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Official thread about the movie you just saw

I think the Angry Birds Movie is the most “critically acclaimed” film based on a video game. That was the hype when it came out.

Why is that such a tough nut to crack in a world with so many well liked video games?

If you want a serious answer, it's because of the nature of narrative in video games. Most video games with acclaimed plots/narratives are either a.) that way because of the way the story uses choice (perceived or otherwise) to influence it, or b.) it's telling a straightforward story (these are the "walking simulators" of the world), where the game is using immersion to bolster plot, so that it doesn't make a ton of sense in the medium of film.

I think it's probably the stuff from category (a) that you're referencing, so to put that another way, those games tend to be more about the "how" than the "what".
 
There are some games that would probably work fine as movies (the same way that this year's Tomb Raider, which was mostly taken straight from the rebooted game a few years back, was... fine*), but I don't know that I see the point. Like, sure, Uncharted would be fine, but why does that story need to be told on film? Same thing with The Last of Us.

I can think of a couple of games I'd love to see as movies (Fallout 4 could be pretty cool!), but for the most part, they're just sorta unnecessary.

*where "fine" is "okay that is a thing that happened and it's not good but hey it wasn't a trainwreck at least"
 
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The new Tomb Raider gonna be SWEET

I read about it in an airplane magazine
 
That’s a good answer. In that respect, a film is a lesser medium for the complexity of top tier video games.

But that doesn’t excuse arcade games and most platformers. For example, Disney made a fantastic film about multiple fake video games that included a few real ones.
 
That’s a good answer. In that respect, a film is a lesser medium for the complexity of top tier video games.

But that doesn’t excuse arcade games and most platformers. For example, Disney made a fantastic film about multiple fake video games that included a few real ones.

Oh, I mean, I don't really know why you'd ever make a movie off of an arcade game or platformer... That's never made sense to me. It reminds me of a few years back when board game companies were selling the movie rights to things like Chutes and Ladders. Like... okay, but why?

I do think it's interesting that there are a number of decent movies about videogames. Wargames, The Wizard, Wreck-It Ralph, Scott Pilgrim... I think that's probably a lot easier to do.

Thinking about this a little more, a game that came to mind was 2016's Hitman. There was already a Hitman movie (there might've been two? I can't remember), but I think it misses the point of the game. It's a game where at the start of each mission, you're given a target (maybe more than 1), and possibly a secondary objective. And then... the game is your sandbox. The reason I'm bringing this up, is that over the course of 2016 Hitman's first "season" (the game was released episodically), it attempted to shoehorn in a story arc throughout, but that arc was hamfisted an super thin, even by game standards. It was just sort of there, but none of it mattered. What the game forgot, and what I think the movie(s) forgot, is that Hitman The Game is about how you carry out your mission, and the reason the game is so special in that respect is that on its best levels it allows for insane amounts of freedom.

Put another way: I can tell some great stories about individual missions in Hitman, but so much of that is personal to me and the situations that a specific sequence of choices I made got me in. I don't think it translates well to a movie for that reason, and I think the game suffered when it tried to encroach on my own storytelling by shoehorning in an unnecessary plot of its own.
 
Why would you make a movie about anything? There’s nothing about an arcade game that inherently doesn’t work for a movie. That’s what is puzzling. The talent is there to make good movies about video games. But it just hasn’t been applied to a video game.
 
Really thought Assassins Creed was going to be the breakout video game movie. It had all the pieces, but it sucked. There was talk that Gore Verbinski was going to do a Bioshock movie if A Cure For Wellness did well, but it didn't.
 
Why would you make a movie about anything? There’s nothing about an arcade game that inherently doesn’t work for a movie. That’s what is puzzling. The talent is there to make good movies about video games. But it just hasn’t been applied to a video game.
most arcade games are a little short on plot, which is why they're arcade games (designed for short, easily digestible sessions). that's really my only point as to why they're bad source material

I don't think anybody is chomping at the bit for a Crusin' USA or Virtua Racer or Capela Hunting adaptation, but maybe I'm wrong
 
Really thought Assassins Creed was going to be the breakout video game movie. It had all the pieces, but it sucked. There was talk that Gore Verbinski was going to do a Bioshock movie if A Cure For Wellness did well, but it didn't.
The story for the first three games in the AC franchise was convoluted as fuck, though. Those games are terrible as far as plot goes
 
most arcade games are a little short on plot, which is why they're arcade games (designed for short, easily digestible sessions). that's really my only point as to why they're bad source material

I don't think anybody is chomping at the bit for a Crusin' USA or Virtua Racer movie, but maybe I'm wrong

How soon we forget
images


ETA - this was just for a dumb yuk. I don't remember a NFS arcade game ever being made.
 
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most arcade games are a little short on plot, which is why they're arcade games (designed for short, easily digestible sessions). that's really my only point as to why they're bad source material

I don't think anybody is chomping at the bit for a Crusin' USA or Virtua Racer or Capela Hunting adaptation, but maybe I'm wrong

"Short on plot" should be an opportunity to develop an original plot around the characters. I think much of the issue is that the premise of many games lend themselves to puzzles, strategy, or meeting an objective, but not plot. I think it's probably tough to figure out a workable plot around a cross country road race, international street fighting tournament, a plumber saving his girlfriend from a gorilla kidnapper, or that gorilla's kid saving his dad from the plumber.
 
Saw 'Blockers' at the Grande in W-S and experienced a phenomenon.

There were 7 people in our theater. The projector started screwing up about 45 minutes in. It eventually (within a minute from the first skip) just got stuck on one frame & a loud noise coming from the speakers.

The phenomenon was that 4 of us applauded the mercy that The Grande was showing us as it broke & all 7 of us left without trying to get a voucher/etc. to come back.

That Bruce Willis disaster may have company at the bottom of my '18 list.

A friend's mom saw this and thought it was great. I found that very surprising. Your take is much more what I expected.
 
A friend's mom saw this and thought it was great. I found that very surprising. Your take is much more what I expected.

It’s like 82% on RT. I had only heard positive reviews until now.
 
A friend's mom saw this and thought it was great. I found that very surprising. Your take is much more what I expected.

It’s like 82% on RT. I had only heard positive reviews until now.
 
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