Movie, TV & Other Adaptations of Video Games

[Depression Moon]

I recall watching a little bit of the megaman cartoon, but never really liked it and of course everybody watched the Pokemon anime, but that trout is too kiddy to go back and watch now.

As for movies, yeah they've all been pretty bad. MK and Silent Hill are the only two that I can say I somewhat enjoyed. The Ratchet & Clank movie sounds like it might be promising. I'll have to finally play a Ratchet & Clank game before it comes out though.

[Del Murder]

I wonder how good the Uncharted movie will be. I wonder why current gen AAA games are getting turned into movies when they are pretty much playable movies in their original form.

[Pike]

I'm interested in the Warcraft movie primarily because from what I hear they're going to be basing it off of the story/characters from Warcraft 1 and 2 with Khadgar and Medivh and stuff

[Jiro]

There have been some pretty decent video game movies, but those are always judged by different standards. Held to ordinary standards, they're usually pretty trout -- average at best.

But I'm a big fan of the Prince of Persia film, the DOA film (c'mon who can't appreciate the tits), and even the Silent Hill film was pretty good despite not being a fan of horror or having played any games. Also the Resident Evil films are great fun if you disregard all of the canon

I've heard the Japanese live action Ace Attorney game is pretty smurfing amazing. I don't know. Maybe we're making improvements!

[Shauna]

Ace Attorney was pretty fantastic.

[Ayen]

Ace Attorney was pretty fantastic.

There was an Ace Attorney show?

[Slothy]

Also the Resident Evil films are great fun if you disregard all of the canon

Also if you turn off your brain and accept that none of them will ever make sense. Not even in relation to eachother.

[Skyblade]

You know, I watched every RE movie a few months back and I've got to say, I think I enjoyed them just because of what a laughable train wreck they are. It's like every movie just throws trout at the screen to see what sticks. Hell, at this point I think they're just a jobs program for Paul Anderson and Milla Jovovich.

In other words, it captured Resident Evil pretty much perfectly?

Ah, Tomb Raider. That had promise too since Angelina Jolie looked so much like the video game model of Lara, I don't know what went wrong there.

The same thing that goes wrong with everyone who thinks that graphics are what make a good game.

I remember there were like, two Sonic cartoons in the nineties. One of them I really liked and the other one I didn't realize was a different cartoon and became greatly disappointed with it.

Yep. There was The Good One, which featured solid characters, good writing, and brilliant atmosphere, and The Bad One, which is still one of the worst shows I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. If you want more details, I'd check out The Nostalgia Critic's Review of the shows.




As to the original question, it's because it is very rare for a director to understand the differences in the media, or what makes a game good. Games are not movies. They don't follow the same sort of structure, or patterns, at all, and it makes proper translation extremely difficult.

For one thing, most games simply can't be made into a movie. Like most book to movie translations (90% of which suck), there is just too much going on to get it all in the incredibly short time limit allowed. The pacing of the story itself is also radically different from the sort you would get in a movie.

Let's say that we wanted to make Chrono Trigger into a movie (after all, if we're going to make a good movie, we should start with a good game, right?). There are no fewer than 27 bosses in Chrono Trigger. Yakra, Dragon Tank, Guardian and Bits, R Series, Heckran, Zombor, Masa and Mune, Nizbel, Slash, Flea, Ozzie, Magus, Nizbel II, Azala and Black Tyrano, Golem, Sir Krawlie, Blue Beast + Red Beast + Mud Imp, Giga Gaia, Dalton, Golem Twins, Lavos, Golem Boss, Dalton Plus, Lavos Spawn, Lavos Shell, Lavos Core, and Lavos's True Core.

Would you put all of those bosses into a single movie? If not, where would you cut? Ok, Nizbel II is out, since that fight has basically no story to it at all. Ozzie, Flea, and Slash get compressed into a single fight, so that cuts two more. What then? There is simply no way you can keep that much content in there, but most of the rest still can't be cut (ok, Sir Krawlie and the Golems maybe as well, but you're losing some comedic tone, as well as a lot of Dalton's build up). You don't have the buildup that you need to make the bosses meaningful characters, and you don't have the time to flesh anything out. You can cut things, sure, but then you're left with a bare bones story that doesn't match the games anyway, and yet probably still won't make sense to anyone who hasn't played the games.



TV Shows have a lot more potential. You can take the time to tell the story properly, and have a fleshed out look at the characters and story. The few good video game adaptations I've seen have been in TV format, for this reason (and even then, they have some issues). Of course, a TV show is a much bigger risk than a movie. If you make a movie from a game, you just have to get people in to watch it once, on a single weekend, and you've broken even, not to mention that you can still count on some DVD sales to hardcore fans no matter how rubbish the show is. But a TV show has to survive to make money, which means that it is a bigger risk.

[Shauna]

Ace Attorney was pretty fantastic.

There was an Ace Attorney show?

It was a movie. The live action movie was amazing and I wish I could see it again. I mean, I could just download it, but dammit I want to own a DVD. xD It came to a cinema near me during the annual event "Glasgow Loves Anime".

[Slothy]

Resident Evil 1 and 2 were awesome dude.

[Botchmun]

Speaking of resident evil. I like how Alice is at the top of a list of Mary Sues I read but also she's living proof of something from roleplaying games. "Bone the DM, immune to failure."

Best video game adaption is the Super Mario Bros movie.

[Formalhaut]

Ace Attorney was pretty fantastic.

There was an Ace Attorney show?

It was a movie. The live action movie was amazing and I wish I could see it again. I mean, I could just download it, but dammit I want to own a DVD. xD It came to a cinema near me during the annual event "Glasgow Loves Anime".

It was Japanese wasn't it? That'll be good to watch. I'm almost at the end of the trilogy anyway!

Amid all this talk, no one has yet mentioned that live action Halo thing their doing as part of the Xbox One. My God. That'll be terrible, probably.

[Shiny]

I would love to see an animated show for Ace Attonery.

[Rostum]

There's some pretty big names behind the Warcraft movie, so I'm very interested to see how that turns out.