Videogames are becoming increasingly seen as a legitimate art form in their own right, boasting voice casts and writing talent that can match the biggest block buster movies, with plot moments that are every bit as culturally defining for those who grew up with them as the moment when Luke Skywalker finds out who his real dad is.
The movie industry, having milked books, TV shows, old cartoons, comic books, 80s action figures, board games, self help books and funny youtube videos for ideas, are keen to get their hands on some of that sweet, sweet videogame money.
The trouble is that every single attempt to do so has been, what’s the word? Horrible! That’s it. Fro the complete mess that was Super Mario Bros, the oh God what happened here that was Doom, to the tragically hilarious Street Fighter to almost every film that Uwe Boll has ever made, the attempts to adapt a videogame to the big screen just don’t seem to go well.
Even Resident Evil, which has been successful enough to launch a barrage of sequels, is still going to make it onto nobodies list of all time classic zombie movies. So why is this?
They Don’t Take the Source Material Seriously
Around the beginning of the century something happened in movies. At a time when people thought that comic book movies were pretty much a financial sink hole, one director thought “Hey, I know, why don’t we try and make a movie that looks like the comics?”
This was not the prevailing logic at the time. The logic was, you took the comic, ripped out whatever parts of it you thought were saleable, and packaged that. This is the approach that gave us Batman Forever, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl and Barb Wire.
But then suddenly we had the X-Men, that too the idea of mutants as an allegory seriously and told a great story about it to boot. Then we had Spider-Man, which got to the core of the geeky-teenager-with-superpowers fantasy and the power-and-responsibility moral that made the comics such a hit, and suddenly the people making these films were in swimming pools filled with money.
And yet when it comes to adapting Super Mario Bros, a surreal and comic fantasy where mushrooms can talk and fire breathing dinosaur turtles can kidnap your girlfriend on a regular basis but still be friendly enough to play go-kart races with, became a horrific blend of Bladerunner and Jurassic Park (and not the good bits of either of those films).
When it came to making Resident Evil, a game about creeping horror and zombies, at a time when creeping horror and zombies were all the public were crying out for, what they gave us was hot girls doing martial arts in skimpy outfits. We’ve yet to see a videogame adaptation by a talented director who actually likes the source material, and until we do we’ll keep seeing clunkers. Except even if we do:
Games Can Do Everything Film Can
Going to see a film of your favourite book is a strange experience. On the one hand, everything they get wrong cuts like a knife. But on the other hand, you finally get to see things that before only existed in your memory: the sand worms of Dune, the battle of Helm’s Deep, the planet Earth destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet. Film can show you things in ways books simply aren’t capable of, just as books can show you the inner workings of people’s minds, and evoke smells and sensations where film is stuck with old fashioned sight and sound.
But if you’re adapting a videogame to the big screen, what do you have to add? Better special effects? Most triple A games feature special effects on a par with the biggest movies now. Better actors? Fallout 3 featured Liam Neeson in a lead roll. LA Noire featured half the cast of Mad Men. Decent writing? Well, admittedly it’s not great, although game writers like Rhianna Pratchett could give most Hollywood screen writers a run for their money.
Films Can’t Do What Games Can
But it’s not two way. Games can do something no other art form can: They let you feel the agency of your character. When the protagonist in Bioshock or Spec Ops: The Line realises he’s done something terrible, you realise you did something terrible. When the character in Portal forms an attachment to their companion cube, despite it doing or saying nothing, you do the same. When Lara Croft feels stronger and more capable throughout the story of the latest Tomb Raider, so do you because it’s you doing the things the protagonist does (and for the record, Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider has far more depth than Lara Croft as played by Angelina Jolie). The best a film can do is give you the sensation of watching somebody play that videogame.
Jason Falls is a freelance writer and avid gamer who works with Butlers Bingo and is still bitter about the Super Mario Bros movie.
