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Monday, December 10, 2007

Why Video Games movies suck:

Last month, i had a "Video Game movie night" with my friends. We watch films like Super Mario Brothers, Double Dragon and Resident Evil and we have to endure the torture of watching these films, but thank god we smoke pot in order to enjoy them. After watching the films, as well as commentaries, interviews, reviews and making of documentaries, i've finally found 10 reasons why VG movies sucked:

1.40% of critics don't play video games, therefore they don't know it's based on a video game

I read critic reviews of games like Hitman, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. They hated the film because they never played the games therefore they don't understand what the fuck the movie is all about. However, they could have liked these movies more if they played these games. And if you think critics are pointless, then you're a cock who probably hates Citizen Kane or an Ingmar Bergman film.
2.scenes from VGs look more ridiculous in theaters.

Look, if you played video games like Double Dragon & Mortal Kombat, you can see the mindlessness of these games. They're like Michael Bay with a touch of Takashi Miike and Yusof Haslam. Which is why they can't be made into movies because it would suck more. However, Hong Kong movies seems to have fight scenes that are as silly as Double Dragon, but has awards and critical praises Double Dragon wishes having. Why? Because HK movies rely on the choreography of masterminds like Yuen Woo-Ping. Americans are too lazy to hire fight choreographers back in those days because most of them are close-minded cocks. Sure, QT and the Wachowskis hired Mr.Woo-Ping for films like Kill Bill and The Matrix, but in the cases of Andrej Bartokwiak and Paul W.S. Anderson, there's no need hire choreographers from HK. Why? Because if you can use cheap CGI, why bother?

3.No artistic merit & not taken seriously

Look at Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. For a VG movie, you can how beautiful the environment, the characters and the action is. I mean, the fight between Sephiroth and Cloud was probably the best to come out of Japan since a Kurosawa film. This is probably the only moment where a VG movie is better than a the video game movies itself, and since it's a CGI movie it's also better than to say, Beowulf. Why? Because it's made in Japan,and it was taken seriously in Japan. Unlike in America, where the majority would think video games are made for nerds, geeks and stupid people, video games are revered in Japan from the cute & cuddly youth to the respected aging old people, which is why they gave birth to games like Metal Gear Solid, Loco Roco, Rez and Ico. Unless Hollywood & the Western world stop generalising the market audience for video games and start taking it seriously, video game movies will never be good.

4.Lack of involvement from Video Game developers

The reason why video game movies were never good because most developers were not involved with the movie adaptations of their games! It could possibly happen because either they were busy, unavailable, do not care or refused to work on the movie because maybe the people involved in the movie industry were dicks. I mean, you can't make a MGS movie without Hideo Kojima(above). And also, the people in Hollywood are either rude, evil or stupid which is why most developers do not want to be associated with adaptations of their games. Therefore you must work closely with video game developers, and if you're going to produce or direct a video game movie and you're getting involvement from the video game developers, try and respect them and their source material. Do not piss them off, especially if they're Japanese because Japan hates being pissed off and rude.

5.It's more fun to play than watch

Look, people play Resident Evil just to shoot at zombies, not to listen to its cheesy dialogue. And people play Street Fighter just to see Chun Li's ass and kick butt. It's not made to care about the plot. Therefore, why bother watch it if you can just play it?

6.Producers, directors, and VG companies only want the money.

In Hollywood, they think that the only people who play video games are geeks, and the only way to appeal to a mass audience is to make into a movie out of it. Therefore, they make video game movies by ignoring their main fanbase(the geeks) and attracting the stupid wide audience, because a wide audience is bigger than a cult geek audience, therefore there's 99% percent chance it'd make money. In the case of video game movies, people don't care if the casting is right, or if the director won a Razzie as long as it will certainly makes money. It's a sad reality, but it's true.

7.Lack of respect for the source material

Source material is important in adapting into a movie. A James Bond film without James Bond is like an atom bomb without the atoms. It just makes you more pissed off and angrier at the people behind such monstrosity. This is a case of video games. I mean, look at Resident Evil. They added a character called Alice which has no relations to the original whatsoever. And the second Resident Evil movie is basically a mixture of RE2 and RE3. However, it doesn't have Chris fucking Redfield in the 2nd movie, and he was the best thing about Resident Evil 2! And in the recent third Resident Evil movie it was a post-apocalyptic film! I mean, rather than having the world saved and Leon Kennedy sent to Spain to fight Ganados, you have a screwed up world where it's controlled by zombies! And the zombies were slow! I mean, we now believed that slow zombies is easier to be contained since fast zombies are way apocalyptic than slow zombies who can have the infection stopped in one place by a nuke(As pointed by Resident Evil 2). It just pisses me off when a movie lacks the respect of source material. It just shows how Hollywood has brought shame to it's Japanese counterparts.

8.When a professional does a vg film, it fails

When i mean by 'fail', is how eventhough the greatest minds in filmaking still fails to produce the perfect script for a video game movie. I've read both Romero's Resident Evil script and Roger Avary's Silent Hill script. To be honest, it wasn't that good, and Avary's script for Silent Hill was tame. I mean, both scripts are respectful of the source material, but both lacks the awesomeness of their writing. I mean, Avary's SH script is nowhere perfect as his Pulp Fiction script which was co-written with Tarantino, and Romero's script on RE lacks the awesomeness of his previous works like Dawn of the Dead and Creepshow.

9.Plots resemble MST3K films

MST3K is a show where a guy and his two robot pals are trapped in space and are forced to watch bad movies. You can watch every episode on YouTube, and you can see how films like Double Dragon and Mortal Kombat resembles MST3K movies like Prince of Space(above) and Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.

10.Directors like Uwe Boll and Paul WS Anderson don't have the imagination of James Cameron, Stephen King, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Rod Serling and had to find stupid, uncreative ways to make a VG movie

Look at Spielberg, Lucas and Serling. What do they have that Paul WS Anderon and Uwe Boll doesn't have? Imagination. I mean, when Spielberg did Saving Private Ryan, he had to imagine how the D-Day invasion looks like through the eyes of the American WWII veterans. It's bloody, violent and filled with bullets exactly how the WWII veterans saw. And back in the 70's Lucas wanted to make his own version of The Hidden Fortress, but he felt it was too early to do one in a very American way. Therefore, he feels like doing one with a space setting while the plot remains the same. It's imagination. If you try to adapt a material into a movie, you must imagine how the movie would look like. And the same case stays in video games too. If you're planning to adapt MGS into a film, you must imagine how the movie would look like. How would Snake interact with characters like Naomi and the Colonel through radio? Will it be split-screen, or will it show the frequency numbers as well as the character's faces? That's the main factor of adapting a source material: imagination. But in the case of Uwe Boll(above), who the fuck adds clips of the House of the Dead gameplay into the adaptation, and what's with the fucking slow-mo?! No creativity or imagination whatsoever.

2 comments:

blogr said...

lol at "if you think critics are pointless then..."

the act of critiquing itself is far from pointless. it creates necessary dialogue and gives opportunities for improvements and insight. but i can say in fair honesty that i've never consulted a movie review or video game review when i go movie watching or go to play vgs. while i can respect other peoples' viewpoints and opinions i prefer to go out and make my own. i guess what i'm trying to say is i can see how critics can be viewed as "pointless", especially with many of them (i'm looking at ew's direction) being overactive fanboys who get carried away with hype, know-it-all-ism and pretentious elitism.

blogr said...

oh and good on ya for mentioning ff7:advent children, it s prime example of a vg movie well done.

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