Editorial: Why Video Game Movies Can't Work

I’ve been following CBM for quite some time and I thoroughly enjoy a good 95% (I’m not a batman fan so batman related news isn’t of interest to me.) of everything posted on this site. I was reading a scoop by LEEE777 today that started a conversation about a subject very close to me and I felt I should give you all my 2 cents on it: video game movies.

You see I’m a pretty big nerd. I’ve been playing video games almost my whole life. And reading comics off and on about as long, so I think I have some idea of what I’m talking about. LEEE777’s Article was about the possibility of a Castlevania or Metal Gear Solid film. I’m just going to say that comic book movies are good ideas and videogame movies are terrible ideas and here’s why:

A comic book is a story told in 20 – 40 pages, although now most stories are told in 4-6 issues with bigger arcs sometimes being told over a longer period of time. Now given that most well known comic book characters have about 10+ years of stories told in this format, this means that the character is very well defined the motivations of the hero his/her likes, dislikes, personality and quirks have all been worked out very well. Take spider-man for example, his character is so well defined that in order to make a movie about him, you don’t need to tell a story from the books (it helps), but instead just make him the spider-man we all know and love. If you film a scene where peter is down on his luck and pining for Mary Jane (spider man 1) it shows me that this is the spider-man I know and love from the comic. If you have him dress in all black and go for a dance (spider-man 3), I start to think “maybe you don’t really know who Peter Parker is”. But the point I’m trying to make is that we all know who Peter Parker was before going into spider man, it didn’t matter what the movie was about, or who the villain was. Heck, you could even invent a new villain named “Mr. Exploding Hat” but as long as the characters behaved the way that we know they would it would still be a spider-man movie. Even though Mr. Exploding Hat would be probably the most terrible villain to ever grace the silver screen.

A video game on the other hand is a very different beast. When playing I’m game I don’t need to know who my character is. Do I need to know Mario’s likes and dislikes? Does it matter if he spends his free time kicking puppies or playing Frisbee? How about Solid Snake, do I even care where he lives? No. That’s because a game’s story is just a reason for my character to go from point A to point B. Think about it, what’s your motivation in MGS 1? You’re at an artic base because some terrorists stole a giant robot. Cool, gimmie my tranquilizer gun. If you follow a comic enough, you know why characters but do what they do, what drives them to be heroes, and what makes the villains, well villains. I’ve been playing Mario games for a long time and all I learned about him is that kidnapping the princess seems to really irritate him.

For most story based games, the story plays out over 20-50 HOURS. Take MGS for example. If you tried to slim the story down and cut out most of the action set pieces the film would still be about 4 hours long and that’s just the first one. So, I guess to sum it up. Story based games have way to much story, and action games have no story. Both have flat, one dimensional characters that are hollow if removed from their games, whereas comics have characters so well defined that they can work in almost any scenario. Don’t believe me? Imagine spider-man in Gotham city. Now imagine a Captain America / Punisher crossover. It works doesn’t it? You can totally picture spider-man and batman playing off each other, and you just know that Steve Rogers and Frank Castle would have some choice word for each other if they had to work together. Now, have Chris Redfield meet Solid Snake, or Max Payne run into Agent 47. Provided they don’t try to kill each other it’s still a boring scenario. That’s because we have no idea who these people are. Which is why when you make a comic book movie, it’s about the characters, not the story. But if you make a video game movie and don’t use both, you’ve got nothing. If you are going to make a film adaptation of a video game and stick close to the source material, I already played that.

Whew, that went on, way to long. If you stuck with me through the whole thing, thanks.

P.S. Max Payne did have a chance to be a good movie, but the writer & director screwed it the hell up. I’d watch a good hitman movie but it’d just be 90 minutes of him choking people and stealing their clothes. Truth be told that’d really only be entertaining for about 15 minutes.