Video games often get lost in translation
There have been dozens of films based on video games, and why not? Global games revenue was reportedly more than $80 billion last year. And as awful as these movies have tended to be, they’ve averaged $100 million grosses. Why? Because they have builtin, dedicated audiences … audiences largely in “the demo.” Which is probably the problem.
Judging from their output, the studios apparently believe that young men are largely incapable of thought (insert your own punch line here). Witness almost every comic-book movie before Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins”: loud noises and shiny objects galore; logic and ideas, not so much.
More to come
This week, “Hitman: Agent 47” becomes the latest in that growing line of game progeny. It’s a remake/reboot of the 2007 “Hitman,” which, despite a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating of 14, made almost $100 million. But if “Agent 47” misses the mark, it ain’t Game Over — dozens more are in the pipeline.
Movies based on actual games have generally been noob (online newbie) level — James Cameron’s fondness for the first “Resident Evil” notwithstanding. Of 29 prominent releases from 1993 (“Super Mario Brothers,” with Bob Hoskins) to 2015 (“Pixels,” still in theaters), the highest-rated on Rotten Tomatoes’ critical aggregator is “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” with a paltry 44. Their average, 17.6, wouldn’t make it past Level One.
Some have been hits — “Prince of Persia” made $335 million worldwide despite a very poor 36 rating. Two of the “Resident Evil” films have made well over $200 million; even the reviled “Street Fighter” (12 rating) finished within spitting distance of $100 million. The average gross of these 29 is $97.7 million.
There have been fine computer-game-related movies, such as “WarGames” (1983), “Computer Chess” (2013) and “Tron” (1982) — but they’re not based on actual games. Screenwriters created them, or the game A.I.s, specifically for those films. Average critical rating for those three: 83.
Studios expect people who play games to be, to put it politely, non-discerning. To be barely able to slobber without aid. Thus, energy is spent on the buzzers and bells of recognizable form (aping the game-play experience or popular film genre), rather than substance (character, story, dialogue, ideas) — those little things that sometimes make movies watchable.
“Doom” and many others play as little more than approximations of first-person shooters, “Doom” amusingly so, looking straight down the gun barrel as in games. “Mortal Kombat,” “Need for Speed” and the “Tomb Raider” movies all closely resemble other films or genres — “Enter the Dragon,” “Fast and Furious” and Indiana Jones, respectively. “Agent 47,” which had not screened by press time, emanates a whiff of Jason Bourne.
Although, to be honest, this writer half-recommends “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” for unintentional humor. Maybe quarter-recommends.
Speaking of quarters, Quarter to Three is an entertainment-kvetching site with an emphasis on video games. Its editor, Tom Chick, says, “The pacing, format and, especially, interactivity are all distinct in a video game. In fact, video-game storytelling is arguably incompatible with movie storytelling. A video-game story needs to emerge in an entirely different way, using unique tools, often spread out over tens of hours.”
It “will have a sense of doing, whereas a movie will always be about watching. In ‘Arkham
Knight,’ I go up against the Joker, Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, even though I’m doing it as Batman. In the Christopher Nolan movies, I watch Christian Bale as Batman.”
But isn’t that essentially the same problem with adapting any source to a new medium? Literature often makes greater use of the consumer’s imagination than does film, creating a unique experience for each person. Theater pieces are written to thrive within the limitations of a proscenium (generally speaking), relying on dialogue and the charge of being in the presence of live action rather than on cinematography and editing.
Consider what happened after some studios realized that comic-book films didn’t have to be terrible. Marvel started treating its audiences as grown-ups whose knuckles didn’t necessarily drag, and the phenomenally successful and critically acclaimed Marvel Cinematic Universe was born.
Yet game movies fail to fascinate, despite the rich worlds of today’s deeply involving video games.
“Some of the best storytelling in the gaming world is in the ‘Witcher’ series, ‘Portal,’ the ‘Bioshock’ games, indie darling ‘Gone Home,’ ” Chick says. “Some of those would be good foundations for a movie. The central relationship in ‘The Last of Us,’ between a man who’s survived the apocalypse and a girl born into it, could be very cinematic.
“But some of these are examples of how you run into problems translating video games into movies. ‘Grand Theft Auto V,’ one of the most amazing narratives I’ve ever seen in a video game, is about the psyche of video gamers. Its three characters are each a facet of what happens when you turn someone loose in an openworld video game. Trevor is the psycho who shoots everyone, Franklin is the impressionable newcomer trying to get ahead in the world and Michael is the world-weary cynic who’s seen it all and just wants to decompress. It’s like ‘Inside Out,’ but set inside a video-game world instead of a human brain. Why would you make a movie about three characters that represent how people play games?
“A movie version of ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ would be just another Michael Mann movie with Michael Bay action sequences.”
‘Assassin’s Creed’
There is hope on the horizon. Next year will see the release of “Assassin’s Creed,” based on a series with complex mythology and starring two of the most intriguing performers today, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Fassbender is co-producing, with his and Cotillard’s “Macbeth” director, Justin Kurzel, directing. The pedigree is promising for “Creed” to be the first really good video-game movie — the pending “Agent 47,” “Angry Birds,” “Warcraft” and others on the slate before December 2016 notwithstanding. Michael Ordoña is a Los Angeles freelance writer.