Why Do Video Game Movies Still Suck?
Every time one of these things comes out and fails either critically or commercially, there are always half a dozen or so think pieces that pop up on the internet talking about why video games can’t make good movies. Usually it comes down to the idea that videogames are to be played and they can never be accurately represented by movies, a passive medium or that video games are too strange and weird to ever be made into a good movie story.
Once upon a time that may have been true. If you look at the early days of video game movies, you’ll see these issues popping up again and again. Super Mario Bros.is definitely a strange idea involving brooklyn based plumbers, a fantasy kingdom, dinosaurs, super powers being granted by mushrooms and flowers, sentient bombs, dragons, and a whole assortment of things that feel like they were thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Two of the earliest games adapted into movies were Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, both fighting games. While both games did have a story, most players who were fans of the game were unaware of it. The story for each game was just there enough to get to the game play where two characters could fight against one another. So we do have a situation where the stories that video games are telling are second to the enjoyment of the gameplay, something that would theoretically be lost.
But as time has gone on, this excuse is becoming less and less valid. Video games have exploded as a storytelling device. Many Triple A games have enough story that just the cutscenes edited together can make for a pretty entertaining movie. And you can’t really argue that it’s impossible to make a movie about an interactive activity when The Lego Movie managed to make an incredible movie about playing with Legos that went well beyond just a random story that happened to be animated Lego style. So what is the problem now? What is it that makes video game movies still feel like a thing that’s almost guaranteed to turn out badly.
Obviously there isn’t one simple answer. But there are a few issues that we’ve started to see turn up again and again. First of all, video games movies are not considered high brow entertainment. I’m not even talking about “oscar bait” type of movies. In the public eye, video game movies haven’t even reached the level of superhero movies. Video game moves are the low end of the quality spectrum. This may be a “chicken or the egg” kind of situation where we have to decide if video game movies are bad because nobody gives them a chance or nobody gives them a chance because all the earlier ones were bad. But no matter which came first, the world we live in now is one that views video game movies as poor quality entertainment. And the movies are treated accordingly.
A lot of video game movies are bad because nobody is expecting them to be any good and as a result nobody is trying to make them any good. I’m not criticizing the cast, the creative team or the crew on any one movie. I’m sure that these people go out there and try to create the best possible movie that they can given the tools and opportunities that they’re presented with. But more often than not, you can only do so much. Take, for example a movie like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, a movie you might have very well forgotten even existed. While it might look like this movie was an honest attempt to launch a movie franchise based on the Street Fighter videogames, upon closer inspection, this movie was given very little support from the studio. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was given a budget of $18 million, and while that might seem like a good bit of money, to compare, the earlier Street Fighter movie (the one starring Jean-Claude Van Damme) was given a budget of $35 million, almost twice as much. Plus, that’s $35 million in 1994 making The Legend of Chun-Li’s budget even smaller by comparison seeing as that movie was released fifteen years later. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was made quickly, on a tight budget and released late February in an effort to capitalize quickly off of the movie’s name and get back enough movie to put the film in the black. As a video game movie, The Legend of Chun Li, was never expected to be any good, and was never given any real chance.
This pops up again and again, with titles like Need for Speed, Hitman: Agent 47 and Silent Hill Revelation. Many times movies based on video games aren’t trying to be good. They’re trying to make a cheap movie that might get a few extra people to come out and see it because of some name recognition. But because of that, time and time again we get movies that are tied to video games that never even get the chance to try and be good. You can get a few exceptions, and more recently video game movies have started to get taken more seriously, and have been given more time and care, and bigger budgets, but this long standing trend of cheaply made video game movies has made a hole that it’s hard to dig our way out of. Of course, the new trend of big budget video game movies comes with its own problems as well.
Another problem that has been more and more common is the hope for a franchise. This isn’t unique to video game movies, but today studios don’t just want a movie that’s a success. They want a movie that can kick off a massively successful trilogy, a spin-off trilogy, a prequel movie, a tie-in comic and a promotional crossover with lunchables. Every property that they look at needs to have a plan not just for the movie, but for the next decade of the franchise. And the problem is that video games keep seeming like the perfect place to get these franchises from. After all, nobody’s looking to make video game movies from small, independently made games. No, these are all games that already have franchises built into them with half a dozen games already released in the lineup. Because of this, a video game movie is forced to not only adapt the game, but plant the seeds for the entire mega franchise that the studio is hoping to create.
Take a look at the Assassin’s Creed movie to get a good example of this. Taking one of the more popular video game franchise from the past decade, the movie chose to focus not on the parts of the game that were the most popular or memorable, but instead the parts of the game that would be easiest to create a muti film franchise out of. Because of this the movie fell flat and as a result, the Assassin’s Creed movie series seems to be going nowhere. Now, obviously this isn’t a problem that is unique to video game movies (see Universal’s Dark Universe issues for a non-video game example) but it is a problem that video game movies have time and again. Because video game movies tend to be action oriented, and because action movies tend to be expensive, movie studios aren’t interested in games that they can’t get at least three movies out of. Think about any recent video game movie. Each and every one spent at least a little bit of the movie setting up what would happen in the sequel, regardless of whether or not a sequel every actually happened.
But the biggest problem that video game movies face is the fact that we still look at video game movies as a thing. We lump them all in together. When a new game based on a video game is announce it gets compared to a dozen other movies that it has no real connection to other than the fact that both of them are based on video games. We need to get past the idea that video game movies is a genre in and of itself. Video games, like any other form of entertainment, can come in a variety of styles and trends. When a book is adapted into a movie we don’t try and make sure that the movie has the feel of reading the book. It’s an adaptation. A funny book will turn into a comedy. A scary book will become a horror movie. The idea is not to recreate the experience of reading the book, but adapt it for a different medium. But this thought process doesn’t seem to apply to adapting video games.
A Resident Evil game should be a horror movie. It should be entirely different than a game adapted from Uncharted or Need for Speed. But so often, these games bend the story out of shape to try and wrap it around the feeling of playing the video game. Having the plot segmented into what are essentially levels with bosses at the end of each level doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie. So often, video game movies are reaching for that moment that someone can point to and say “just like in the game!” but those moments are not necessarily what’s best for the movie as a whole. Too much focus on making a video game movie can lead to not enough focus on actually making a good movie.
There are “game like” that can work in a movie. Edge of Tomorrow was praised for how it was able to present the feel of a video game in movie form with the character having to die again again, making progress a little bit at a time by learning from the mistakes made in his previous lives. More recently, the latest Jumanji movie borrows some structure from video games by blocking each action sequence in a separate stage or level. But neither one of these cases is one where the movie is trying to adapt an existing video game. When video games are adapted into movies, that’s exactly what needs to happen. They need to adapt. Tomb Raider is an adventure story, one like Indiana Jones where there are ancient relics, and huge action set pieces, and exploration. Yes a nod or two to the game can be fun, but trying to remind everyone that this is a video game takes away from the idea that now it’s also a movie. There’s no tried and true way to make a good movie. If there was we wouldn’t have bad movies anymore. But as long as video games continue to be successful, Hollywood will continue to try and make movies out of them. Draw inspiration from them, video games can be great source material, but it’s an adaptation, which means that if it’s not good, it doesn’t matter how “video game-y” the movie feels, it’s still going to be just another video game movie that sucks.
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