Current Events > Why can't live action video game movies ever be game accurate?

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's always gotta be a real world tie in as if that makes the game's story more relatable. Monster hunter movie is one example of this where, where they're just normal humans sucked into the monster hunter world. Or sonic being the opposite where the character is sucked into the real world. Or someone completely original to the film just to explain the lore to us.


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Closest we ever got was the original Mortal Kombat movie.

Because they always feel like they have to make it make sense to people who aren't fans of the source material. They can't just make a movie to appeal specifically to the people who liked the game

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CoasterFan1990 posted...

Closest we ever got was the original Mortal Kombat movie.

Yeah I did enjoy that movie at the time it came out. Watching the 2021 movie was weird and disappointing as an mk fan.
MK2021 spoilers
With the whole "arcana" being the reason for their powers instead of it just being they either trained for or the tech being that advanced. jax's arcana power being his metal arms gain super strength was probably the dumbest thing in the movie besides kano and his eggroll for powers.

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The 2021 movie wasn't that bad really, was it the greatest? No, but it was better than 99% of movies based on videogames. Expanding the lore isn't a bad thing really.

Silent Hill is 100% structured like the games.

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Because they have to appeal to the general audience in order to make a profit.

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Turbam posted...

Silent Hill is 100% structured like the games.

To me it didn't follow any of the games, maybe it was because I didn't play any of them for quite awhile before watching the movie.

The new Resident Evil movie seems like it will be close to 2&3 as possible, the casting choice doesn't bother me.

I'm looking forward to seeing it soon in theaters.

General audiences. And it's inherently difficult to translate things between different forms of media.

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specialkid8 posted...

General audiences. And it's inherently difficult to translate things between different forms of media.

So they take something good and make it worse.

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Just stop wanting and watching video game movies. There's literally no reason to pay with money or time to do so.

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I don't really want a "game accurate" movie if it's just going to retell a story I've already played.

But if they're gonna do a game movie I'd like something in the spirit of the games. Assassin's Creed isn't a very good movie but they had the right idea in telling a story that's just set in the same universe as the games, one that's still canon to the games even now although it's only tangentially referenced.

The original MK movie did it pretty damn well.

It respected MK lore and followed the same format as the games only moments after introducing the cast of characters.

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CoasterFan1990 posted...

The 2021 movie wasn't that bad really, was it the greatest? No, but it was better than 99% of movies based on videogames. Expanding the lore isn't a bad thing really.

It wasnt a bad movie from an outside perspective imo. Some funny kano scenes and somewhat decent fights, but *2021 spoilers killing off a lot of villains and characters that early into a proposed series and going straight to the revenant story line without quan chi is dumb. Also still dont like the arcana thing cuz it limits people powers .
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The big problem with MK '21 was the OC protagonist.

Just make Johnny Cage half-Japanese if that's the guy you wanna cast. It's not the end of the world.

FortuneCookie posted...

The big problem with MK '21 was the OC protagonist.

Just make Johnny Cage half-Japanese if that's the guy you wanna cast. It's not the end of the world.

Also this, we had a certified dumbass/outsider in lore to explain mortal kombat. Leaving him out for an OC was dumb.
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Imagine if the Sonic movie was done by the guys who did Spiderverse

I didn't mind Cole in MK'21, him being a descendant of Scorpion was pretty cool too, it was cool seeing Scorpion as sympathetic.

PowerOats posted...

Imagine if the Sonic movie was done by the guys who did Spiderverse

I heard the sonic movie wasn't too bad despite it being another "game character in real world" scenario

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Silent Hill Revelation was pretty much a direct movie version of SH3. It deviated a few times, but it hit most of the key notes.

The new Resident Evil movie looks to be a mashup of REmake and RE2 with more focus on the backstory of Lisa Trevor. I wouldnt be shocked if they threw in some Nemesis action as fan service (maybe some real silly shit like Nemesis vs a mutated Lisa as the "final battle".)

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Detective Pikachu was dope
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teep_ posted...

Detective Pikachu was dope

I liked it a lot despite the flaws, it also was an eatablished Pokemon world none of the real world bs.

Sonic was great too despite real world stuff.

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yeah as far as I knew, detective pikachu still had a game accurate world.

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eston posted...

Because they always feel like they have to make it make sense to people who aren't fans of the source material. They can't just make a movie to appeal specifically to the people who liked the game

this line of thought never made sense to me cause you market fantasy and sci-if to people who arent fans of the source material just fine.

its only when video games are the source material people suddenly believe changing everything instead of condensing it is a brilliant idea.

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First Silent Hill was fantastic but yeah changed too much in the end.

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I can understand being lost when video game adaptations were starting out. Today, I would think that most writers would have grown up playing video games in some form or another.

I think there are two big hurdles:

1) It's not respected.
2) There's a need to separate gameplay mechanics from storytelling techniques.

