PART I:
#NotMyVideoGame.
This new movie reminds me of something...
We all know why games-to-film don’t work. There is a fundamental difference between something created to be an interactive experience, and something created as a passive experience. This is the discrepancy between videogames and cinema, and it’s become accepted reasoning for why so many adaptations have failed. But Hollywood keeps attempting to make them, and fans still want them; The dream of seeing something you love, come to life on the big screen is an everlasting appeal
for any fandom. So, if translations can work with other mediums like books, (which also requires individual engagement, and different personal experiences- perhaps even moreso than games), why can’t it be true of videogames?
I often argue, that all an adapted film really needs to do is satisfy its core audience, regardless of how it might do critically or financially. This is why I love
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. I’m a huge fan, and they were able to incorporate everyone, and deliver beautiful, intense battles. BUT, it’s also why I didn’t enjoy
Warcraft, a movie that expects you to know everything about
World of Warcraft, and I’ve never played
WoW in my life. It’s always different when you’re on the outside looking in. So, in a general sense, I do feel that anyone who is interested in watching a game movie should be able to enjoy it if they want to, regardless of if they are familiar with every aspect of said game or not.
So, what does a videogame movie need to do to “work”? When you sit down to watch, what is it you are looking for? Hoping for? Is sticking to the source material enough? Perhaps it’s a matter of Budget and Production Value. Casting and Performance. Writing and Story. Whatever the case may be, you can take any game adaptation ever made, run it through those 3 parameters, and find that it stumbles in at least 2 of those aspects at any given time. And even when every one of those key facets is well done, a movie may still be defeated purely by its concept.
In the earlier days, games were getting adapted that had concepts that just don’t work for film- at least not without drastic, or unnecessary changes and filler. Just ask
Double Dragon. The ideas behind videogames weren’t meant to be anything more than basic framework to get started playing. Or in the case of something like
Need for Speed, was never meant to be a movie in the first place. But as we’ve seen, games have gotten more and more cinematic; Story is more prevalent and important in all types of games, and there are quite a few titles out there now with substantial material to build a feature film around.
Within the game itself. (I’m not talking about a bunch of supplemental lore that you’ve got to go digging to find.) And that’s where
Tomb Raider comes in.
Tomb Raider is the litmus test. For the some 50+ Games-To-Film that have been made, not a one of them came from a videogame that could be considered
a movie in its own right. Even
Prince of Persia, the first film people hoped would break the mold, was coming from a series with very few cutscenes, or set pieces. Same with
Assassin’s Creed, which is all about open world gameplay, and the most cinematic thing about them are the E3 announcement trailers. As undoubtedly the most cinematic game to yet be adapted to film,
Tomb Raider is the guinea pig for all the
Metal Gears and
Uncharteds to follow. The whole debate about if cinematic games are the best titles to translate, or the most pointless, will finally be put in perspective. In this way, despite being a reboot from the Angelina Jolie movies, this Tomb Raider will be the first of its kind.
So, going back to what I asked earlier, what does
Tomb Raider need to do to be good? A fresh rating on an aggregate site like Rotten Tomatoes is ideal, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, simply cracking 50% would be a breakthrough. (As of this writing, the highest rated games-to-film are
Final Fantasy: Spirits Within and
Angry Birds, both at 44%? Lol ew.) I’ve seen enough videogame movies to have a pretty good idea what I want this reboot film to embrace and what I want it to avoid, and we can look at almost everything. (Well, not
everything. As much as I punish myself sitting through these, even I have my limits, and frankly I take a sense of pride in knowing I have never watched a frame of a single Uwe Boll film.) So, I’ve got a grab bag of noteworthy entries I think TR could learn from.
PART II:
Let’s dive into some basic DOs and DONTs :
DO NOT focus on the wrong thing.
Assassin’s Creed was completely bogus for only having 3 scenes in the past, and thinking anyone would care about so much of the boring modern-day stuff. It's not popular in the games and its not popular here. Clear case of the filmmakers being out of touch. Nobody likes not getting enough of what we want in the first place.
