1:36 PM
Roy Vicker
It really seems like it should work, doesn't it? You'd think that movies like Harry Potter and Iron Man should make great games, right? There's plenty of room for action, creative game mechanics, even RPG elements... It's almost like the idea is gift wrapped for the developer.
Regardless, time and time again, taking a movie and making it into a video game instead becomes an exercise in futility.
Take Harry Potter, for instance. A quick look at Metacritic tells most of the story. The movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 has received an aggregate score of 87, an impressive showing. The game of the same name? 47. That's not even in the ballpark.
Iron Man was also recognized as a decent movie by most standards. But the video game? It fared even worse than the Harry Potter game, earning an aggregate score of 45.
What's the problem? Why are these entertaining movies that are already littered with action ending up as such horrendous video games?
Unfortunately, the vast majority of games that are based on movies are created with the sole purpose of promoting the movie. They're glorified advertisements. Big-name publishers like Sega and Electronic Arts aren't above attaching their names to them because they're guaranteed money-makers.
Still, would it kill you guys to take one of these titles seriously? Just once?
Well, it did happen at least once. One very rare exception to this rule is - believe it or not - The Chronicles of Riddick. The movie was universally received as lousy, turning up a Metacritic score of 38. But the video game adaptation titled The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay received an excellent aggregate score of 90! It is widely considered a lost gem of a video game that simply not enough people played due to the fact that it was based on a failure of a movie.
But that's an extremely unusual case. And the problem is arguably worsened when the roles are switched.
Has anyone seen the Doom movie? Max Payne? Alone in the Dark?
These are all great games, considered some of the best ever in their respective genres. The movies are the polar opposites.
And it's for the same reason that game adaptations of movies are never good. They're cash-ins. The directors of these movies aren't fans of their associated games, made painfully evident by the fact that the movies have almost nothing in common with the games other than than their titles.
Even a movie like Resident Evil, considered one of the less-painful of game-to-movie adaptations, is hardly an adaptation at all. It's just a film with occasional references to the game peppered throughout.
So excuse me if I'm less than excited to hear stories of movies based on great games like Uncharted and Mass Effect being in development.
As far as movies go, Uncharted has been done before. Nathan Drake is a compelling protagonist and a great video game character, but he is this gaming generation's Indiana Jones. Make it a 2-hour movie and the similarities will be exposed in all the wrong ways.
And a Mass Effect movie? The epic and compelling story of the video game took a good 30 to 40 hours of gameplay to be fully uncovered and fleshed-out. To say that I'm skeptical that a couple hours is all a movie would need to accomplish a similar feat would be a vast understatement.
I hate to sound cynical, but all we should expect here are two more cash-ins of big-time game franchises. If these movies actually see the light of day, do yourself a favor: save your ticket money and put it towards the next game in the series.
But for now, it looks like we're doomed to have our cherished games and movies bastardized by cross-pollination. I think we can expect these medium-swaps to eventually turn out products of actual quality as a result of the growing acceptance of gaming as a respectable form of entertainment. But being honest, we are still quite far from that scenario.
Posted in: movie
When a superhero origin story movie is made it is inevitable that someone will be disappointed. Character introductions, lengthy exposition, and transformation scenes are all keys to getting the uninitiated up to speed, but can be merely a rehash for the target fanboy audience. Admittedly I went into Captain America: The First Avenger as a relative novice to the character’s history and status as one of Marvel Comic’s oldest heroic icons. The Captain has not exactly maintained a commercial presence outside of the realm of comic books like Batman, Spider-Man, or Superman (seriously how many people on the street would know his real name?). As a prelude to next year’s massive The Avengers, Captain America succeeds in introducing many of us to one of that film’s key heroes and does so with retro charm, efficient action sequences, and enough heart to care about the scenes in between all of the explosions. 
