More_Badass
Member
The actual writing in the game doesn't matter for a film.Most video games have bad writing. Like, very bad writing. You need the opposite for a great movie.
The actual writing in the game doesn't matter for a film.Most video games have bad writing. Like, very bad writing. You need the opposite for a great movie.
The actual writing in the game doesn't matter for a film.
Considering most video games are a la carte aping movies for their storytelling, plot elements and visual language, I think trying to take that stuff and turn it back around into a movie is just a losing battle.
Silent Hill to me is a great example of I guess where many video game films that try to stick to the games have stumbled. It's actually great throughout as it stays a mystery. Then it stupidly tries to explain everything but it can't go back to the games to lift that because not only has the plot been cobbled together from multiple games in the series but it has been altered in a number of ways. And proceeds to lose almost everything it has going for it.I don't get people saying that video game movies tend to follow the plot too much, when normally the plot of the game is thrown out the window for the movie. You can't tell me the Resident Evil movie followed the game closely. Silent Hill is the only one that somewhat tried to keep the plot SOMEWHAT.
I agree 100%.Video game movies tend to suck because the people making the movies don't get what's appealing or compelling about the games they license.
You could make a great movie based on any number of games, you just need to figure out what the hooks are and dress them up to the nines. Mortal Kombat was schlock but it was great schlock, because the martial arts action and the fun, tropey characters were what made the game fun. The lore was a bonus, and downplayed in favor of supernatural ninja magic.
Silent Hill worked because it stuck to the most compelling monster designs and a simple narrative of monster encounter, then dreamlike fugue state, then monster encounter, repeat, then barbed wire and Pyramid Head.
Warcraft worked because it was all lore all the time.
DOOM was a blast because it was monsters and explosions and The Rock and big fuckin guns.
Street Fighter didn't work because the characters were unrecognizable and the story was halfassed.
Double Dragon didn't work because it had nothing to do with the game.
Wing Commander didn't work because it didn't have anything to do with the game. Also, no aliens. Also, sound in space as a plot point rather than an incidental or atmospheric choice.
Need for Speed almost worked, but they abandoned the fast cars, and faster drivers aspect for the plot of The Crew.
Super Mario Bros didn't work because what in the fuck was that madness?!
You could make a great Mirror's Edge movie by taking the plot of any number of "innocent courier has thing" movies and using Fayth and the City of Glass.
You could make a fun parody of action movies with Viewtiful Joe, or a brotastic Magnificent Seven or Dirty Dozen style movie with Gears of War. Or make a psychological thriller out of Killer7. Find a game with great characters or a compelling world and set a movie there.
You could probably make a fantastic Metroid movie if you had the balls to make it almost entirely silent, and focused on the design and cinematography of the alien world, but I can't imagine that ever happening.
What the Martian does better than Deus Ex is have an interesting, funny, self-deprecating main character who is easy to root for and also relate too. It's kinda unfair like you said lol
What caused the biggest problem was the fact that we went into production with a script that Annabel and I liked and was originated by Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais, who wrote The Commitments. And they were really sensitive to this story of the two brothers, and the love story between the two brothers, and the fact that they had lost their parents; Mario had to bring up Luigi on his own. And he became this mother figure to Luigi, and what Luigi really wanted from Mario was an elder brother figure — you know, a male model — and it frustrated him, and he disrespected Mario because of that. Throughout [that initial version], it was about how they reconciled that problem and how Luigi fell in love with Daisy along the way. So it was very much a personal, emotional story between the two of them.
And then we went into production, started casting, I started building these huge sets and all the prosthetic creatures and everything. And we were spending so much money; they needed more money and it was an independent production at the time — I think it was financed by a French bank or something — so they decided to try and pre-sell it to a studio to raise the money to finish it. The reaction from the studios was that the script that was written was too dark and too adult, and it should be rewritten — or dewritten, as I called it — to a lower level, adding stupid gags and making it more childlike, which is what happened. It got rewritten about two or three weeks before principal production, so by the time the script came in we were ready to shoot.
The new script was so different that it didn’t apply to a lot of the sets and the characters. Also, it was kind of flawed, it didn’t work because it was rushed so fast. And all the actors had read and signed up for the original script, and this new script came in which was much more full of gags and sort of childlike, and they didn’t like it very much. So I had to sort of defend the script — and I didn’t like it either — and encourage them to carry on. And it was very awkward, and uneasy, and difficult.
It also threw everything out of order; we had an order that we were gonna shoot everything in and we were building the sets accordingly, and because we had to shoot it in a different order because of the way the script was, I can remember [one of the sets] not being ready — [it was] half built and the paint was still wet, and the only way I could shoot the scene was on a long lens looking in one direction. If I pointed the camera off you could see that the set wasn’t completed, so there were things like that. And I can remember asking Dennis Hopper “Please walk this way, because if I pan the camera this way you’re gonna be off the set,” and then we had this argument about it. Things like that, it would just go on and on and on, there were just so many problems. It threw the film into chaos, basically.
You’re right, there are two films, basically. There’s the original film that was my intention, and that had the original script with Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais, and it was this story of a proper relationship between two brothers and their problem, and the younger brother falling in love, it was those themes. And it was them falling into this other universe that involved dinosaurs — you know, when the meteor hit, instead of the dinosaurs being wiped out as we think, they actually disappeared into another dimension because the force was so great. It shocked the dimensional shift, but they continued to evolve and become intelligent, and the plumbers managed to enter into this world and have their adventure. And it was dark, it was a darker thing, and they had to battle against these evolved dinosaur creatures; it was really interesting from that sci-fi perspective.
