[Movies] Why do Video Game-based movies fail?

[Ershiin]

Two major reasons i can think of..
One being that the stories and plots of most games are really meant to spand over too much time to be properly covered in a movie.
The other being that most of the people who does video game movies dont care about the games themselves and just see it as an easy market to earn some money from nerds.

Obligatory third reason being Uwe Boll...

[Rageissues]

I personally enjoyed the first RE movie, but not the other ones.

I completely forgot about the Mario movie... it was lol-worthy.

To make a statement with little behind it, if the movie is rated R, it will be generally more enjoyable. Sure less people will pay to watch it, (which sadly is the reality of all businesses) but most people, at least in my personal experiences, enjoy a good violent movie over "Pee Wee battles the Teletubbies".

And I don't want no fucking cheesy jokes! I'm looking right at you Transformers 1 and 2...

[rase1one]

Video game movies in itself aren't always bad. More or less the fact that it's based off a video game gives it a bigger chance to fail than to succeed since there aren't many games which can have adaptations which would realistically fit in a cinema. The majority of movies are bad. Video game movies wouldn't really classify as a genre or even a sub-genre. From what ive seen basically every video game movie is either a fantasy or scifi setting. You dont really see any action movies as the genre is so broad and most action movies plots are similar to others, with the exception of street fighter. The fact that they are all fantasy and scifi movies means they require a larger budget than usual. Directors and studios are cautious when it comes to games because it's popularity and target market. A game like wow has more potential since it's been running for years as well as an obviously talented cinematic and screenplay team. I would say that it's not the video game genre but the fantasy and scifi genre that is having the trouble. Some of the best movies ever made were fantasy / scifi movies. Eg, Lord of the Rings, Alien and yes; even the classic The Wizard of Oz.

[Barky]

but Scott Pilgrim is probably the best "Video Game Movie" and that's not even based on a game.

100% correct.

I think the problem with video game based movies is that they are never kept true to the original storylines as compared to the actual game (or at least 90% of the time)

Also I guess they never recapture the feeling you got when you were playing the game itself. That's why a lot of gamers leave feeling disappointed out of the cinema but non-gamers seem to enjoy them.

[Exiled]

I would say no love put into them!

[stuperdude]

Because they're not shot from first person/3rd person/platform POV!

[moaradin]

I personally enjoyed the first RE movie, but not the other ones.

I completely forgot about the Mario movie... it was lol-worthy.

To make a statement with little behind it, if the movie is rated R, it will be generally more enjoyable. Sure less people will pay to watch it, (which sadly is the reality of all businesses) but most people, at least in my personal experiences, enjoy a good violent movie over "Pee Wee battles the Teletubbies".

And I don't want no fucking cheesy jokes! I'm looking right at you Transformers 1 and 2...

Yea when you start giving the main character superpowers in a zombie film that is supposed to be a horror, then you know something is wrong.

The first Transformers movie was good for a mindless popcorn movie, but the second one had too much sex jokes

[bak00777]

Doom with Dwayne Johnson was good, and the first Resident Evil.

i did like Doom, esp the first person part at the end...that was pretty neat.

[saberon]

I think that most Game-based movies fail because:

- Like Books, Games are based around a storyline. And, Like books, its hard to fit that entire story into a 2 hour slot. Which is why many book based movies are sub-par.

- Even worse than Books, however, is that Game-based movies have an action component, and, since apparently telling a story is so damn hard, Directors often opt to accentuate the action and forget about the storyline.

- And then, they try and make the film more "Mainstream", thus butchering the plot even further.

[rhod]

The biggest problem is, and I know I'm going to catch some shit for this from a ton of people, is the vast majority of video games really have sort of "B-movie" writing and character development. They're designed to entertain and allow you to play the characters, not let you sit back in sheer amazement at the emotion and character interactions. Ask yourself this, how many times have you been on the verge of tears when reaching the climax of a video game's story as opposed to the climax of a superb movie? You just can't even begin to compare the emotions a good movie can bring out of you. The best thing a video game based movie can do is try to sell out and be as "cool" as possible, but even then it generally fails because the game is typically a lot cooler.

If there was ever any game that had better writing than a lot of hollywood movies, it would be Mass Effect 2. It felt like you were playing a movie.

[Lylandra]

agreed with Prince of Persia being one of the best movie adaptions of a video game.

Problem is that most video games that are no adventures/RPG don't have a "big story" with multiple interesting characters to tell. They entertain by letting us do the action and story is next to irrelevant in many cases. But that doesn't work in a movie where the person who views it has no input to the things happening on screen.
Problem with those few adventure adaptions that *have* a story is that they are most times 6+ hours long and that needs to be adjusted to fit into a 2-3 hours movie. Same thing we have with many book-adaptions. And I believe that is the reason why we have not seen that many RPG -> screen adaptions until now. Advent children was a good movie because it was a sequel and done by SQ-Enix itself. FF7 itself would be quite difficult to adapt to a movie, especially if you wanted to realistically include the multiple layers of Cloud's identity.

