Sorry, These Movies Aren't For You

As a gamer, there will always be a part of me that gets excited when I hear about Hollywood’s plan to take a game I love and give it the big screen treatment. My mind instantly goes over the epic moments and I can’t help but imagine the grand spectacle of Link battling a giant Dodongo with a massive special effects budget and an epic score. I think to myself “Wow, those sequences sure would look amazing. I can’t wait”. Then the initial revelation wears off a bit. Rational thought once again takes hold and I come to realize all the potentially negative aspects. “Who on Earth would they get to play Link? Would they be able to do justice to a character that never says a word? How much unnecessary emphasis will be placed on the love story? This is a terrible idea!”

And therein lays the problem. Past the flashy fight scenes and iconic characters getting a glossy Hollywood sheen, the problems with putting a video game on screen go on and on. As with any film adaptation, a host of cuts simply must be made. While it is true that video games have become increasingly like movies over the years, the two mediums don’t quite mesh yet. Of those games that have received the upgrade, only a scant few are even watchable (not everything can be as great as the original Mortal Kombat movie). So here’s the question folks: should we keep turning games into movies? I know the temptation will always be there, but are there any games out there that can be done justice on the big screen? And, even if it is plausible, would a quality product be able to make it through the rigorous movie-making process? I hate to say it, but the outlook isn’t too good.

Right now, Hollywood is buying up any license it can to put out a movie version on an existing property. If you didn’t already know this, you don’t have a head. Now that almost every comic book has been bought up, video games are high on the list of things to exploit. If teenagers are waiting around the block to preorder it, studios want it. However, pause for a quick second. What makes a great movie? An engaging plot. Compelling characters. Skillful acting. On the flip, what makes a great game? Solid mechanics. Enjoyable gameplay. Replayability. While it is certainly true that many games do present impressive stories and wonderful characters, they still aren’t a must for a great game. I don’t care how bland the story is, I will keep rescuing the Princess from Bowser in Mario 3 until I’m no longer in control of my faculties. And then there’s the acting. Getting talented voice actors to handle a game requires getting the planets to align (or a production team that actually cares what a game’s vocals sound like). Admittedly, particularly poor acting can ruin a game, but rarely is a game salvaged on voice work alone (All emotions in Contra are presented only with bullets).

Obviously, the standards the two mediums are set to are vastly different and create numerous issues for cross-pollenization. Furthermore, there is so much that cannot be shipped over intact. Plots, for instance. Most games still have some pretty lose plots. Evil is over there. Kill from points A to B to fix. Given this sums up the plot of most fighting games, I’m still amazed how many have been filmed (and still are, new Street Fighter movie). Others, however, have plots that are far too complex to work within a standard two hour timeframe. It would be impossible to try to fit all of the beats, characters, locations, and plot points of Final Fantasy VII together without having to play the entire film at breakneck speed. No matter how you slice it, most games will either have to lose a lot or be seriously fluffed out to meet our expectations. This brings me to my next point: us.

Movie executives don’t much care what gamers think. Admittedly, I can’t say I blame them. We gamers, as a whole, are a testy bunch. We will cling to the franchise we love for dear life. Mess one thing up and we will decry you for crimes against humanity and threaten your very existence (not unlike the comments I’m sure to generate below). What adds to this problem is that those involved aren’t exactly our ilk. Video games turned movies are often managed by people with a similar mind to those who manage movies turned video games. These folks don’t understand what makes games enjoyable and they rely almost solely on name recognition. They assume we will latch on to a property regardless of its apparent crap level. Hence, your standard producer will have no problem cutting and adding to a script to make it more appealing to the mainstream moviegoers of America. Plots are streamlined. Characters are mismanaged. Love stories are shoe-horned in. Uwe Boll is present. In the end, you’re left with something that has hints of the game from which it draws its name but bears only slight resemblance. The film holds none of the nuances for which the game was touted and is instead filled with generic Hollywood fluff (and love stories) that leave it as an unremarkable mess that game fans will hate and actors will deride years later on a commentary track. Most of America is unimpressed and we, the gaming community, are livid.

This is a process that baffles me. These franchises are willfully gutted to make them unwatchable to the original fans, those that lead to its success and would naturally be the most excited to see its big screen debut. However, the gaming community isn’t considered a large enough base financially to justify gaining our business alone. Given our tendencies and makeup of the total market, this does make sense financially, infuriating though it may be. Their aim is to attract the masses, believing (somewhat correctly) that we will see this movie regardless of its quality. There’s really no point in catering to the will of the fans so studios can do as they like. To me, it renders the whole process somewhat absurd.

