Video games don’t translate well into movies. Sometimes the opposite is true, but we’re invariably left with garbage that’s rushed onto shelves to meet the movie’s release date. Looking at you THQ and Sega! And for all the bitching and moaning about what we think should make a great game movie, we don’t seem to realize that the feature film adaptation of your beloved game franchise will never match your wildest dreams. Because as we know, Hollywood creates homogenized brands of entertainment meant to appeal to the broadest possible audience and not just you, you lazy d-bag. You might think THE INTERNET and the game’s FANS are the only people important enough to have GAME X appeal only to them, but that’s false. Not when a multinational corporation has millions of dollars on the line. Then everyone’s the audience.
More to the point, through extensive SCIENTIFIC research, we have discovered the only game films worth watching are fan films made by you.
Yes, you! Why is this the case? Simple, someone took their hardcore knowledge and pure, unadulterated joy of a game and distilled it into several minutes of footage that more or less, resembles the thing you like.
Watch these fan flicks. Rich with plot and emotionally engaging characters? Or After Effects demos? You be the judge. The reason major franchises haven’t made it to the big screen are the wealth of issues – creative and financial – that keep our favorites from hitting the big screen.
Taking the lore of a game and blowing it up on the big screen creates many issues. Don’t believe me? Think about the large franchises that have almost made it to the big screen in the past few years, yet stumbled due to any number of factors.
BioShock, Assassin’s Creed, Halo, Uncharted, God of War, Gears of War
In the case of Halo, Fox and Universal couldn’t come to an agreement on sharing the dough with Microsoft. Original director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson were on the outs, so Jackson had Blomkamp whip up a quick little ditty based on his earlier short film, Alive in Joburg. And that’s how we got District 9. So even though we didn’t get a Halo film that would almost certainly upset people if Master Chief’s voice would be wrong, Blomkamp kinda side-stepped that disaster and gave us something wayyyyyy better.
And who could forget the Uncharted debacle? David O. Russell was set to film an adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg, Joe Pesci and Robert de Niro, which was reportedly going to be about a family of thieves and have jackshit to do with the franchise. Or Assassin’s Creed, where Ubisoft wanted complete control over the project. And frankly, you don’t want another company having complete control over a film they didn’t make.
Pretty much always when adapting mediums, you need to take liberties just to make it FUCKING WORK. Think about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: that encounter with Shelob from The Return of the King actually takes place near the end of The Two Towers book. Why was this changed? Because Jackson was trying to realign the timeline of the story to make shit make sense.
Point is, someone’s gonna poop their pampers over how their favorite game is handled when an adaptation goes down. But until we get that amazing game adaptation that will probably never happen, smaller shorts by the most adamant of fans are the best way to whet your appetite.