For Tomb Raider, this means: Keeping the survival front and center. It’s the best part of the reboot, and hopefully we won’t get too bogged down with uncovering a backstory we don’t care about.
DO NOT lose sense of your own genre.
Max Payne the game is a gritty revenge crime noir.
Max Payne the movie is, for some damn reason, supernatural? Both
Hitman films are inexplicably partner-centric, actioners when the games are all about solo STEALTH. There are few quicker ways to lose the fans than fundamentally missing the point of what the games are doing in the first place.
For Tomb Raider, this means: The film shouldn’t throw in unnecessary plot elements and become convoluted.
DO have a standout scene. In the history of videogame movies, there are probably only 2 scenes people might call gleefully unforgettable: The First-Person sequence in
Doom, and Raul Julia’s “It was Tuesday” speech in
Street Fighter. There is nothing better than making sure your movie has something people won’t forget.
For Tomb Raider, this means: Even if the movie sucks, if they can offer at least one moment that sticks with us, they’ll have contributed something positive to the genre.
Most importantly,
DO commit to the material. A guilty pleasure of mine is
DOA: Dead or Alive. For all its faults, it knows exactly what type of movie it is. According to star Holly Vance, about 40 bikinis were ruined in the making of that picture. It may be cheesy as all get out, but that’s what I call dedication! The first Lara Croft film pretty much had all the elements I was looking for. Trademark Jumping, flipping, shorts, twin pistols, and globe-trotting. Angelina Jolie kills it in this, oozing cool as a confident badass. And it’s great to see her real-life father used for the dad plot.
For Tomb Raider, this means: Have some pride in what you’re doing, and wear your heart on your sleeve. I confess Some of the lamest things adaptations do is be ashamed of their source material, and play down their roots.
From what I can conclude, the more a game leaves to interpretation, the more likely filmmakers will interpret it wrong.
Super Mario Bros. is responsible for starting us off the wrong foot. Considering the state of the genre, I’d argue it unforgivable. Even Bob Hoskins hated it and had to be drunk the whole time. It’s a movie filled with one bad decision after another, and it’s like the filmmakers didn’t care, didn’t understand, or both. I hate this embarrassment, but at least it’s good for a laugh. Can’t even say that about Tekken…
Sitting at a paltry 0% on RT is
Tekken, by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. Terrible acting, terribly edited fighting, terrible everything. Coasting off the fact that the combatants are in their costumes is not enough, not when so many of your favorite characters have been sidelined or randomized. This is a problem in all the Tekken adaptations I’ve seen, and even
Tekken 7 bungles its story mode in this way. Between the live action take, and
Blood Vengeance, it comes as a surprise that only the crudely animated movie from 1997 attempted to tell something coherent, and use more of its characters well- and it’s still not great. Apparently, whatever you do as a game movie…don’t be Tekken.
PART III:
I’ll suggest what I consider the 10 best adaptations gamers should be proud of,
across any platform.
10. Funnily enough, fans already took a stab at the Tomb Raider reboot with “Croft” from 2013. So, right off the bat, I’m including a fan film. “Croft” was an enjoyable effort, but I think a stronger one is
Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy. The point I’m making here is that no Hollywood suit will know and understand a game better than the fans who play it. The only thing young filmmakers are really missing is the money to make it pretty.
9. Sticking with the very game-y theme of user-created content, I want to highlight a short film that gained a ton of notoriety for aspiring director Kevin Tancharoen.
Mortal Kombat: Rebirth shows a hell of a lot of creativity, and I’d take this gritty re-imagining over an official product like
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation any day of the week. Along those lines, I’d also take the
Assassin’s Creed Lineage short over Hollywood’s latest big screen effort.
8. The cool thing about Rebirth was it evolved into
Mortal Kombat Legacy. But as game web series go, I’m giving my 8th slot to
Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist. So awesomely done, and this is the only live-action take on Street Fighter to actually star the lead character of the games, Ryu and Ken- and what do you know? It works best.