Despite all of my previous points of contention, there are some games that may actually be able to make the leap from gaming to film with little adjustment necessary. Some have argued that Halo would make a great movie. Master Chief, despite all of the praise thrown upon him, is little more than a suit with the occasional line of dialogue. A compelling character we can watch for two hours, he is not. Others suggest Metal Gear Solid. As cool as that sounds, so much of the Metal Gear series involves getting inside your head while you experience the game. Few games attempt to engage the player on so many levels as Metal Gear (what they hell would Psycho Mantis tell a theatre audience?). Turning that into a passive media would render it a generic spy flick devoid of what made it so unique. One could also make an argument for survival horror games, but they’re essentially a horror movie turned video game. No need to transfer again (more so than has already been done).

No, after careful consideration and much debate, two games in particular come to mind: Prince of Persia and God of War. Prince of Persia may not have the most compelling story (evil vizier betrays king, save existence), but it is fully manageable for a film. It’s none too long, has decent variety, and plenty of action. More importantly, though, it has interesting characters. The Prince evolves from a pompous ass to a likable hero. Farah, the token female, requires little actual rescuing and serves as an entertaining foil to the prince. There’s even a love story set up, dispelling all need to invent a character for solely that purpose. Similarly, God of War has a workable plot (revenge) allowing for spectacular action and is paced appropriately for film. Also, the character of Kratos is a genuinely interesting, multi-dimensional character. While yes, he is a living death machine spurred constantly to seek revenge, you actually gain some insight into his personality as his story plays out. He is a man willing to kill a god to erase the memory of murderous past. One could possibly make the argument for Kratos as a tragic hero. Add some gods as supporting characters and focus/flashback on the loss of his family and you could probably film that.

Hollywood is apparently aware of these exceptions and as we speak, both films are being heartily worked upon. Unfortunately, despite their potential, I still have little faith in either. Producers these days are aware of the unlikely success of a video game movie and often make efforts to kneecap them accordingly. Little effort is placed in appointing appropriate directors, as evidenced by Brett Ratner helming God of War. Additionally, casting is based more around stunt people than talented actors. Even when a big name is included, like Mila Jolovich or Jake Gyllenhaal, the remainder of the cast generally serves to bring things down. Even the special effects budgets aren’t as impressive as one might hope; leaving those elegant battles we’ve all imagined looking somewhat half-assed. I’m not even going to go into scrip quality (you know that one just isn’t going to be pretty). Most importantly though is the studio’s lack of faith in these projects. Any of these movies would require a lot of work, money, and investment and as long as the company behind it isn’t willing to offer that, nothing great will ever manifest.

So yeah, there are some potential converts, primed and ready to go, and as time goes on, games will probably be presented more as interactive movies, hoping to one day make that leap themselves. But as it stands, none of them will be given a fair shot at achieving what we all might hope for. They’ll come out and crush our dreams. And despite this knowledge, we’ll still see them anyway. Sorry original Mortal Kombat, it looks like you’re going to be very lonely.

Now that I’ve stroked my ego, what’s your take on the situation? Any possibilities I’ve over looked? More inherent difficulties? I am a completely full of shit? Discuss.

A Salvo From the 360

As in the real world, the Xbox 360 appears to have more fans amongst our writers. So, in true underhanded Microsoft fashion, Jo and Alex have decided to gang up on the other consoles. We were all reticent about agreeing to it until they started threatening us. Something about a chainsaw mounted on a machine gun…

Unlike the PS3’s snooty elitism or the Wii’s grandma-friendly demeanor, the Xbox 360 appeals to me: The Ex-Fratboy. That’s right, I don’t smoke hashish and I don’t read Chaucer. What I do is drink whiskey and kill bad guys, and that’s what the Xbox has been about from the start.

The original Xbox came in to the market with an Ali-style rope-a-dope, and it served its purpose well. It was meant to tire the other systems out by taking away some exclusive titles while throwing a few well-timed punches of its own in the forms of Halo, Ninja Gaiden and KOTOR. With the 360, Microsoft comes off the ropes and really starts to pummel its worn out foes.

And the other consoles know it. While I wasn’t a Fratboy, I do like me my Xbox. I’m a gamer at heart and out of all the next-gen consoles, the Xbox is the only traditional “gamer” console. Nintendo’s Wii admittedly left the gamers out in the cold – creating a toy that was meant to be shared by the family. Meanwhile, Sony overshot the traditional gamers, creating a system that was meant to be elite and sophisticated – which turned into prohibitively expensive. It might have been different if the PS3 had come out with some games to make one fork over the cash for it, but they didn’t.

With console exclusives such as Halo 3, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Ninja Gaiden 2, and the Gears of War series, the Xbox 360 welcomes the traditional gamer to the next generation. All of these titles were revolutionary in their own way, but they also held true to the “Those guys over there are bad so you should kill them,” theory of gaming. I made my bones with the original NES, and I was a die-hard Nintendo fan through the N64. I made the difficult decision to switch to the Xbox when it came out, and now with the 360 I feel that my decision was justified.

