The Curse of the Video Game Movie

This topic is as cliche as the Guitar Hero franchise, but it has to be said…

Hollywood looks to many sources of inspiration when developing movies. Everything from novels, short stories, fairy tails, and comic books. Within the last twenty years, or so, video games have also become a source of inspiration for Hollywood script writers. Most who fancy themselves both movie goers and gamers would normally be elated by the idea of their favorite stories being crafted for the silver screen. But, as any gamer or film buff would tell you, Hollywood hasn’t been able to get it right!

Going all the way back to 1993 with Super Mario Bros to even today in 2010 with Tekken, it feels as if tinsel town has made absolutely zero progress with bringing video game properties to theaters. In most cases, it seems like they have damn right regressed. But, why?

Technology for special effects has gotten infinitely better in the last two decades of movie making, so bringing some of the more fantastical effects to the screen shouldn’t be too difficult or even too expensive. Video games have done their part by not only becoming more mature with story telling, but also with emulating their film-making counter parts. Games today are made with very movie-like directing styles for their cut scenes. Some games are just movies BEGGING to be made, but when you watch these films they are just poorly made and sometimes they are unbearable.

Does Hollywood just not take the source material seriously? Do they look at the games as an opportunity to cash in versus an opportunity to tell a compelling story? It would be hard to argue against that theory. Some of the worst adaptations out there (Street Fighter, House of the Dead, and Doom being prime examples) attempt to bring too much of the “game” to the screen instead of carving a decent narrative around the source material.

Some would argue that the source material isn’t good enough to be taken seriously. To that, I argue: BAH! Sure, Street Fighter isn’t a powerful drama, but I think that it could be made as a halfway decent action film instead of the abomination it had become. And, yes, most games are going to be better served as action or adventure films because of their nature, but that doesn’t mean they have to be VOID of any dramatic elements or have the drama done poorly. Balance is needed! If Hollywood is ever going to right the ship and take our great stories to the screen and do them justice, there has to be a balance.

The balance has to come in many forms, too, it can’t just be balancing the genres. There has to be a balance in how much is sacrificed from the story to satisfy the fan-boys, and how much is sacrificed from the fan-boys to satisfy the story. Let’s take look at a series that will make every pair of fan-boy panties wet: The Legend of Zelda. Zelda hasn’t been made into a film and as far as I know, there are ZERO plans to do so. Now, before I get 102347 comments telling me that I’m wrong, let’s take a look at what would be right and what would be wrong for a big screen adaptation of the Hero of Time.

DO NOT MAKE LINK MUTE- I know, this is walking the thin line of blasphemy for most out there, but how do you drive a story when the hero doesn’t speak? This will put most of you Zelda fans out there into rage mode, but it’s done in the game FOR A REASON and this reason has no place in a film.

DO MAKE IT SIMPLER- Some will argue that the time travel aspect needs to be done in a Zelda movie. I disagree. People will already have a hard enough time believing a boy with a sword bigger than him is fighting an evil wizard to save a princess… we should ease movie goers into this world before sending them through time.

DO NOT DRESS LINK IN THAT GAY HAT- I do not have to explain this one.

DO SHOW THE SWORD AND TRI-FORCE- You can make a story that’s surrounded by fantasy more believable if you build a mythology around the fantasy. It worked for Lord of the Rings, it worked for Sword in the Stone. Plus, when the Zelda geeks see that Master Sword resting in that stone with those three golden triangles, the theater workers will be mopping up the semen.

DO HIRE RESPECTED HOLLYWOOD WRITERS AND ACTORS- You don’t leave this one to chance, you bring out the big guns for this guy. Batman’s best films came when they brought in established writers, directors, and actors WHO ALL RESPECTED AND UNDERSTOOD THE SOURCE MATERIAL. You don’t want to hire some fan-boy to write it, either. You need the balance. Find people who can make a good REGULAR MOVIE and who can find the balance in what’s needed to put a good movie on the celluloid and what’s needed to keep the fans coming back.

The hard part here is, and again I stress this point, the balance. You have to please two camps here: movie goers, and gamers. Sometimes these are the same person, and sometimes they totally different people. The gamers have to see enough of what they came for to feel like it’s done their hobby justice, while movie goers have to walk out feeling like they watched a really good movie and not a 2 hour commercial for the game. No gamer would want to watch a movie version of Assassin’s Creed where Altair vows never to kill, but movie goers don’t want to look at each other wondering why the character kills lepers for no reason, either. FIND THE BALANCE, HOLLYWOOD!

I feel that most people have lost faith in Hollywood at this point and aren’t holding their breathe for an Oscar winning version of Tomb Raider to come to life. But, if The Dark Knight taught us anything, it’s that the source materiel is what you make of it and if a balance can be found- magic can still be made on the big screen with these stories. Someone just has to press the reset button.