Thursday, January 24, 2008

Mini-article: Why can't they make a good video game movie?



Some game storylines seem perfectly well-suited to movie adaptions. For horror, you have Doom, and for adventure, you have Tomb Raider. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought these franchises would make good movies, as they've already been turned into films. There's one problem, though:

The movies sucked.

I'm not going to go into specifics about why the above movies were no good, nor am I going to name ways I think they could have been improved, and that's for the simple reason that I don't want to be writing this article from now until Christmas. I'm just merely asking the simple question of "Why?". What is there stopping a game movie from being great? We have a few exceptions like the above-average Resident Evil films, but most of it's utter crap.

You know what, film makers? I'll get you started. Here are some franchises perfect for movies:

-The Legend of Zelda
-Metroid
-Jak

There, three solid franchises perfect for becoming movies. Make them animated, make them CG, make them live-action. I don't care. Just make them good. It can be done. They've made movies based on all other forms of media, why should games be any different?

So put some effort into game movies, rely more on content than fan-service, and even hire a few of the game's writers to pen the script. Toss in some good actors and a great musical score, and you just may go against the norm and make a good game movie.

Discuss this article on the forums

The Duck Has Spoken.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it just me or is the forum not working??

Anonymous said...

I agree with Metroid, that could be very good indeed, if done right. I'm not too familiar with Jak, and I'm not sure I agree at all with LoZ. One of the trademarks of Zelda is that Link doesn't speak, and I'd love to see that in a movie - would probably confuse the hell out of the non-gaming audience.

alexanderpas said...

Good video game movie???

Final Fantasy: Advent Children...