We saw the same kind of thing with comics back in the mid-20th century. In the 1940s, film serials like Captain America and Batman would ignore characters' rogues galleries (and sometimes even change a hero's alter ego) in favor of original villains not from the comics. And the 1966 Batman TV show incorporated the punch bubbles of the comics in what amounted to a sendup of hero tropes. Given more time, we might see a Lord of the Rings quality film which bears the Final Fantasy name. Nobody in 1943 could have ever predicted The Dark Knight.

On that note, there's a difference between how a game is played and how a story is told. If a character dies in one hit, that's not a storytelling technique. You're not expected to write the movie so that the character never, ever gets hit. Something like beating up lesser enemies to gain experience points -- grinding -- that's a gameplay mechanic too. You don't have a person "level up" mid movie because he or she has beaten up enough goons. Don't try and reference it. Don't try and be clever about it. Just leave it out altogether. Just tell a story with the characters and scenarios that are presented to you.

CoasterFan1990 posted...

To me it didn't follow any of the games, maybe it was because I didn't play any of them for quite awhile before watching the movie.

bulletproofvita posted...

First Silent Hill was fantastic but yeah changed too much in the end.

Oh, I think I may have misunderstood the point of the topic.

I just mean how the movie follows a similar flow of the game.
Find out what your looking for is in an area via a clue
Go to that area and solve puzzles to find out where you need to go next while uncovering elements of the story

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FortuneCookie posted...

On that note, there's a difference between how a game is played and how a story is told. If a character dies in one hit, that's not a storytelling technique. You're not expected to write the movie so that the character never, ever gets hit. Something like beating up lesser enemies to gain experience points -- grinding -- that's a gameplay mechanic too. You don't have a person "level up" mid movie because he or she has beaten up enough goons. Don't try and reference it. Don't try and be clever about it. Just leave it out altogether. Just tell a story with the characters and scenarios that are presented to you.

This is the biggest thing. The basic structure of games and movies are different. Games don't tend to have three act stories with 3 to 5 action set pieces interspersed with character development and exposition. Even "story focused" games are wall to wall action with cut scenes thrown in for story. You can't translate gameplay to a movie so you tend to end up with somethign where the action scenes are stunted and the dialogue is exposition heavy because what little story is in a game gets stretched out to fill a movie. It's easier (and cheaper) to just take characters and a few important story elements out and stick them in an existing story which doesn't usually make for a good movie.

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Real answer: Hollywood/Big studios dont care what the games fans think. They make movies to target a general audience.


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SSJPurple posted...

Real answer: Hollywood/Big studios dont care what the games fans think. They make movies to target a general audience.

That's certainly a part but the vast majority of movies are made for a general audience. Niche movies are relatively rare. It's not really an excuse for decades of consistently crap video game movies. The box office doesn't consist of mountains of garbage with a few indie darlings on top.

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SSJPurple posted...

Real answer: Hollywood/Big studios dont care what the games fans think. They make movies to target a general audience.

Then why make such bad films? Not even your average person is going to like most "game films" in the way they continue to make them.
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Funkydog posted...

Then why make such bad films? Not even your average person is going to like most "game films" in the way they continue to make them.

Because theyre stupid and out of touch

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specialkid8 posted...

This is the biggest thing. The basic structure of games and movies are different. Games don't tend to have three act stories with 3 to 5 action set pieces interspersed with character development and exposition. Even "story focused" games are wall to wall action with cut scenes thrown in for story. You can't translate gameplay to a movie so you tend to end up with somethign where the action scenes are stunted and the dialogue is exposition heavy because what little story is in a game gets stretched out to fill a movie. It's easier (and cheaper) to just take characters and a few important story elements out and stick them in an existing story which doesn't usually make for a good movie.

My advice to anyone trying to turn a video game into a movie would be to look at successful movie-to-video game adaptations and work backwards from there.

FortuneCookie posted...

My advice to anyone trying to turn a video game into a movie would be to look at successful movie-to-video game adaptations and work backwards from there

Not a much better batting average

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specialkid8 posted...

Not a much better batting average

I don't know that that approach has been done before.

Goldeneye seems to be the gold standard for video games based off movies, so I'll use that as an example.

In the movie, Bond has maybe three shooting scenes and two hand-to-hand fights. In the video game, it's all shooting because it's been turned into a first-person shooter. In the movie, there's really only one ladder that I can think of and that's toward the end of the movie. In the video game, ladders are found in nearly every stage. The video game removes 80% of the dialogue. A number of guns are created specifically for the video game. Despite being feverishly faithful, the video game still creates a few new action sequences to pad out the game.

There's no reason someone couldn't potentially work their way backwards.

Cut out the guns, superpowers, and powerups that you don't have time for and choose the key ones that you can't do without. Condense the action. Chop out action sequences that don't adhere to the central narrative. Figure out who the characters are and what conversations they would likely have with one another if allowed to speak at length.

If a screenwriter were to tell a story about an average Joe who gets trapped in another dimension and rescues a princess from a great evil, that movie could potentially be entertaining. If that average Joe is Super Mario, you can count on a writer to more or less forget the basics of storytelling in lieu of, "What did you expect? It's based on a video game."