The Low-down on Gaming Movies

Copyright (c) Noelle Adams. All Rights Reserved.

Death. Taxes. For many, life’s certainties end at these 2 items. But there is a third certainty – bad movies based on video games.

Game-to-film adaptations must have the worst record of any movie genre when it comes to critically panned turkeys. Think Street Fighter and Double Dragon. BloodRayne, starring the Terminatrix herself, Kristanna Loken, made a pitiful $1.5 million at American cinemas this January. It hasn’t even gone straight-to-DVD locally.

BloodRayne’s director, Uwe Boll, has been labelled a 21st Century Ed Wood because of his laughably bad films. Unfortunately for gamers, Boll appears to have an especial fondness for ruining game-to-film adaptations. He has already made Alone in the Dark, and his next ‘masterpiece’ is a Dungeon Siege film, starring Matthew Lillard and Burt Reynolds as medieval nobility. Expect Dungeons & Dragons awfulness!

Perhaps it’s unfair to say that all game movies are rubbish. They clearly make money. Tomb Raider, Doom, and this year’s Silent Hill all debuted at number 1 at the box office. It’s just that the genre’s best tend to be unexceptional. Resident Evil, probably the most popular video game movie, is still a forgettable zombie film. Even with semi-nude Milla Jovovich.

One of the fundamental problems of game movies is that they lack originality. This is because, frequently, the games adapted for the big screen are those with filmic influences. Doom 3 gave gamers the ultimate Aliens experience. The Doom movie came across as an Aliens knock-off, with a First Person sequence tacked on. A Grand Theft Auto film would be pointless for this same reason – the games let you ‘live’ your own urban action movie.

The biggest problem of game movies is their handling by people who have no concept of fan feelings or intelligence. It has taken decades for films based on comics to gain respect as creative products, worthy of serious treatment. Game-to-film adaptations are seen by Hollywood executives as brainless fodder for teenagers.

Gamers’ wants are ignored by B-grade filmmakers who mistakenly believe they have the right to ‘reimagine’ beloved characters and worlds. So Final Fantasy was more science fiction than fantasy, Hell vanished from Doom, and BloodRayne wandered around Nazi-free Medieval Europe.

Although Blizzard is involved in developing a live-action Warcraft film, fan-pleasing fidelity has already been drop-kicked into Outland. The film will only be set in the Warcraft world. The filmmakers have announced they have no intention of following the games’ epic storyline.

Surely there must be at least one good game-to-film adaptation coming? Hitman, Castlevania, American McGee’s Alice, and several others, are all in development.

Halo, directed by South African Neill Blomkamp, may have the best chance at success, backed by heavyweights like The Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson as producer. Then again, Halo is just another science fiction shooter. I’m expecting a visually impressive, but soulless film.

Perhaps I’m being unfairly sceptical. Just like comic book adaptations, video game movies may come right. Until then, though, I’ll continue to brace myself for Paris Hilton as a Night Elf. ‘I’m so wasted, I’m so wasted.’