|
Post by omega on Jun 4, 2018 5:54:56 GMT
It's not a genre that typically thrills or inspires confidence in viewers, with such exalted entries like Super Mario Brothers. So why?
The way to discover this may be to dissect what people enjoy about videogame titles, and see if those aspects are transferable to the medium of film. Interactive elements like puzzle solving or exploring areas aren't easily done on film, the latter certainly would risk pacing issues. For plot, it depends on how much story there is and whether it can fit in a two, two and a half long film. Character development depends on how much of it is seen in the story. Visuals would be the easiest.
So, my question is this. If you like a game that has been adapted for film, what did you like about the game and were these aspects capable of being in the film?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2018 6:33:33 GMT
A lot of the big videos games are influenced by movies (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider etc) but what sets them apart is of course the interactive element of playing them. Most movie adaptations show up that derivative weakness when you take away the playability factor.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 4, 2018 10:03:00 GMT
Squeezing them into what's expected of a three-act Hollywood screenplay can also mangle the story something chronic. It's a bit bizarre that the primary choice for adaptation tends to be arcade games or shoot-'em-up titles like Tomb Raider or House of the Dead. Kind of speaks to the possible mentality behind the productions: these are light, disposable sort of properties. Not something to really be taken seriously. Problem there is that even doing something as "disposable" as an action or adventure film, actually takes a lot of thought. First Blood and Raiders of the Lost Ark are more than just their aesthetic, they've actually put some thought into analysing their genre (e.g. Rambo's genuinely heartrending breakdown or the first Nazi uniform not fitting Indy).
Like, let's look at one of the most successful adaptations across two mediums in the past century -- Goldfinger. From a 1959 novel to a 1964 film, I think why it worked so well was that not only was it able to forge its own identity (and kickstart Bondmania), it also sought to enrich the original story by repairing some of the more problematic sections of the plot. Who are you working for Mr Bond? "There is nothing you can talk to me about that I don't already know." The gold bullion robbery? "Who mentioned anything about removing it?" Mending and tapping into the little gaps in story logic and ending up with a really decent adaptation as a result.
I don't think video game adaptations have really done that yet. Ratchet & Clank was fairly decent, but it didn't really exploit that undercurrent, the soul of those games, in film language. There are still gaps left in that translation across mediums, like watching a trailer or a recap. If we were going to get a Majora's Mask adaptation, for example, it would be a great opportunity to explore how Link changes in his journey through Termina and what exactly drove Skull Kid to the mask in the first place.
It might be that, for video games, adapters aren't aware that the setting itself is also a character. The most successful online adaptations I've seen like Fallout: Nuka Break and Terrible Fate have replicated the ethos of their respective games by using its mise en scène (stage setting) to tell the story as well. The landscape is speaking to the viewer when its characters aren't.
|
|
|
Post by omega on Jun 4, 2018 23:17:22 GMT
So, would a TV mini series be a better medium for adapting a video game storyline? More time for the story and character development, as well as developing the setting itself as a character?
|
|
|
Post by Digi on Jun 5, 2018 0:36:04 GMT
From where I'm sitting, it's all about plot and characters. The video games that people most love and want to see made into movies tend to be ones where we love the plot and we love the characters. But when a movie based on a video game actually makes it to the screen, we get movies where...the plots are largely discarded because it's nigh-impossible to distill a 20-40 hr plot down to 90 minutes, and the characters we like are either completely rewritten or reduced to dumb caricatures.
I do think TV (whether series or miniseries) would be a much better medium to tell those stories. Of course, the writers of that adaptation could very well screw it up too, but at least then it would be because the writers suck or make bad choices, rather than that they were given the impossible task of condensing to 90 minutes.
|
|
|
Post by omega on Jun 5, 2018 1:16:13 GMT
From where I'm sitting, it's all about plot and characters. The video games that people most love and want to see made into movies tend to be ones where we love the plot and we love the characters. But when a movie based on a video game actually makes it to the screen, we get movies where...the plots are largely discarded because it's nigh-impossible to distill a 20-40 hr plot down to 90 minutes, and the characters we like are either completely rewritten or reduced to dumb caricatures. I do think TV (whether series or miniseries) would be a much better medium to tell those stories. Of course, the writers of that adaptation could very well screw it up too, but at least then it would be because the writers suck or make bad choices, rather than that they were given the impossible task of condensing to 90 minutes. For purists, long form serial is a better form than feature film instalments for adapting novel storylines. One of the main reasons people didn't like the film of Ready Player One was because the plot was altered (personally I thought a more faithful adaptation would have had very poor pacing, one of the problems I saw in the novel). A TV series or mini-series can highlight areas, characters, missions, NPCs etc while cutting out more tedious things like level grinding, backtracking, fetch quests, escort missions, item collecting etc. The Pokémon anime does this to a certain extent, although results can be variable.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2018 5:34:32 GMT
From where I'm sitting, it's all about plot and characters. The video games that people most love and want to see made into movies tend to be ones where we love the plot and we love the characters. But when a movie based on a video game actually makes it to the screen, we get movies where...the plots are largely discarded because it's nigh-impossible to distill a 20-40 hr plot down to 90 minutes, and the characters we like are either completely rewritten or reduced to dumb caricatures. I do think TV (whether series or miniseries) would be a much better medium to tell those stories. Of course, the writers of that adaptation could very well screw it up too, but at least then it would be because the writers suck or make bad choices, rather than that they were given the impossible task of condensing to 90 minutes. For purists, long form serial is a better form than feature film instalments for adapting novel storylines. One of the main reasons people didn't like the film of Ready Player One was because the plot was altered (personally I thought a more faithful adaptation would have had very poor pacing, one of the problems I saw in the novel). A TV series or mini-series can highlight areas, characters, missions, NPCs etc while cutting out more tedious things like level grinding, backtracking, fetch quests, escort missions, item collecting etc. The Pokémon anime does this to a certain extent, although results can be variable. Video games with very distinct acts or chapters like BioWare's titles could theoretically get away with the shift more as well. Like, let's say that someone wanted to do an adaptation of Knights of the Old Republic as a miniseries. Each episode being an hour long and covering one location visited in the game. Taris, Dantooine, Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, the Leviathan, Korriban, the Unknown World and the Star Forge. Nine episodes in total. Now, in theory, there'd be a desire to stretch out the production block, so the Star Forge might end up being two, taking it to ten. There's a lot that can be accomplished in an hour, but you'd have to also juggle not only the main quest, but potentially companion quests (digging through HK-47's brain) and maybe some more generic side-quests as well. The question there would be, well, do you do it in self-contained blocks (we go through HK in one bout on Tatooine, etc.) or do these threads blend together over multiple episodes. The latter seems more promising, if a bit more difficult to handle, but there's no one way to really approach it. The same thing kind of turns up in Doctor Who actually. I get the impression with Terry Nation and Malcolm Hulke's stories that they were structured like tentpoles. Anything can happen within the episode, provided that by the cliffhanger we have reached 'X' point in the plot. As opposed to Terrance Dicks or Chris Boucher where it feels like the episode's cliffhanger has been put there because that's the pace of the story ( Robots of Death's televised vs. scripted endings, for example). Both of these approaches can work really well for different reasons, but for a video game adaptation where it's a question of cramming all this preexisting content in... I think a lot of these sidequests and spare threads would probably be taken up by someone other than the PC character to keep things moving. So, in this case, you'd probably end up with B-plots and C-plots being carried by your party members and NPCs. Tentpoles being used for plot (everything on Manaan done in "Manaan") with a rollover for characters (maybe some sidequest NPCs tag along in that episode to make the main quest more interesting), at least in theory.
|
|