Game movies – why do they suck so much?

Ever since 1993, gamers have had to endure crappy adaptations of their favourite video games. With every game movie that comes out, people have come to expect less and less, with the final product bearing little resemblance to the original game.  Why are movie games so terrible?

Super Mario Bros was the first in a long line of videogame to movie adaptations. At the time, SMB was a huge deal to gamers, and the name alone could turn water into wine. What we got instead, was a bucklet load of piss that set the expectation for every other game-movie that came after it. Dennis Hopper as King Coopa? Alternate dimensions? What the fuck? This confused the hell out of me as a kid, and thankfully, I seem to have repressed most of my memories of this terrible film.

Wing Commander, one of my favourite games of all time, was also given the the movie treatment.  When it was first announced, I was excited as hell.  After all, Wing Commander 3 and 4 were almost movies themselves already, how hard could it be?  What I felt when I watched it was like my childhood dreams being raped onscreen.  The story didn’t stick to the established canon at all, the fighters looked nothing like the ones from the game, and it left me totally disappointed and pissed off.

There are two parties at fault for this. One is the game developers/publishers, who are eager to dish out the licenses to their games to make a little extra on the side.  There’s really nothing wrong with this, except that it feels like once they manage to sell a license, they don’t seem to care or have much creative control over what happens in production.  Why don’t they care more about what happens to their IP?

The other, are the script writers, who have little respect for the original source material, who decide to warp the plot and characters as they see fit.  As a gamer and moviegoer, I feel insulted, because I feel that these people are trying to sell me a rubbish movie on it’s name alone.

Yes, you play a game for anywhere between 8-40 hours and the story is developed over that time.  Yes, there’s some changes that need to be made in order to make this story now fit into a 2-3 hour movie.  But then again, a lot happens in the Lord of the Rings books, and yet they’ve mananged to stay faithful to the original story somewhat.

But maybe there’s just some games out there that aren’t movie material.  Games don’t always fully flesh out back stories of characters or the setting always, nor is it always done via the game itself.   It might be found in other materials, like the game manual, or even a novel.  For example, if you dove straight into playing Halo 1 without reading the manual, you’d be pretty lost as to what’s going on.  For the game, it doesn’t really matter, because the action can carry the game.  I’m not so sure if you could get away in a movie without some lame recap segment or wasting precious screen time on setting up the story.

One upcoming game movie is the King of Fighters adaptation, which plot seems to be based on the Orochi saga from the games.  Here is the plot from KOF94-97 games:

KOF ’94: “Rugal Bernstein is an incredibly rich and notorious arms and drugs trafficker, as well as an incredibly skilled and ruthless fighter. Having become bored with the lack of competition, Rugal decides to host a new King of Fighters tournament. Rugal has his secretary travel to eight destinations around the world and invite fighters to his new tournament.”

KOF ’95: “Rugal Bernstein, thought to have perished in an explosion in the previous game, had in fact survived and sent out invitations to the teams from the previous game signed simply ‘R’.  Later we discover that Rugal has tapped into the power of an evil demon called Orochi.  After Rugal’s defeat,  the player finds out that Orochi’s followers are seeking to ressurect the demon.

KOF ’96: “The tournament is now held by Chizuru Kagura, the descendant of the ancient Yata Clan responsible for sealing the Orochi demon along with the Kusanagi and Yasanaki clan (the clans from Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami, respectively). Chizuru wants to find the warrior who defeated Rugal in order to stop the upcoming Orochi threat.”

KOF ’97: “The tournament is held to gather power for Orochi’s awakening, unbeknown to the fighters.  Orochi is awakened, and the Yata, Kusanagi and Yanasaki clan must put aside old differences and unite once again to seal Orochi.”

I’ll admit, it’s not the greatest of stories, but there’s alot of decent material to work with.

And here is the ‘plot’ they’ve decided for the movie:

“The King of Fighters movie will introduce a new science fiction spin into the setting established in the games’ universe by following the surviving members of three legendary fighting clans who are continually whisked away to other dimensions by an evil power,” says insider blog Movieset.

“As the fighters enter each new world they battle that universe’s native defenders, while the force that brought them seeks to find a way to invade and infect our world.”

What the fuck.  There is a semblance of the original story in there somewhere, but the problem is this.  “The King of Fighters movie will introduce a new science fiction spin into the established setting…” . I for one knew this movie was a terrible idea already, but they really went out of their way to put some extra cheese on it.

S0 if you’re going to make all these changes, why base it off a video game in the first place?  After all you don’t need to pay for licenses, and you can avoid any pre-conceptions anyone might have with it being a video game movie.  For example, Legend of Chun-li boils down to a simple revenge story.  None of the characters have backstories that even resemble their game counterparts,  so why not have an original revenge story, rather than having a half-assed plot which tries to be different and the game at the same time?  It might actually make a decent movie.

There’s also a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time adaptation on the way.  As usual, they seem to have messed with plot ever so slightly, and I remain skeptical about this movie.  Also because it has Ben Kingsley as the villain.  When I think of Prince of Persia, I always think about the prince going up against an evil Vizier guy, who looks like Osama bin Laden.   Ben Kingsley reeks of cheesy and looks nothing like the part.

Of course, being a game movie rant, special mention goes out to Uwe Boll, who is the perfect example of what I have argued against so far.  Uwe Boll has made several unbelievably terrible game movies,  all with scripts that have barely any connection to the games themselves.  I’m not even sure why people keep giving him licenses to work with, because he completely disrespects the original game in every way.

I don’t think that screenwriters understand that when you make a video game adaptation, most of the people watching it will be fans of the game.  As a fan, I want to see:

1. Respect for the original source material.   Stick to the canon established by the games.   Of course there will need to be ‘some’ edits, but the main facts must remain the same.  If you want changes, make an original story that sticks to canon!
2. The art direction must remain the same.  If there’s ever a Halo movie, Master Chief must be exactly the same, the Warthog must be exactly the same, etc.
3. References to parts of the games themselves.  Resident Evil: Apocalypse sort of had this, paying homage to the incredibly bullshit scene in Code Veronica where Claire drops the pistol, then somehow falls down faster than it to pick it up at the last second and shoots a red barrel.  Doom also tried to do this with it’s crappy FPS sequence, but it was totally out of context and tacked on.  If there’s ever a God of War movie, I’d like to see Kratos complain about that stupid spinning spike thing  he has to climb while he’s in hell.

If any of this has to go, THEN DON’T MAKE A FUCKING MOVIE OUT OF IT FOR GOD’S SAKE.

The only ‘movie’ to ever get this right, is Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.  Not the terrible Jean Claude Van Damme one mind you.   But sadly, it doesn’t count as it’s an animated feature, and created in Japan.  Even with all the shit game movies we’ve had so far I still have some hope for the Halo movie. Whether this will be an adaptation of the game itself, or a prequel story is yet to be known, but with Peter Jackson at the helm, there is a chance in hell it may turn out ‘okay’ yet!