Author Topic: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?  (Read 13140 times)

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Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
So, does anyone know of any good movie adaptations? There are a lot of them that are terrible, but surely there has to be one or two that are at least of acceptable standards. :nervous:
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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
The Halo movie looked like it was going to be amazing... :(

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Offline Stormkeeper

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
It now languishes in development hell.
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Offline Wobble73

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
The Mario movie was the worst thing that Bob Hoskins has ever done!
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Offline Roanoke

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I see there's a Max Payne movie doing the rounds. Looks very much like The Crow. Uh, without the crow obv.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I see there's a Max Payne movie doing the rounds. Looks very much like The Crow. Uh, without the crow obv.

I'm dubbing it "Crow-nstantine".............stupid demons, not needed.
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Offline Roanoke

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Underworld is on TV tonight. Everythings gone all gothic.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Hands off Kate beckinsale, she are mine. . .
 
I'm watching gadget show on C5 tonight.
 
I quite enjoyed the mario film to be blunt :p
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
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Offline gevatter Lars

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I read a funny comment about the game to the second Narnia movie. "...actually the game is better then the movie."
Looking at the game I can only predict that the movie must be very bad.
Still does this qualify it to be a good movie adaptation? ^_^
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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Dungeon Siege I totally saw coming and no one around me believed me on it. Reasoning: the game was so dirt boring I stopped about midway through, which is rare for me.

 

Offline Galemp

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I read a funny comment about the game to the second Narnia movie. "...actually the game is better then the movie."
Looking at the game I can only predict that the movie must be very bad.
Still does this qualify it to be a good movie adaptation? ^_^

Uh... the movie wasn't based on the video game. So no.
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Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Why movies based on games are awful?

How about this guy:

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Offline Galemp

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Less than half of the movies on that list are Boll productions. How do you explain the rest?
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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Underworld is on TV tonight. Everythings gone all gothic.

Underworld is based on a comic not a game though.

 

Offline Mr. Vega

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Movies of games don't work for two reasons:

1. What will work as a game story and what will work as movie story are extremely different. Games are much longer than movies, and their interactivity allows them to have moments during play that in a movie would be extremely boring. Like say, Thief I, a game with an extremely good story, involves the player standing or crouching, waiting for things to happen, as much as half the time. This works in a game, because if you move into lighted areas or too quickly and noisily you'll alert the guards and get yourself killed. That creates suspense, because your character really can die during play. But the protagonist of a movie will never die except under very special circumstances, so you can't convince the audience that Garret should stay where he is for 3 minutes. They'd get bored out of their minds and walk out. So what do you do? Get rid of those moments? Make the entire burglary last 5 minutes? Wouldn't work; it'd look so unrealistic as to be pretty stupid. My point is that there are tons of things that games can get away with because they are interactive, and the stories written for these games take advantage of this. Which is why with most games, even the best written ones, when you try to adapt them to a non-interactive media like film you run into massive problems that are usually insurmountable.

2. Hollywood either doesn't understand how difficult it is to adapt game stories to two hour movie scripts, or doesn't care enough to actually try to make it work.
« Last Edit: November 11, 2008, 01:05:49 pm by Mr. Vega »
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Offline Galemp

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I am going to strongly disagree with you on that point. I postulate that a four or five hour Doom or Tomb Raider movie would be just as bad, if not worse, than what we have now.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
I didn't think the Tomb Raider movie (or at least the first one) was all that bad, though that could just be my appreciation for Ms. Jolie's...assets...talking.

I think the tightrope you have to walk when attempting to make a movie adaptation of a game is following the game's story closely enough that it replicates its general experience, while not following so closely that you're left with essentially a cinematic version of the game's mechanics coming through.  That second point probably does contain a few caveats; though I didn't see it, the idea of a few scenes in the Doom movie being shot from first-person view seemed like a decent one to me.  A lot of it also has to do with how well-suited a particular game is to a cinematic presentation; I could see something like Resident Evil 4 working reasonably well, since many sequences in it felt very movie-like to begin with.  Another game that fits that category is the Prince of Persia series, whose film project I have reasonably high hopes for, since Jordan Meichner himself is contributing to the screenplay.

 

Offline Wobble73

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Actually, when we (the wife and I) first went to see the Tombraider movie, during the action scenes at the start. My wife turned to me and said, "It feels like there is something missing..........That's it! You don't have a gamepad in your hand!" She felt the opening sequence where Angelina was doing all those acrobatics, fighting against that practise robot was a lot like the game. I have to agree somewhat, it did have the feel of the game.


That skin tight silver wet suit in the second film was a winner for me!  ;7
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
 
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
 :nod: :nod: :nod: :nod: :nod: :nod:

Anything with Jolie and hot[pants/tight shorts makes me smile like a cheshire cat :D
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: Movie adaptations: why do they suck?
Anything of that sort makes me think of pornography and masturbation. :rolleyes:
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Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
MP-Ryan
Oh you still believe in fairy tales like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and free market competition principles?