Oh boy, we’re opening up a can of worms with this one.
So, at this point it’s pretty widely accepted that movie adaptations of videogames don’t exactly turn out all that well (i.e. they suck). It’s sad, I know, but this just seems to be the way the world works, and for whatever reason Hollywood keeps churning these movies out. Just like with every other disaster this particular trend does have an actual cause, and believe it or not it can’t all be traced back to some wingnut thinking it would be a good idea to hand over the movie rights for a videogame franchise to some German guy who keeps insisting that he’s a real director.
Truly the face of a visionary.… granted, that isn’t exactly helping, but that’s not the point.
It may not be readily apparent at first, but this whole adaptation business is a two-way street, and there are problems on their side and ours. So, let’s get down to business and get to the finger-pointing, shall we?
The Movie Side
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way first; part of the issue here is that it just seems that movie studios just don’t care. Now, that isn’t exactly a “fair” umbrella statement to make. I’m sure there are plenty of people involved who are very dedicated and are really giving it their all for whatever project they’re attached to, but for Christ’s sake, you guys, churning out pieces of crap like Wing Commander doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, even more so if everyone on board really was trying their best.
No, from as far as I can tell most movie executives do care. Quite a bit, in fact, just not in the areas that we want. They’re more worried about their profits and their bottom-line than anything else. Heck, if you stop and really take a look at things, what we have here is a complete reverse of the “movie licensed cash-in game” problem. Case and point: Doom.
Doom 3 was released by id Software back in ’04 and, despite a few complaints here and there about how the game veered towards survival horror territory and how in the future all guns apparently have a natural magnetic repulsion to flashlights, it was a good game. It reviewed well, it sold well, and for what it’s worth I thought it played well. Somebody somewhere in Hollywood took notice of this and said “Hey, this franchise is making money. Why don’t we make a movie based off of it so we can make some money, too?”
And make a movie they did. A little over a year later Doom was released in theaters, and it was deplorable. Good job, boys.
This just helps reinforce what I see as being the main problem. The studios care more about the license itself than the actual integrity or content of it. With Doom they kept a few of the key elements added in by the most recent game, but managed to flub up one major point; Mars wasn’t being invaded by demons from Hell. That’s pretty much the entire premise of the Doom franchise. Company experiments with teleportation, company discovers the portal to Hell, and everything goes to crap. That was the entire story of the original game.
How hard was it to mess that up? Seriously? You even had a game that was a reboot of the entire franchise that had it’s own story. Sure, it wasn’t exactly Sharsperian in complexity, but it was a story. You could have just lifted the script of Doom 3, written a few one liners for Karl Urban to say in the margins and then filmed it. There. Problem solved. You have a movie that’s at least of the same quality of what we got that’s actually faithful.
Apparently none of these things entered anyone’s mind during scripting or production, and even then I can only guess that if someone said something no one who was high enough up on the food chain to have the power to fix it seemed to care. No, none of that mattered. It was all about the license. The brand recognition. That was going to sell tickets and put the butts in the seats either way, so why bother actually trying?
This same thing almost happened with the Uncharted movie but, thankfully, we seem to be avoiding it. I’ll admit to never playing any of the games in the Uncharted franchise, but even then I could tell there were problems when I started hearing about the casting choices.
Now, when I bring up casting I’m not talking about Mark Whalberg as Nathan Drake. I personally don’t think he can pull off being the lead in an action movie (I’m looking at you, Italian Job remake) and the movies I’ve liked him best in are dramas like Four Brothers and The Departed. That said, you have Nathan Fillion practically throwing himself at your feet for the role and you cast MARKY MARK! What is wrong with you people?!?!
It’s okay, Capt’n, us Browncoats still love you.
*ahem* No, this isn’t about that. I’m referring to comments saying that Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci were being cast to play Nathan’s father and uncle, respectively. From what I understand these are characters that have never appeared in the franchise and, for all intensive purposes, don’t really exist.
You’re starting to see the problem here, right?
Director David O'Russell had a “vision” for the Uncharted movie where Nathan Drake is part of some kind of secret underworld family that kept watch over all of the antiques and shiny ancient relics of the world, and that’s all well and good, but it’s the diametric opposite of Uncharted’s basic premise. Nathan Drake is suppose to be like a modern-day Indiana Jones (or more accurately a male version of Laura Croft, who in turn is a female version of Indiana Jones) who runs around the world shooting ambiguously evil henchmen and liberating ancient civilizations of their priceless artifacts. O’Russell’s take on things directly contradicts the source material to the point where you have to ask yourself why they would even bother.
Dave, if you want to make a movie where Marky Mark, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci fly around the world breaking the kneecaps of treasure hunters with lead pipes, good for you. Go make that movie. I might even watch it, but don’t bend a pre-existing IP over a table and have your way with it to make that movie.
“What, you think treasure hunting is funny? Funny how? Does disturbing the resting place of an ancient civilization amuse you?”
