geo85 Wrote:We have already done all that stuff in the games who needs it all over again in the movie. If you just follow the game totally then anyone who has played it will sit there bored knowing everything thats going to happen.
Your argument is severely flawed. If what you are saying was true, then all book to movie adaptations careen into that same pitfall. It would also mean that making an anime from a manga would be pointless, because we could, and I stress could, have already read it. Sin City was a great movie, and from what I hear, it was the three graphic novel stories almost perfectly reproduced.
There has never been a video game movie that perfectly retold a video game story. You know why? They pick games that have no story, but are really popular instead. Almost all video game movies come from action-oriented games. Street fighter, Double Dragon, Mario Bros., Tomb Raider, and Mortal Kombat are all games that don?t posses enough story to fill a bologna sandwich. They weren?t suited for the medium, but possessed a generous amount popularity in the video game world, or at least enough to make some idiot executive drool at the prospect of a quick buck. Maybe if more attention was paid to making a movie as close to possible of a reproduction of the game, THEN AND ONLY THEN would you have a movie that is about a game. All of these pieces of trash are simple premise bait and switch of a marketable license. The movies are the game counter parts in name only, and that is why they fail.
Another problem however is this: games are pretty long. RPG?s undoubtedly have the most gold to mine story wise. However, the problem with trying to make a game about an RPG is that the story for a game like that is far too long to try to make into a movie. Trying to condense it would make for a horrible experience. So the biggest portion of solid plots get thrown out right away. After that, you have to sift through a bunch of games to find creative scenarios to recreate. But instead of trying to take a game that has a solid narrative, a game with a cool concept or design is taken and narrative is built around it. One has to wonder why no one has figured out that the reason the design is good or the concept is cool is because you will be interacting with and controlling the action, rather than being a static recipient of actions that occur separated from you instead of involving you. That is why games are so fun, because you get to be involved in what happens.
Games that could work are few and far between, but they are out there. Retell and flesh out Half-life, it had a good story and a flexibly interesting universe. Psi-ops was an action heavy game, but it had characters that were worth remembering, a story that could adapt reasonably well, and a concept that is cool. But then again, some shitty director would get assigned to it, a crappy script would be written and a pile of a movie would be made. Then we would end up back here complaining how they screwed it up.
To be blunt, until I see a good video game movie, one that isn?t all action and doesn?t take liberties in the story (because it doesn?t need to), these adaptations are just an unimaginative invasion raping of inactive entertainments creativity pool, because Hollywood has become bankrupt of innovation, talent, and fundamental execution.