Lets face it, at some point or other the vast majority of us have stumbled haplessly across a movie that is adapted from a videogame. And for those of you that haven’t… lucky you. Not once do I recall watching the credits roll on one of these films without instantly looking for the nearest wall to hit my head against. The latest optical assault I had the misfortune of enduring was ‘Max Payne’ (2008). It is essentially an exercise in mediocrity. There is the mandatory overuse of slow-motion and with Mark Wahlberg putting on his best scowl for the duration, the whole thing is about as gritty as a British B-road in a snow drift. The experience got me thinking why? Why in the world do people keep making these awful videogame adaptations?
My main gripe is that there is no love in them. It is a simple case of conveyer belt nonsense, containing enough references to appeal to fanboys, and with a big enough budget to gather some mainstream appeal. They are capitalising on the fact that bulk of cinema audiences, the young adult male, is also the bulk of the videogame market. Throw them an attractive female lead, a large slice of high concept action, all combined with the brand of their favourite videogame franchise, and there you go. Easy money for people bereft of original ideas.
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| Bob Hoskins as Super Mario. It hurt. |
If you were to compile a list of all of them, first offender being The Super Mario Bros. (1993), through to the not so eagerly anticipated ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ (2010) I doubt that between them all they could muster up two star quality. But this drought of class is able to slip into the shadows due to the box office figures. The Resident Evil series, amongst others, has come out financially profitable on all three outings, so why not keep making them?
But it just may be that some people are beginning to get the idea. A film based on the Grand Theft Auto series has been rumoured for a long time, but never come to fruition, and directors haven’t exactly been queuing up to helm Peter Jackson’s ‘Halo’ project. Neil Blomkamp of ‘District 9’ (2009) fame never got past testing, whilst Guillermo Del Toro refused outright. Jackson insists the project is still alive, but signs do not look too promising as of yet with Blomkamp stating that it would be “difficult to return,” to the project after working on it for five months only to see it collapse.
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| You might want to get that looked at old chap |
But not to worry Pete, there is a hero in the midst, a hero who shall rise and bring this project from the dust. Step forth Paul W.S Anderson: A true veteran in the art of smiting the good name of the videogame franchise. His early career saw him make many a ‘Mortal Kombat’ (1995) fan shed a tear. Since then he has wrung the ‘Resident Evil’ series dry of credibility, directing the first then producing the rest of three films (with another due for release later in the year), that have drifted further and further into utter farce. Then, his crowning glory: He took what was a very popular video game and along with that even managed to tarnish the reputation of two of the greatest loved names in the history of cinema, with the truly atrocious ‘AVP: Alien vs Predator’ (2004).
As you may have gathered I am quite a fan of video games, but much greater is my love for cinema. That is why I think it is high time that all boards of film classification unite and prevent these adaptations from robbing us any longer of ninety minutes that we will never be able to get back. Although they do not seem to translate well to the screen, film directors have often expressed the view that gaming and film could one day become one and the same.
"My influence, when I was a film student here (University of Southern California), was a television influence. In the '80s, cinema became influenced by the pace and style of television commercials. And in the '90s, it was the pace and style of the music video. And I think the next decades are going to be influenced greatly by the digital world of gaming."
What ‘Back to the Future’ (1985) director Robert Zemeckis said to the San-Diego Tribune in 2004 does ring true in many respects, although it seems too many filmmakers are taking this concept literally and simply lifting videogames from the console onto celluloid. There is, however, a branch of the ‘videogame movie’ that should be allowed to exist, and that is solely under the pretence that they are made before the video game.
‘Crank’ (2006) is a film that fits admirably into this category. Assassin Chev Chelios (Jason Statham – thankfully not attempting an American accent) is given a lethal cocktail of poison that will make his heart stop unless he gets frequent bursts of adrenaline. Ludicrous it may be, but good god is it delivered well. The opening titles appear as preparation for ninety minutes of videogame logic. The word ‘Crank’ is displayed in large pixellated font above a rudimentary looking beating heart, all on a multitude of bright pastel backgrounds. It is the sort of thing a six year old could knock up on Microsoft paint, but as the film progresses you come to realise just how much it fits into the scheme of things. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor you really do feel that you are in the midst of a videogame. Intensely creative camera work and sharp, pacey editing make for a near heart-attack of a movie, scattered with little pockets of calm that almost act as loading screens leading to the next level. It is the game ‘Grand Theft Auto’ wishes it was.