Even after this entire rant this is something that might give you a bit of hope; David O’Russel walked away from the project due to disagreements between him and Sony, and now the project has a new director and they’re sticking far closer to the source material. Press releases say that the split was mutual, but personally I like to think it went down something like this:
David O’Donnell: … and that’s my script for the Uncharted movie. Thoughts?
Studio Executive: Yeah, it’s good and all, but last night on the advice of my family councilor I actually spent some time with my son instead of trying to cram a Ritalin prescription down his throat as a substitution for proper parenting and he said the Uncharted game is nothing like that. At all.
O’Donnell: Yeah, I may have taken a couple artistic liberties and re-imagined a few things…
Exec: Re-imagined how?
O’Donnell: Well, for example Nathan Drake now travels with Blotto, his talking Jack Russell Terrier who says witty one-liners and fights crime.
[beat]
O’Donnell: I’ve been trying to get a hold of John Travolta to see if he’s available to voice him, but he isn’t returning my calls.
Exec: Dave, you’re fired.
The Game Side
As I said blame lies on both sides of the fence, but unlike the Hollywood side of things game developers aren’t inherently doing anything wrong. It’s more a problem with the medium itself.
Videogames are, regardless of genre, an interactive form of entertainment. The player takes an active role in things, driving the plot forward and in some cases even making decision about how it unfolds. Movies, on the other hand, are a passive form of entertainment. As a viewer all you really have to do is sit and, well, view. The movie takes everything else from there and does the work for you.
This is where we start running into issues. Regardless to whether or not the game is just running a bare bones excuse plot or has an epic, fleshed out narrative there’s still the obstacle of how to transfer gameplay into something that can work in a film. This is why every videogame movie I can think of can be accurately described as an action movie. The shift from gameplay elements to action set piece is pretty simple. At least that’s something that Uncharted will be able to deal with better than most. That game was already designed like it’s a movie directed by Michael Bay, and if someone manages to still mess that up then it’s time to hand over their director card and find a new line of work.
It’s because of this little obstacle that I think moviemakers believe they can get away with making anything that carries a game’s name. As long as it has fighting, explosions, monsters or whatever it is that made the game fun the fans will just eat it up. Who the hell cares about “plot”? *pfft* We have a scene where the camera goes into first person, like in the game! People will love it!
… and now you know why the world has four Resident Evil movies. I hope you feel enlightened.
If the gameplay issue wasn’t enough, some of the franchises that get chosen for the movie treatment don’t exactly offer themselves up to the transfer very well. Look back at the Super Mario Bros. movie as an example, if you dare. The plot of Super Mario Bros. doesn’t extend that far past “a gigantic turtle with an attitude problem just captured your princess and you have to go get her back”. That’s it, and when you start looking at the gameplay elements of jumping on mushroom people and collecting coins it’s no wonder that the scriptwriters panicked and wrote what they did. That doesn’t absolve them from making that abomination, but I get why it’s the way it is.
Now, if people on the game industry side of this are to blame for anything, it’s probably not keeping a degree of creative control. I honestly don’t know if this is a condition for Hollywood paying for the game’s license, if publishers like EA and Activision just sell the IPs off independently of the actual developer that made the game, or whatever, but not having someone around to represent the actual creative team that made the source material is a problem.
I’ll admit to this just being an assumption on my part, but let me put it this way: I sincerely doubt that Shigeru Miyamoto was invited to the offices of Hollywood Pictures, was shown this…
… and after watching it said “Yeah, that looks about right. Good job.”
The Solution
… I’m not going to lie, I’ve got nothing. Seriously, how does one fix this without just throwing out speculative ideas and theories?
The best I can do, honestly, is suggest two things. First off, studios, maintain some creative control over your IP. Make it a condition of the business contract that you guys have veto power over any particularly ideas, and if it comes down to it bite the bullet and walk away from the project, killing it completely. It’ll hurt your wallet, but if you care about your creation it’ll be worth it for a moral victory.
Meanwhile, filmmakers, be a bit more selective with your choices. Because of how the videogame medium works even some truly long games can be thin on story outside of pre-scripted events or cutscenes. Ideally, and this is just a suggestion, your more popular adventure games or RPGs are your best bet. It some cases they might have too much story, and unless you’re willing to go the Lord of the Rings route things will have to get cut. Still, as a fan I’d rather the writers had to cut out side plots and the like instead of come up with some kind of inane story to fill the gaps.
In the meantime? All there’s really left to do is just sit back and see how some of our next movie offerings are going to fare. I’m sure I’ll see some of you guys at a midnight screening of Mass Effect somewhere. I’ll be the guy setting the theater on fire in retaliation for the movie being terrible.
~V
Max "Vanguard" Phillips is a freelance photographer, occasional writer and a long-time gamer. Right now he's trying to get Christopher Nolan to read the screenplay he's written for "The Longest Journey", but so far all he's gotten back is a sternly-worded restraining order.
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