I've maintained this point elsewhere, but combining two things you love doesn't always work out well. For example, I love peanut butter, but there's only certain foods you can enjoy it with. Chicken isn't one of them... it's a long story. Still, the point remains, combinations are tricky, risky and might make you throw up for a couple hours/days... again, it's a long story.
So it is with videogames and movies. I love both, but seeing them together is often not a good idea (see Uwe Boll, entire career of for examples). However, they are bad ideas that continue to make money, so we can be assured that there will be more of them on the way. It is we, the gamers and fans, who will be suffering.
The history of movies based on games isn't a good one, stretching all the way back to Super Mario Bros. You'd think this would have been a grand slam, especially with the budget they had. However, for whatever reason, the filmmakers decided to strike a completely different tone than the games did. Anyone who'd played a Mario game to that point would tell you it's a bright, cartoony fairy tale world that was really aimed towards children and families. That's Nintendo's M.O. and continues to be to this day. The movie, however, is a dark, grimy, post apocalyptic movie that tries to be way more serious than it ever could be. Besides all that, it stupefies the mind to think that they took a couple of 8-bit plumbers (who'd never even had speaking roles yet) and tried to cast real people in those roles rather than doing an animated movie. Oh well, at least we still have the Saturday morning cartoon.
There are countless other examples of god-awful transitions, but nailing the mood and feel properly is key to a good game-to-film crossover. While not an amazing piece of cinema, Mortal Kombat at least did this properly. The fight scenes are very much in the style of ninja movies from the 90's, but it captures the essence of what Ed Boon and John Tobias nailed in the original game. It's shrouded in mysticism and pseudo-Asian culture, there's people with odd powers and cool fatalities, Scorpion and Sub-Zero are there, it's the best that fans of the game could have hoped for. It's sequel... not so much, mainly because of too many new characters that feel like throwaways. You only get about 2 hours, pick your battles better.
Another issue with adapted movies is that they often just rehash the story of the game. STOP THAT. The people going to see this movie are fans who probably already played the game and don't need to hear it again in a different media.* Expand the universe, tell a new story, do something, dare I say, CREATIVE. The now cancelled Halo film project by Peter Jackson would have proven my point. From what the interwebs have been telling us, the Master Cheif, Halo's armored protagonist, wouldn't have been the focus of the story, but only show up in a cameo-like role. Since the Halo universe is so rich and full, I really think this could have worked and I'm bummed it won't happen.
Movie studios should learn that consistency matters to some geeks. Understandibly, the success of a videogame movie is no longer exclusively geek driven, but it certainly helps having them (that is to say us) on your side. We've invested hours of our time in the worlds your now playing in, don't mess up our recollections of what we've experienced. It's for this reason that flicks like Doom ultimately failed. The movie went for a horror angle while the game makes you feel like a BAMF, killing demons, escaping hell and using rocket launchers.
Of course Doom was made at a time when pixellated graphics were still somewhat high tech. We've moved on a bit as a culture into the realms of near photo realism. Of course movies got there first, ironically enough with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. While it was very beautiful, Spirits Within was very much a 3D anime, and was not a great representation of the series in my opinion. The main reason for this is the Final Fantasy games have become so film-like that a movie based on them seems unecessary. This is rapidly becoming true for the whole industry. The line between a game you pay $60 for and a movie you'll see once for $10 is becoming blurry.
Then there are some games that should never be a movie, ever. Like Asteroids. ASTEROIDS. A game with no plot, characters, progression or graphics. It's a triangle shooting rocks and Universal is SPENDING MONEY developing this property. What kind of weird, Twilight Zone-esque world are we living in? Is Pong next? The tale of one paddle's valiant struggle to overcome his inability to move up and down?**
Obviously game movies are still in their infancy, much like comic book movies were in the late 90's. It's a genre that has had some minor successes, but hasn't had it's Spider-Man yet. However, since games are becoming more and more like movies, I think it will get more and more challenging to meet expectations. I feel Hollywood should just quit while it's ahead. Perhaps the upcoming Prince of Persia or Sam Raimi's World of Warcraft will prove me wrong.
*Mortal Kombat gets a free pass on this because the "story" in a fighting game is really just there to justify all the battles. This is the only fighting game to film adaption to do it well though, as Street Fighter, Dead or Alive and even Mortal Kombat: Annihilation prove.
**If anyone makes this, I demand royalties.
