Videogame Movies

It’s become chic to trash video game movies in general, and Uwe Boll in particular. The latter I can certainly understand, if only because you get to read his whiny, childish responses later. But he doesn’t bear the blame for all of the trash out there, even if BloodRayne II: Deliverance was the most unnecessary movie ever made.

For an example of Boll-less garbage, who remembers Super Mario Brothers? The most notable aspect of this movie was that somehow an entire team of moviemakers got together to make a Super Mario Bros. movie, and evidently none of them were at all familiar with Super Mario Bros. Seriously, Bowser was played by Dennis Hopper. And rather than jumping and collecting mushrooms and flowers, they shot at each other with flamethrowers and de-evolution guns.

Another non-Boll movie that is easy to trash is Doom. This movie had everything going for it. A solid star to play the lead. The tie-in to the new Doom III. Plenty of budget for special effects. In fact, it had everything it needed to be a good movie. Well, except for a good movie.

There are some video game movies that are hard to trash, however. DOA and the Tomb Raider movies were, in my opinion, very close to their source material. Some nonsense story that doesn’t make any sense, all circling around some good-looking women.


On the other hand, the Double Dragon movie was truly a waste of film. Fans of the video games were slightly confused, as this movie was actually based on a cartoon, which explains why it was so completely ridiculous in every way. Really, the main mistake with this movie was choosing to make it live action. If they’d just stuck with cartoons, this would have been much better.

In fairness, not all videogame movies are terrible, and not all of them are financial failures. the original Mortal Kombat movie, while not well thought of today, actually did quite well at the time of its release. And the Resident Evil series of movies has been very sucessful, as has Silent Hill.

The problem with making videogame movies is that generally, video games have very thin plots and poor characterization. We as gamers fail to notice this because we fill in those gaps somewhat by taking control of the characters and becoming a part of the story. But when a movie takes us back out of the story and gives us some distance, we can see how little there actually is. Obviously, role-playing games give the best chance to overcome these problems, but Advent Children aside, very few role-playing games are mainstream enough to support a major theatrical release.

So what is the formula for making a sucessful video game movie? Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Obviously, videogame movies usually need a lot of money for special effects. And any movie benefits from good casting. But other than that? Paul W.S. Anderson as largely responsible for the Resident Evil movies, but he also did Super Mario Brothers and the abysmal Street Fighter. Of course, you could just forget about good filmmaking, and just hypnotize children with brand recognition, as demonstrated by the unending series of Pokemon movies.

While I'm aimlessly tossing around ideas about video game movies, here are a few that I'd like to see, provided Uwe Boll can be kept at bay.
- Magna Carta: Tears of Blood. I really thought that the story was engaging, and I’d like to experience it without suffering through the relentlessly bad gameplay.
- One of the Front Mission games. It’s been a long time since there was a mech movie made, and I’m getting close to wanting one bad enough to rent Robot Jox.
- Prince of Persia. Nostalgia alone should sell this game, but if not, throw in the weird evil harem girls from Sands of Time.
- Diablo. I just think that there aren’t enough movies with amazons fighting demons.
- Tenchu. Same with ninjas fighting demons.

As much as I mock them, I still love watching video game movies, and I’m sure that I’ll give Mr. Boll another chance with Dungeon Siege. And then maybe I can read another ridiculous tirade.