But all of that was lost, because [in the new script] what some of those scenes got substituted for was stuff like Iggy walking into the plate glass window. Like, you know, two guys are carrying a sheet of glass, Iggy’s running down the street and runs into it. That was the new bit. And you can see the problem that that would have caused, trying to merge these two universes together.
I remember when the new script came in, we had a phone call — she was casting in LA, I was in NC building the sets, and we’d both just read the new script, we called each other up and said "This is terrible, we've gotta get away from this movie, it’s not the movie we wanted to make." And then we discussed it and discussed it for hours on the phone, and in the end we thought, "Well, we can’t let everybody down. We’re building the sets, we’re the only people that really understand what’s going on." You know, another director coming onto this project would be completely lost, but at least we knew all the characters and could piece the new puzzle together. We decided to soldier on and rectify the film as we carried on. But we were a bit naive in that what’s in the script is what’s on the screen — it’s very hard to remake a movie as you’re filming, and that’s what caused a lot of the problems too.
Overall, what’s your abiding memory from working on this movie?
Humiliation.
Dennis Hopper said:Wow, you really did a jump there. [Laughs.] My son, who's now 18 years old, was 6 or 7 when I did that movie, and he came up to me after he saw it and he said, "Daddy, I think you're probably a really good actor, but why did you play King Koopa?" And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well he's such a bad guy, why did you want to play him?" And I said, "Well, so you can have shoes." And he said, "I don't need shoes." [Laughs.] So that was my 7-year-old's impression. It was a nightmare, very honestly, that movie. It was a husband-and-wife directing team who were both control freaks and wouldn't talk before they made decisions. Anyway, I was supposed to go down there for five weeks, and I was there for 17. It was so over budget. But I bought a couple buildings down there in Wilmington, NC, and I started painting. I made an art studio out of one.
This is a good point, and probably the biggest issue I take with people saying that game movies stories are bad because game stories are bad. IMO, a lot of games heavy on narrative, even ones considered subpar, at least have really cool concepts for that narrative. The execution usually just isn't there because people writing for games usually aren't great writers. When people criticize game storytelling the writing is far and away the biggest issue. But that wouldn't necessarily matter if the filmmakers take enough liberties with the source material.
Warcraft worked because it was all lore all the time.
I agree 100%.
You forgot Final Fantasy Spirits Within. Up to that point the games were mainly swords, dragons and magic so naturally the movie would be about futuristic Marines, aliens and guns?
Why?
90% of them choose games with either little to no storyline like Super Mario, or games with rather shitty storylines like Tomb Raider or Resident Evil.
Final Fantasy is a weird beast, because the underlying premise is actually the same as the one at the heart of every Final Fantasy game. Balancing science and progress with The stewardship of the world, advancing through peace and unity and love, etc.
The problem was that the people who make the games didn't understand why people actually like the games.
Like, if the guy who created Metroid made a Metroid movie it would likely be more Other M than Prime.
I actually really like Spirits Within, if we're being honest.
Light Novels....It's the worst written medium in existence.
It absolutely did not work. Which is breathtaking given how many fantasy films existed with basic storytelling templates already.
And it fell apart when it tried to go beyond just that. It worked far better as a semi-low key horror mystery with only a few "normal" characters.Silent Hill 1 wasn't amazing but it did a very good job of capturing the atmosphere of the games.
Yes, I like you.Super Mario Bros. was a great surrealism interpretation of the videogame series at that time. Salvador Dali and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson would be proud. Bring it!
I will forever defend Warcraft. It's the best and most faithful movie adaptation of a video game ever.
You can say it 1000 times, I does not make it true. Most games have quite decent writing actually.Most video games have bad writing. Like, very bad writing. You need the opposite for a great movie.
You can say it 1000 times, I does not make it true. Most games have quite decent writing actually.
Case in point, with lukewarm reviews of AC trickling out one can ask the valid question of why the makers had to write a shitty new story instead of using the existing one. Like, the entire Ezio ark in AC was very well written. Especially AC2 had everything you need for a good movie. Likeable characters, drama, conspiracy, historic setting.
Why the fuck didn't they just make an Ezio movie? We'll probably never know.
You can say it 1000 times, I does not make it true. Most games have quite decent writing actually.
Case in point, with lukewarm reviews of AC trickling out one can ask the valid question of why the makers had to write a shitty new story instead of using the existing one. Like, the entire Ezio ark in AC was very well written. Especially AC2 had everything you need for a good movie. Likeable characters, drama, conspiracy, historic setting.
Why the fuck didn't they just make an Ezio movie? We'll probably never know.
Indeed. The absolute hate I see from Neogaf, and Americans in general, about this movie is just baffling to me.
The Ezio arc is basic storytelling 101. Man seeks revenge, joins a cause greater than himself, learns to fight for the cause, etc, etc.The Ezio arc only looks good in the context of it being a videogame.
Especially one in a series full of trashy stories you want to skip most of the time (Assassin's Creed).
The Ezio arc is basic storyelling 101. Man seeks revenge, joins a cause greater than himself, learns to fight for the cause, etc, etc.
Again, it doesnt matter how the story was done in the game. A film isn't a direct adaptation. Only the broad strokes and general concept matter