I feel the same way, and not just because of the games. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft hasn’t left its gamers wanting, hoping on blind faith that problems with the system will magically get repaired. You see, Xbox fans don’t believe in Big Foot, and we don’t leave cookies out for Santa. We are a people of instant gratification and Xbox provides just that. With the Wii, gamers are still waiting faithfully for a fix to their (half-assed) internet system. And as far as Sony’s financial outlook goes, PS3 owners are just taking on faith that the console is still going to exist in the next few months. FINALLY, after waiting for so long, the games that are going to make its purchasers happy, and perhaps attract some new fans, are emerging (a little late in my humble opinion).
The Xbox has been solid from the start. Sure there were red ring issues – but Microsoft knows how to handle these kinds of problems. They are used to getting a product out and fixing it later – quickly. And they have. The red rings aren’t nearly as prevalent as they were at launch, and Microsoft still offers a 3 year warranty on all 360s for any red ring-o-death issues. Microsoft saw the problem, fixed it, and made their fans happy. While Nintendo and Sony are asking for our faith, Microsoft is gaining our trust.

I would like to elaborate on my earlier “half-assed” comment concerning the Wii’s online capability. Xbox Live has been much maligned for being a singularly offensive and intolerant environment. I can’t argue with that. 10 year old kids have hurled epithets at me that made my eyes roll into my head and blood shoot out my nose. However, this staggering degree of closed-minded bigotry is not common to every game played on Xbox Live, however.

After recovering from the ego-shattering shame spiral I was sent into while playing Halo 3 online, I decided to try my hand at the Gears of War 2 multiplayer system. To my delight, the douchebaggery was much reduced, and the experience of playing AND TALKING with other gamers was quite enjoyable. One of the most fun and important aspects of online gaming is the ability to chat with the fellow players. Often I am teaming up with my fellow beer-swilling frat brothers, and being able to catch up on our various states of unemployment is important to me (while chain-sawing Locust in half!)

So while you can complain about the Xbox’s online play sucking because of the idiot gamers out there, you have to realize that this is something where you take the good, with the bad. And the good parts of Xbox’s online system outweigh the bad parts of the Wii’s. Besides, if you didn’t have annoying, vile-mouthed, pre-pubescent punks pwning n00bs to practice your head shots on, the experience would be a lot less enjoyable!

Now that we beat up the “baby bear” as Kink puts it, we thought it was time to take on “big brother bear.” Everyone who owns a PS3 rationalizes it the same two ways: The graphics are better, and it has a Blu-ray player! First, the graphics issue. On paper the PS3 has more processing power than the 360, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to better graphics. Without going into far too much technical detail, the graphics processing unit on the Xbox is more powerful and easier to take advantage of. Therefore it can perform in ways that the PS3’s graphics unit can’t. When people say that the PS3 is more “powerful” than the 360, the are referring to the 8 dedicated SPU’s in the PS3 versus the 3 general purpose CPU’s found in the 360, neither of which have much to do with graphics. These SPU’s are what make the PS3 so difficult to program for, however, and consequently games that are available on both platforms are almost universally more bug-ridden on the PS3. A more powerful system doesn’t mean a damn thing if it comes at the expense of gameplay.

Next, the Blu-ray player. Sony took a huge risk in backing Blu-ray, and it has paid off since Blu-ray won the format war. However, this lovely little component adds hundreds of dollars of per-unit price to the Playstation, and is the single biggest reason that Sony loses money on every console sold.

That being said, right now Blu-ray is also the biggest reason to actually go out and buy a PS3. And Sony knows it. It’s what they’ve been trumpeting while they’re trying to get their third party support and games in line. “Yeah, you don’t have games to play right now, but LOOK! A Blu-ray player! Oooo!” I’m not interested in shiny things. I want games dammit. The fact that they didn’t strip the Blu-ray out of the system and add a DVD player instead to cut down on costs proves that. They knew they couldn’t sell the gaming component of the system alone, there are not enough games to support it. In the end, Blu-ray capability should be a secondary consideration for a gaming system, and not the reason you purchase it.

So where does that leave us? With the Xbox – which is where we started. In addition to being an ex-fratboy, I’m also a trained engineer. The Xbox has the best hours-of-fun-per-dollar-spent ratio, and that is the single biggest reason to buy one. I have almost 3 times as many games for the Xbox as I do for the Wii, and have spent at least that much more time playing the 360. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Wii when I fire it up, it just means that the Xbox is my console of choice. You know what you’re getting with a 360. It’s not a retirement home accessory, nor is it an expensive Blu-ray player that happens to play games. It’s a damn fine gaming system that will still play your DVDs for you. What more do you need? Besides, if I’m trying to decide between buying a game for my PS3 and my Xbox, the 360 always wins – I have to build up my gamer score!! Now where’s my hashish? I’ll need it to get through this volume of Chaucer. . .