[Underverse]

I agree. I think writers try to take on way too much of the video game's universe at once.

[primalmatter]

I think the problem is they try to follow the games story... just use the world not the characters. Warcraft was pretty bad because they tried to expand and tie in a whole bunch of elements they should of just left alone.

It got to the point where even as someone who followed all the games and books had no kdea what the hell was going on most of the time. The weird as cube... medivh turning into a whiny character and the horde being reduced to the laughable state they are in world of warcraft screaming retarded shit about honor after butchering children.

If you want to make a good video game movie take the universe and leave all existing characters out of it.

[McNeil]

I haven't seen Assassin's Creed yet but judging from the trailers I don't have to expect anything, I also haven't played the games yet so maybe it works as an advantage. As for Warcraft, with the budget it had it could've been a really good movie, even as a video game movie. But the movie was just filled with flaws, they basically did everything wrong except the CGI for orcs and some of the battle scenes. The acting was bad, the pacing was bad, the story was bad, the characters were bad, the dialogue was bad, and some other stuff like emotion and atmosphere were severely lacking.

But there are certain things that brings down this movie by a lot, for example that the movie only lasts 2 hours while it needed atleast 40-60 minutes more to properly flesh out the story and characters. What we got now is some very awkward pacing issues where at one moment we're in Draenor, a sec later in Stormwind, another sec later in Karazhan, another sec later in a bar (not in particular order), there's simply not enough breathing time.

It might've been better if they took another timeline for this movie to start, like starting with the Arthas storyline so you can have a solid linear storyline. Instead they tried to hard to push the Alliance vs Horde theme, even advertising it as such like with some dumb Twitch icons and having PewDiePie promote the game. This hurts the movie because its hard to properly balance a movie troughout 2 different perspectives without making sacrifices to the quality of writing.

Some other flaws like making this movie to heavily focussed on CGI, if it were up to me I would've just made the whole movie CGI like the WoW trailers. Thats quite expensive though, but it would've worked better.