Oh, settle down.

I liked the line "a mangled mess hardly resembling the source material". I thought that was funny.

Remember Mortal Kombat ... a game inspired by cheesy kung-fu movies was itself transformed into a cheesy kung-fu movie inspired by a game.

Video games do not belong in film. Period. Even if handled "delicately" (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - took 4 years and $ 137 M), there's just not enough substance in games to even think about making a good movie.

Oh, settle down.

Beto.

I'm settled down already! But, you're completely wrong, regardless. There's plenty of games with more than enough material to do a movie, more than many movies without videogame roots. The idea that there isn't enough substance in games to make a good movie is simply out of date, and has been for a while. It merely expresses a deep prejudice with regards to both filmic and ludic experiences (and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hardly qualifies as a videogame movie, or even a movie based off a videogame). The real problem has *always* been a lack of sophistication, with naive ideas about "what videogamers want" and "what videogamers are like" prevailing in crappy movies like Tomb Raider. (Mortal Kombat, incidentally, is a good movie. Cheesy, yes, but who says cheesy can't be good? Certainly not the guy/gal who invented nachos!)

Dear Walter,

First of all, you are a subborn mule. Secondly, Mortal Kombat is not a good movie ... it's a PG-13 piece of garbage. But come to think of it, I think I see what you're saying ... if compared to every other video game movie, it's kinda like you're watching Citizen Kane.

That word ludic ... of or relating to play; characterized by play; playful. I love the "armchair screenwriter" mentality. A ludic experience is not going to make a good screenplay. That experience is solely based on one's imagination. Look, I loved playing D2 ... and was completely immersered in that world ... but that doesn't mean MY EXPERIENCE should be made as fodder for a piss poor movie.

Lara Croft was a character beloved worldwide for her tight-fitting shirts, short shorts, and ability to jump deep chasms while moaning erotically. Guys didn't play that game because they were really into the story. They played that game cause they needed a late-night wank whilst puzzle solving. And so, the movie reflected just that ... with all the impromptu shower scenes and such. Honestly, what did you guys expect?

Notwithstanding, I agree wholeheartedly with your nacho statement. Good call.

Hey, maybe John Woo could shoot the Metroid movie as a live action side-scroller. He could use a stationary camera throughout the entire movie and just cut scenes when the lead character finds a door. An homage to gamers.

One more thing, please don't turn that word (ludic) into an -ism for gamers, either.

Shoes full of snow.

Beto.

What kind of -ism?

Beto, I believe that the only thing that can make for a good screenplay is, well, a good screenplay. And I'm not an "armchair screenwriter", either: I've taken a class on screenwriting and have gotten my hands dirty.

What I'm saying is that there's inherently no reason why a game's contents couldn't provide the basis for a good movie (which is a better way to frame this debate as opposed to talking about turning a game into a movie, or making a good screenplay out of a ludic experience, which seems to emphasize a contradictory reading that doesn't get at what I'm talking about). A lack of story-substance a la Tomb Raider the game is an opportunity to fill in the gaps, along the lines of, say, Red vs. Blue and Halo multiplayer. There's no reason, artistically speaking, why Tomb Raider had to be a bad movie. That it turned out to be a bad movie has nothing to do with the fact that it was based off a videogame. Instead, it has everything to do with cynicism and stereotypes, screenwriters and moviemakers doing their best to suck or being told/paid to do their best to suck.

That said, there are still games out there with enough diegetic material that much of it would actually have to be cut out to make a movie from it. The movie, of course, would still have gaps to fill. That's part of its job, after all, no different from translating novels and comic books into movies and vice versa. Each medium has its special strengths and abilities, and moving content from one medium to the next will involve a process of cutting things out and putting things in. You just have to do this well. Most videogame-based movies have not, but what else do you expect in a world that still has yet to take videogames seriously? It's a sign of the times, not of inherent deficiencies.

I think the point was missed, being placed in the midst of all that Woo and Tomb Raider-as-movie bashing.

I'm not against the act of creating a movie out of a game; rather, I'm against movies being made out of games for their own sake. Clearly movie studios are seeing a trend in the making - the kids are playing a lot of video games, so why not pack them into theatres seeing movies based on their favorites?

We saw it recently with House of the Dead - an incredibly lame movie that expected to sell tickets on the sole basis of it being based on an excellent arcade game. I found Resident Evil to be similarly hollow - take a groundbreaking video game and put it into film format starring two incredibly vapid actresses and you have a veritable slurry of bad filmmaking.

The first time I saw Mortal Kombat, I have to admit I was impressed. It did what we expected: have all our favorite fighters duke it out with a paper thin plot in between encounters. Christopher Lambert as Raiden almost made me faint when I first heard the casting, but he didn't do too badly. Street Fighter, on the other hand, was a terrible movie because it tried to make some sort of a statement - and the depressing part was it was Raul Julia's last movie. But I'm going on too much of a tangent here.

As I said in the beginning of this post, video games cannot be made into movies unless considered deeply by the film's creators. A game like Diablo II, taking Beto's example, has enough of a backstory that a pretty decent adventure could be concocted starring some arbitrary hero. What we don't need is a movie "based" on a game that is merely taking a popular character or universe and shoving it into some Hollywood hack's script. As Walter says, the only thing that makes a terrible movie is a terrible screenplay.

Points taken.

But you honestly can't compare novel and comic book adaptations to video game fodder. That's just absurd. So it goes. Paper-thin, if you will ...

Until I'm proven wrong ... have a good Easter holiday.

Beto.

Huh? Why wouldn't, say, an adaptation of Metal Gear Solid, System Shock, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic be comparable? But if all you're thinking about are story-lite games (and I don't know why, since there are plenty of good film works out there that are very light on story), then all you have to do is think of them as providing a starting premise--something pretty much all screenwriters have to make use of anyway. Where a screenplay goes from there is up to the screenwriter and anyone controlling the content.

When I make the comparison to novel and comic book adaptations, I'm pointing out how translating these things to film, no matter how sophisticated they were to begin with, always involves an additive process (heck, the same is true merely by going from screenplay to film!). If it didn't, then film adaptations of novels and comic books would simply be a recording of the pages. And there are indeed movies out there with more content, more substance than the story it was adapted from. The same thing can happen with games! Fundamentally speaking, there's no difference. Why videogame to movie adapations have thus far been disappointing has nothing to do with the mediums involved, and everything to do with the decisions made by people.

Well anyway, happy Easter!

Walter, you're a good man. I like people who stick to their guns. Good stuff.

Gatmog, I'll say it again, your site is excellent ... keep it up, son.

Exclude the null hypothesis.

Beto.