The Legend of Chun Li? Don’t get me started. That’s like
Halo: Forward Until Dawn starring Thomas Lasky. Oh, wait…
7. TV Series in general seems to be a good way to go for videogames. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s you might remember several flagship game mascots getting their own shows. None of them hold up pretty well, though, and things are taking a turn for the better with Netflix’s
Castlevania. But I think the king of the mountain for videogame TV shows is easily
Pokemon. For younger audiences, it’s great, and it kickstarted a world-wide phenomenon.
6. As the only videogame TV movie one might be able to find, BBC’s
The Gamechangers is unique. Rather than be based on a pre-existing game, this Daniel Radcliff-starring film is instead a dramatization on the various attempts to halt the making of the
Grand Theft Auto games. A bit of a controversial choice for some of the liberties it takes in its telling, but Gamechangers is still better than most videogame movies, and the closest the genre has come to something akin to
The Social Network.
5. Continuing the theme of the story outside of the game, comes a straight-up documentary.
King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters is probably the most critically acclaimed videogame movie out there, and for good reason. Simultaneously scratching our nostalgic itch (Q*Bert! Pac-Man!), and tapping into the obsession that can drive hardcore gamers, we follow a science teacher’s quest to break the Guinness World Record in Donkey Kong.
4. Switching gears back to proper game adaptations, one comes to appreciate how closely computer-generated movies work in tandem with their game companies.
Heavenly Sword repeated its game story beat for beat. Resident Evil has a slew of Leon-focused outbreak adventures, but Final Fantasy takes the cake, and even though
XV: Kingsglaive is gorgeous, the best CGI game movie is
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It more than makes up for whatever
The Spirits Within was claiming to be.
3. That’s what you’ve got to love about Japan, and there are plenty more undiscovered gems that released over there, that are wonderfully faithful to their game source material. For my no.3, I went back and forth over the pitch-perfectly silly
Ace Attorney and the charming, Studio Gibli-esque
Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. Both are on point, (Layton even has the puzzles!) and really put American movies to shame. Cheating a bit, but I’m calling this a tie!
2. With straight-to-home video, there is no lack of videogame movie projects. Everything from
Dante’s Inferno to
Mass Effect, to
Dead Space, to
Bayonetta have gotten the animated treatment. The best of the bunch is
almost the best videogame movie I’ve seen, and it is
Batman: Assault on Arkham, a DC animation people often forget is set in the world of Rocksteady’s Arkham games. I love this movie. The only reason, it’s not number one, is Batman came from comics first, so it almost isn’t fair.
1. Finally, if I haven’t exhausted you enough, if you’re looking for that “official” Hollywood major motion picture that gets videogame movies right, I give you:
Silent Hill. Sure, I like
Mortal Kombat, and
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and the first
Resident Evil (which, if we’re talking strictly theatrical releases, rounds out my Top 4, and it’s a shame ALL their sequels are trash of the highest order), but I legit think Silent Hill is kind of genius. All those DO’s and DON’Ts I mentioned? Silent Hill adheres to them all; A masterclass in translating atmosphere, balancing multiple games, making sensible changes, and letting fans feel like what they’re seeing is authentic-
right down to getting the game composer to do the film score. The visuals are stellar, the ending is ambiguous, and Pyramid Head’s flesh-ripping scene will stay with me forever. As far as I’m concerned, this is the movie to beat.
There’s talk among hopefuls that- even though it’s been over 2 decades- we are still in the early stages of videogame movies. That this is not unlike what comic book movies had to go through before reaching the superhero boom we have today. But this isn’t the 80s and 90s anymore. This isn’t a matter of filmmaking just being too cheesy to properly do the material justice. By 2017, movies don’t need to suck anymore.
What do you think? Have you seen any or all of these? Are there some keys to victory for game movies or will they always be doomed? Can fan films get more credit for doing things Hollywood gets wrong? Is it ok that Resident Evil is the most successful game movie franchise? Should I talk more about how awesome Mortal Kombat is, and that Linden Ashby is fantastic as Johnny Cage? He might be the best character performance in a game movie so far. Thanks for Reading!