Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#231

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #89

goostavos wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go back to GP's "why" question. I thought that The Last of Us was an absolutely fantastic game. Honestly, its one of the few games I've managed to stay engaged with all the way to the end. It works as a game. It's wonderful within its medium. A movie can't give you moral choices (did you guys kill the doctors at the end??), nor the time required to really get aquainted with the characters. The narrative works bes…

That's what series are for! I could see The Last Of Us as a series.

All of the repetitive missions in games would work well in a series. I mean most TV shows follow that formula, you know at a certain time in a cop show they will figure out whodunnit and proceed to the thematic close of events.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#232

Post by elcritch » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #192

Good by what standards? I think Resident Evil is pretty good. Doom was fun. So was Mortal Kombat. The first Tomb Raider was fine. It is too bad it doesn't seem that the recent one did well because Alicia Vikander is good.

Of any of the action movies I’ve seen in a long time, Alicia Vikander did a great job making her character feel like she was a real person struggling through a crazy situation. There were weak moments but overall there was a degree of empathy which most superhero movies lack. Well except for Iron Man; who doesn’t empathize with being a genius billionaire jerk?!

But given my take of the flick I almost didn’t go as I thought “eh, game movie”.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#233

Post by jitix » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

sirmarksalot wrote: post #44

So many video game movie projects are missing the simple question, "why?" So many of these games are inspired by movies in the first place, and their stories are mostly just cliches based on their source material. It's fine in the context of the game, because the player is doing something, but when you put that into a non-interactive medium, the flaws become obvious. If you take Indiana Jones, turn it into a game wit…

I think Mass Effect trilogy is fairly original and does away with a lot of the space sci-fi cliches like humans being the ruling class of the galaxy, or all species having a united voice, etc. I’d love to see it made into a movie.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#234

Post by zamalek » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #25

The 2016 Warcraft movie doesn't count? It got a 77% audience score, and a 27% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed almost half a billion, and is the highest grossing video game movie of all time[1]. I watched it out of a sheer morbid curiosity, and haven't played any Warcraft title newer than II: Tides of Darkness. I thought the movie was crap. But maybe I and critics just aren't the audience for these movies. Se…

> I thought the movie was crap.

I'm a fan of the Warcraft lore (though not where WoW took it). I found it pretty awful too. It seemed to lack a story - "stuff" just seemed to happen. It was like a 6-year old telling a story: there was no coherence or continuity. I've liked tons of movies that have done poorly with critics but a common theme across all of them is that they had a storyline.

To put this in perspective, I enjoyed Doom (2005) which is renowned for being one of the worst game movies around.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#235

Post by underwater » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #45

larrik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was better than than the trailers made it look like it would be. It's probably better without the game, though since, it simultaneously makes no sense within the game's universe and yet leads right into the beginning of the game version of Sands of Time.

I've never played the game or seen the movie, but the trailer looks pretty bad to me. If I were making a movie about that subject (and maybe this will make it clear why I'm not a producer), I'd go for more of an "Adaptation" style film. Viewers can't control time? Play it up, by (visually) admitting that the game powers like "rewind" are done on film through multiple takes, and stunt men, and editing. That's how you…

I haven’t played Prince of Persia, but that sounds awful. I’d roll my eyes if a movie did something so cheesy.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#236

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

The same reasons why adaptations of books aren't better than the book, usually. The medium is different, books can go into much more detail and leaves many things up to the readers imagination which is based on their own worldview, perceptions, knowledge, etc.

A movie glances over many details and doesn't leave much to the imagination of the viewer.

Movies and books are both scripted stories. Video games involve choices by the player which can't be done in movie medium. I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid, which are an exception to that medium being scripted.

Hollywood makes them the same reason why there are WordPress or Salesforce plugins: a proven market of people with interest and willing to spend money.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#237

Post by wpdev_63 » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

They have, silent hill. All the other bad game movies, doom, the later resident evils, and super mario bros really didn't tap in on what made those games great in the movies. They just parroted the story and hope it would translate well.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#238

Post by vkou » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 11:02 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #178

Can anyone tell me why the Warcraft movie was so awful? I felt like, out of all of them, that one would at least be pretty good, but it felt worse than a Warcraft 3 cutscene.

Too many characters, too much plot armor, too much name dropping, moves too quickly.

The cutscenes in WC3 worked because they were paced well (Due to gameplay in between them), and each one established a few basic facts about the world, or one of its characters. If you were to sit and watch through all the cutscenes back-to-back, they would not hold up well.

The film sucked for the same reason that Lord of the Rings would have sucked as a two hour movie. It would just be a dumb, disjointed montage of action and scenery.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#239

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 11:04 PM UTC

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #212

tnecniv wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship Troopers is great on multiple levels, ranging from a fun action movie I was sad to see and to a commentary on Nazi Germany.

If you read the novel, you get the impression Heinlein actually supports strong barriers to citizenship and other governmental ideals seen in the movie. It praises meritocracy but doesn't really touch on how to avoid corruption, besides being in an existential war against bugs (and skinnies, not seen in the movie).

> If you read the novel, you get the impression Heinlein actually supports strong barriers to citizenship and other governmental ideals seen in the movie.

No, I read the novel, and didn't get that impression at all. (Nor did the novel contain strong barriers to citizenship; it simply portrayed a society which retained the [near universal, in the time and society in which it was written] idea that citizenship required a commitment to service, while reversing the [similarly generally accepted] idea that citizenship was mandatory and automatic with birth.)

And especially I don't think the descriptions equate to simple endorsement after reading lots of Heinlein, where to maintain that shallow attitude toward his work I'd have to think that Heinlein rapidly cycled through deep devotion to a wide range of radically contradictory ideologies. He certainly has certain themes and ideas that he liked to remix that had some relation to his actual political views, but, at least in his fiction, he doesn't seem to be given to simple presentation of what he sees as an ideal.

Re: Why Can't Hollywood Make a Good Video Game Movie?

#240

Post by defen » Wed, Apr 11, 2018, 11:04 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #210

defen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a proper Metal Gear film They're working on that (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, guy who did Kong: Skull Island ). I have no idea how you could possibly turn Metal Gear into a movie that is appealing to people who haven't played the games, but he seems to be a huge fan of the series, and has claimed to have "cracked the code" about how to make an appealing movie based on a video game, in the same way that Hollywood has crack…

Mulling over the concept, I think the only way to direct a quality Metal Gear film is to ditch the idea of mass appeal and intentionally attempt to create a cult classic that captures the spirit and story of the original, not unlike Dredd or the new Blade Runner film. And with the correct marketing and angle, hopefully crossover into mainstream appeal like Mad Max: Fury Road. Tricky, but there's a first time for ever…

Here is the reddit AMA where he talks about it a bit: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5y9y4o/i_am_jordan_...