And while we are on the topic of ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ there have been almost as many stops and starts as with Peter Jackson’s ‘Halo.’ The last engulfed Neveldine/Taylor’s latest outing ‘Gamer.’ Rumours were abound that the original concept of the project was a Grand Theft Auto adaptation, which hit a stumbling block due to a rights war between Ron Howards 1977 film and the videogame. Although it never got off the ground, the choice of Neveldine/Taylor alone speaks volumes for the kind of job the duo did with Crank. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen and we don’t have to watch them commit artistic suicide.
Another film that appears to be heavily influenced by the videogame industry is Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998). The opening image is that of the screen being swallowed up by the mouth of a demon atop of a clock. From then on we are at the mercy of time. The circular narrative and problem solving aspect drag you into a world that is not dissimilar from that of a platform game. Lola (Franka Potente) has three twenty minute attempts to save her boyfriend, who has lost a whole lot of a rather nasty chaps money. As Lola uses her three ‘lives’ she learns from and rectifies her little mistakes: Much in the same way Super Mario would as he plods his way through the mushroom kingdom. All tied together with a tremendous original score, it makes for a truly great piece of cinema that has enough action to give it ample mainstream appeal whilst giving the art-house fan enough to enjoy as it meditates on the nature of fate.
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| I recommend watching his films, I recommend not playing his games |
Even since the earliest days of gaming, film directors have been poking their noses into the medium. None more bizarrely than ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, who in 1986 released Takeshi no Chōsenjō (Takeshi’s Challenge) on the Nintendo Famicom. The tagline read ‘this game is made by a man who hates videogames,’ and with levels including one that required you to hold down the ‘select’ button on your controller for four hours in order to progress, you couldn’t help but believe the claim on the box. His whole ethos was to illustrate the futility of playing videogames. On today’s evidence it didn’t really work though did it Mr Kitano? So he wisely went back to the graft of directing award-winning cinema.
In more recent times, Steven Spielberg has been a regular contributor to the videogame world, his Dreamworks company creating the popular ‘Medal of Honor’ series. The company was eventually bought out by Electronics arts, whom he is now working for on two titles to follow 2008’s ‘Boom Blox,’ a physics-based puzzle game designed for the Nintendo Wii. Not the cinematic spectacle we would have expected from someone of Spielberg’s ilk, but we wait with baited breath for his next two offerings. Electronic Arts have also enlisted ‘visionary’ director/graphic novel rip-off merchant Zack Snyder as creative leader on a trio of forthcoming games. It remains to be seen whose vision he plans to claim as his own next.
On the flipside, there is a distinct lack of drifters going the opposite way. Heavyweights of the videogame world such as Hideo Kojima (famous for creating the ‘Metal Gear Solid’ franchise), Shinji Mikami (‘Resident Evil’) and Shigeru Miyamoto (‘Super Mario Bros’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda’) have never worked in the film industry, although Hironobu Sakaguchi (‘Final Fantasy’ creator) did flirt, directing ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,’(2001) a fairly lackluster CGI animation based on his videogame franchise. He hasn’t returned since.
What all this seems to illustrate is the truth in the idea that the worlds of cinema and video games are moving closer together, yet the one making all the movement is the world of gaming. Developers look to film as storytelling art for an example of how to add more and more class to their ever improving medium. When cinema looks back at videogames for the same influence, it regularly comes up short. The art of making a videogame is significantly more complex, from a technical standpoint, than that of a film, therefore narrative can often take a backseat due to the importance of graphics and gameplay. Gaming is first and foremost an interactive experience, whereas with cinema, we are the spectator alone, meaning there is nothing other than visual aesthetic to distract the viewer from a poor story. A second rate story could only ever give birth to a second rate movie. So Please, please, please directors of the world, switch off your Xbox and read a book. They really do make for much better cinema.
