A technical SNAFU led to last week’s We Can Fix It being postponed, but it’s okay because we’ve got something even better than Batman Forever to cover now. (We’ll get to that though.) Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson recently gave an interview to MCV about his adaptations of that popular video game franchise, and presented the reasoning for his creative decisions in adapting them to film. While the Resident Evil movies have been of mixed quality at best, there’s no denying that they’re the face of successful video game adaptations in Hollywood. They make money, they’re reasonably popular, and they’re arguably the best video game adaptations we’ve had to date (although personally we’d be on the other side of that debate). But are they good enough?
Hell no. That’s why this week We Can Fix It takes a look at how to do a video game movie right. The history of video game-to-movie adaptations is filled with such disappointing releases as The Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter: The Movie, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and Bloodrayne, to name but a few. Even the better adaptations, like Silent Hill or Prince of Persia, rarely rise very far above mediocrity. How can we fix that?
Let’s take a moment to examine why this matters, or if it even should. Video games are an art form. That’s been the subject of some debate lately, but for the sake of this article we’re committing to our own take on the subject, that video games are art. If you disagree, then we agree to disagree with you. Now, if video games are an art form then they don’t need to be validated with an adaptation to another, different (if somewhat related) medium, like film. Which is true. The spate of awful video game movies has brought a lot of negative attention from non-gamers. When your only knowledge of video games comes from such awful movies as House of the Dead or Tomb Raider you’re bound to have a low opinion of the art form. This is why many of the A-list video games and video game franchises are now avoiding Hollywood altogether. You may have noticed that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has never been seriously discussed as a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s why. A bad movie negatively affects the perception of video games, the video game industry and even a hit franchise.
And of course this is why making a great video game movie is worth the trouble. Gamers know that video games can be art, and often cite such exceptional games as Shadow of the Colossus, Braid or Silent Hill 2 as examples. Video game movies have caused serious harm to the medium’s cause in the public eye, which is why it’s (at least partly) the responsibility of video game movies to pay up. As a parallel, look at the negative impact Super Friends or the Adam West Batman series had on the public perception of comic books. To this day, mainstream articles about comics still rip on Aquaman or reference those silly “BAM!” title cards, because during the period when comics were ghettoized those series were The Average Joe’s primary experience with comic book characters. No matter how many Alan Moores or Robert Crumbs the comic book medium produced, it was a movie – Tim Burton’s Batman initially, and later Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins – that significantly helped legitimize the medium in the public eye, as wrong as that is on principle.
So this week on We Can Fix It we’ll take a look at how to make that video game movie. The one that can make up for all the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Withins and the Wing Commanders. It’s possible, but it’s not easy, but who cares? It’s worth it, and in addition to bringing positive attention to video games as a medium it will also open up a new world to movie producers, who will learn how to do it right and finally make some real video game blockbusters in the process.
NEXT: How to adapt a video game properly in four easy steps...
