It passed a couple of weeks since the last time I wrote a blog. Holiday time came also for me and a week of full relax forgetting about everything but food, alcohol and sun was deserved (it really was!). "Las playas mejicanas" help a lot in this purpose during this period of the year.
The only drawback is the long fly time, so, nothing else than watching all the movies that went on the screen. At that moment I took the idea of this post, because it went on Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time.
Well, the games is evidently inspired at Prince of Persia saga, evidently mostly on the last episode (the Sands of Time), even though I noticed several little detail while jumping up and down the platform directly taken from Prince of Persia 1 and Prince of Persia 2.
While watching at the movie (boring, indeed), I was thinking at the other movies based on videogames that I watched. I think the first one was Mortal Kombat, based more on the second episode than the first. The movie was quite adherent to the videogame, at lease in some characters, representing almost all from MK2 with the addition of Kano and Sonya Blade by MK1. I remind that movie was quite entertaining. Here you can watch the combat between Goro and Jonny Cage (what a great character!).
I do not remember if Street Fighter movie came before or after MK movie, however, I watched it some years ago and it was really bad. The story-line was focused in Van Damme's character (Guile), and, a part some real reference to the rest of characters, the movie did not follow a story. Moreover it was just representing Street Fighter 2 game and I really cannot see M.Bison with the face of Gomez Addams (Raul Julia, the same actor of both movies).
However, the worst I see was Doom. Really awful! They just used the title for marketing. It's really ridicolous the scene where you watch the main character killing the zombies with a first person camera. Do they think they are allowed to call the movie Doom, just because of those 3 minutes? (and probably because they bought the rights...).
A little better was Resident Evil. The story was not exactly the same, but, they made a better screenplay (in fact two more episodes follows but I did not watch them, one is more than enough). I did not watch Tomb Raider instead, so, I cannot give an opinion, though I think that most of the success was due to the quality (phisical ones, of course) of Angelina Jolie.
Another really bad one was Silent Hill. And it's a shame, because anyone could have build a really creepy history behind that game. They focused more in showing splatter stuff instead of creating suspense and frighten people.
Resuming, my experience was not so good, but the list of videogames based movies is longer, and I am sure I am forgetting something. You're invited to participate to tell us what do you think about some movie/game you liked.
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Something that annoys me about film adaptations of a game, is that usually they center the story too much around the "main character", even when no such "main character" exists in the original game.
ReplyDeleteTake "Street Fighter": everything goes around Guile, the rest of the characters seems just like extras. The same with Mortal Kombat, although that one is much better balanced in that aspect than Street Fighter.
Or, take Wing Commander: what is the reason to make Blair something close to a super-human, something like a "mutant" from X-Men with special abilities? Make him a regular guy, who has to fight his own way through just like everybody else, without any aid from any kind of "special ability" or "heritage" and you'll have a much more attractive character for the audience to identify with.
I mean, the most important thing, the "star" in a good game, is never the main character, is it's "universe". The character must be well done and "fit in", but no good game develops around a character. And, generally, in this movies is the other way around: the "universe" is cut to the minimum necesary to hold the "hero". He is the "star" of the movie and absolutely nothing else has to eclipse it, not even a good plot.
This whole problem doesn't exist when the game already centers on a character (maybe like Tomb Raider). The movies have no reason to be any different... happens i dislike those type of games also.
BTW, amazing page, i already downloaded lots of games through squakenet.
-Alfredo
Hello Pasquale,
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right about the movies. Most of them it's terrible. I remembered another awful movie: Max Payne with Mark Wahlberg. It's a shame and Mark didn't save the terrible film.
- Gustavo
You made me remind another movie I saw that looked like a lot to a game, The Crank.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it was a stupid movie (indeed), then, the camera and movement reminded me a lot GTA IV. I found an interesting discussion around it, here.