[brirrspliff]

they will stop failing when blizzard releases a rendered (important, computer gfx, no actors!) cinema movie. boy would that rock. imagine 90 minutes of bliizard trailers.

[Deleted]

Does Advent Children count, because I actually quite liked that and I'm pretty sure it did well

[Jim the mage]

Does Advent Children count, because I actually quite liked that and I'm pretty sure it did well

Pretty sure we all agree that Advent Children is awesome. But thats because it was made by the people who knew the story. I'm praying that the Warcraft movie won't be a fail but my expectations has dropped since watching the Mario movie and the Doom movie (Though Dwayne Johnson was awesome in it). All I can say is; Let Blizz make the Warcraft movie themselves, not let a hack make it.

[Lylandra]

they will stop failing when blizzard releases a rendered (important, computer gfx, no actors!) cinema movie. boy would that rock. imagine 90 minutes of bliizard trailers.

Hope that the Warcraft movie will be longer than 90 minutes :X

[Kavoo]

Wouldnt it be awesome if they rebooted the Resident Evil franchise and made a movie with the plot of the games ?

RE1: thriller-ish
RE2: plot twists
RE3: full non stop action

[Noomz]

I read about it in a video game magazine (which I'd rather not name) a few years back and didn't think much of it at the time. As indicated in This Thread, my expectations of the Warcraft Movie are pretty low. After all, not ONE Video Game inspired movie it seems actually tries to relate to the game it's based on aside from the names of the characters. This makes no sense since representatives from the video game franchise in question (in Blizzard's case, Chris Metzen) are supposed to be working with the movie production to make sure you don't end up with disasters like Street Fighter and Double Dragon.

Mind you, I'm aware the game companies get a sizable cut of the profits from the movie and therefore don't care as long as they get their cut, but what the ****. It was the FANS who wanted the movie. Of course we also to blame for not liking what we asked for but at the same time, they should at least try. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it. If you must make a movie adaptation of a movie, you should consult The Aurabolt's Five Rules:

1. Play the game the movie will be based on: Of course they're not required to but the movie Super Mario Bros. wouldn't have looked like such a nightmare if they at least played the first 30 minutes of Super Mario World. That and Double Dragon are perfect examples of what happens when you decide to "reinvent" what doesn't need to be tampered with.

2. If you will not play, REQUEST/DEMAND reps from the game maker consult: They're allowed to do that. It's called "trying to be accurate". About a third of those who saw Street Fighter watched it knowing it was Raul Julia's final project of his career (and were fans of his). The rest watched for one of two reasons: The misleading trailers (really had me fooled) and the name of the movie. The acting was terrible and it was obvious there was ALOT of guesswork. I suspect they merely got permission to do the movie but were then given a laundry list of things they weren't allowed to do. Capcom clearly tried to make $$$$ off its flagship franchise on the big screen. They haven't attempted it again for obvious reasons!

3. Don't be afraid to go off script if you have a good actor/actress: Case in point: The first Tomb Raider movie. Lara Croft was played by Angelina Jolie (who reprised the role in the second as well but it didn't do as well) and in a rather interesting twist, her actor father Jon Voight (a damned good actor in his own right--IMBD) was tapped to play the role of Mr. Croft. The film was loosely based on the first two movies with a few sprinkles of Indiana Jones thrown in for good luck. It ended up working out but lightning didn't strike twice. Of course it worked because Angelina was willing to do what she could make it work. The second movie didn't do as well for one of two possible reasons: The recently released TR game almost killed the franchise and it was competing with highly anticipated blockbusters.

4. Selling Out could kill the franchise: That was the fear after the movie Driver was announced. After all, it's been a long time since the last game--an attempt to reinvent the franchise at that--came out and it was rather disappointing. The first two games were well received but the third did so terribly the developers went back to the drawing board and almost didn't leave. What they came up with almost sunk them for good!

5. Don't focus on just the characters: This was what they did in the Mortal Kombat movies. It showed from start to finish. They may have been based on fighting games (and at the time the most popular fighting game series) but they didn't need to be so...cliched and 2-dimensional. So Johnny Cage accepts the invitation to Mortal Kombat after a boring movie shoot of an fight scene. Sonya Blade ends up in the tournament to go after Kano. So? We could've figured out the former just from the games and the latter everyone already knew without having to. The decision to make Liu Kang Luke Skywalker was pretty assinine not because they pulled it off but because the included every Hero's Journey cliche they could fit.

Of course, those are all my opinion and I don't expect anyone to take 'em seriously. I'll not split my own topic as I tend to do ('cause I multi-task >.> so I'll stop here XD

Because the mediums do not translate well, and because Hollywood doesn't understand gaming.
A game tells a story in many many hours, while a movie has to do it in 1½-2 hours.