Aw man, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.
Smash TV.
That would make a freakin great movie.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie based on the Mech Warrior games, or maybe the Diablo series of games. THAT might be kind of cool. Probably not, but it could be.
How about a movie based on Fear or Half Life. Could be freaky.
-XT
Of course, you would think that was a great idea. :rolleyes:
That is the most fantastic trailer ever.
There was a game for the Apple ][ called, IIRC, “Bloody Murder”. It was similar to Pong in that you had two players, each with a paddle on one side of the screen. The ball, however, had been replaced with a human. You had to bat the human back and forth between the paddles. If you failed, she (I think it was a she), would fall to her death on the bed of spikes at the bottom of the screen. The spikes might have been crosses, come to think of it. My buddy had the height of technology, a color monitor, so you could see her bright-red blood spilling out over the sharpened white crosses.
If Saw and Hostel can gross millions, surely “Bloody Murder” is an untapped gold mine.
Pengo! It’s been so long since I’ve seen that game. And the penguin was so cute. Don’t you think a movie with penguins . . . what do you mean, it’s been done?
I’m still hanging out for Tetris: The Movie.
There are a lot of great games that should be made into movies that never will be, or if they are, they’ll do a terrible job of it (see Silent Hill, or better yet, don’t).
There are many games that just shouldn’t be movies that will be.
This kind of works because all they need is guys jousting on birds in a stark land. Other than that they can do whatever the hell they want. Still think it’s a lame idea, but hey, it’s far from the worst they could do. If it comes out anything like a live-action Heavy Metal (which is what the description kind of makes me think of) then it could be pretty good.
As for Warcraft; they’ve already announced it. It’s gonna be live action, it’s going to be set in the timeline around the point of the beginning of WoW (the Third War is over, Admiral Proudmoore’s ruined the peace between the Alliance and the Horde, and the Horde’s getting into territory disputes with the Night Elves). It’s going to be relatively small-scale focus, and primarily told from the Alliance side of things.
All of which is a colossal mistake IMHO. It should be grandiose, it should be a war movie, not another fantasy adventure. It should portray both sides of the story as sympathetic, in the grand tradition of the best war movies. Also, I’d seriously consider either going all the way back and making a movie of the First War (borrowing heavily from the books The Last Guardian and possibly The Rise of the Horde), or at least the Second War (where things really got interesting). Then, if it does well, you can go in any number of directions in the timeline, and the general public has a solid basis for the context.
Lastly, I really, really think it should be pure CGI, so they can keep the characteristic Warcraft art-style intact. Maybe it’s just me but that’s always been a defining characteristic of the franchise (along with the little bits of humor), and losing that for the sake of realism is a terrible idea. According to the behind-the-scenes DVD segments in the WoW collectors edition, when they were developing WoW they tried for realism at first, but changed directions and went with the look we all know and love because it didn’t feel right to the devs. They need to learn that lesson all over again, apparently. And you absolutely cannot blend that art style with live actors, either. That would look terrible.
PS. The mofo who made the Doom adaptation, a movie based on a game about space marines going to Mars and fighting hellspawn which had neither Mars nor Hellspawn, is making the next Street Fighter movie. WTF?! If you screw up Doom, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to make any other videogame adaptations? Is that a hard concept to grasp?
I wouldn’t even try to make SF as a movie; because I don’t really think the more fantastical storylines of the latter games would work in live action, and I think you couldn’t really compress enough of the many, many characters stories into a movie and make it work.
At best I’d say you’d want a full-season anime to do it right. Otherwise, just make a movie of the first game; except that’s loosely based on a real-life story of a turn of the century (1900’s) martial arts tournament that very likely also inspired Karate Kid, ie, people would think it was a rip-off.
What, like this blockbuster?*
*work-safe link to a Penny Arcade comic from Jan 23rd, 2003. Pun stolen from the newspost.
:mad: Uwe Boll Must Be Stopped.
Street Fighter: The Movie killed Raul Julia. However, the anime movie Street Fighter was actually really good. Most of the characters wound up being cameos (hi Akuma!), but they managed to integrate most of them into a decent action plot with some kickass fight scenes.
They did do a full anime series, and they still didn’t do it right. It was a ‘re-envisioning’ and you know how well those turn out most of the time.
While I agree wholeheartedly about Mr. Boll, he was not the man I was referring to (was he even involved with Doom?). I can’t remember his name atm, but I’m talking about a script-writer/producer type guy.
Yes, I was choosing to pretend that series didn’t exist. I do agree the SF anime movie was good. IMHO, you’d get the studio that animated that movie, and leave the writing to the guys who made the Udon Comics Street Fighter series. They’ve done a really great job with the license, and Capcom’s pretty much cannonized everything they’ve put out, AFAIK.
Hmmm…the adventures of a subterranean clown, 'eh? It’s been done*.
That was just…evil.
I just realized the funny I made there. 
Whoops. You’d think I’d learn to doublecheck one of these days. I’d thought Boll did Doom. Well, we’ll just have to string up those guys, too.
The Minesweeper movie seemed like a better film, until my co-worker delivered Joust’s tagline:
Ouch, Nanoda. That tag line calls for a quick check against The Filmmaker’s Exam – all numbers refer to questions on that list:
8 (probably)
9 (possibly)
11 (likely)
18 (wouldn’t surprise me)
28 (wouldn’t surprise me)
36 (HOO YEAH)
41 (probably)
44, 45, 46 - at least one of these
56 (ostriches, close enough)
57
67
74
As suggested in another thread, this movie probably should be watched as a rental and with a blood alcohol content of at least .25%.
Some of the Sierra games from the 80’s might be kind of cool. I’d go see King’s Quest IV, or Space Quest III.
Eh, it’s very funny, but I disagree with quite a few items on the list (and in many cases can think of specific films that disprove their point). A lot of it is just film snobbery, and not recognizing the difference between pure entertainment movies, and bad movies.
Not every movie needs to be art; ID4 is a dumb, schlocky action movie, but it’s probably one of the best summer blockbuster “hey let’s make some quick cash” type movies ever made. Armageddon wished it could be ID4. Better yet, they say having aliens whose sole purpose is to eat humans is an automatic disqualifier: John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien, Aliens… Anyone want to add to that?
I like the idea of the list, but I think it could work better if they trimmed some of the items out because their so glaringly wrong.
If you want to see my ideal game-to-movie wish-list, here goes:
Half-Life, done right. Then maybe branch into HL2. You’d need writers, directors, and actors who can pull of dry, almost british humor, psychological horror, and surreal twilight-zone esque elements. Tall order, I know. But I’ve seen few game properties out there that scream movie adaptation the way this did. No freakin’ one liners. Gordon’s got to be clever, with a kind of subdued desperation, not John McClain wanna-be #3001.
Legend of Zelda. new story. Old school, brown-haired, green tunic over brown peasant-clothes wearing Link. None of this pretty-boy in spotless white tights stuff. Just make up a generation somewhere in the timeline. Have Ganon in his bad-ass, Ocarina of Time era leathers human form until the very end (then have the goat-horned blue pig-demon appear). Keep it family-friendly, but go for a slightly darker, more mature tone. Straight-up fantasy adventure (please no comedic sidekick). Would be freakin’ awesome.
Warcraft 3 and maybe the expansion, as a series of movies, all in full CGI. It’ll never happen, but Arthas’ fall to darkness is one of, if not the best fallen hero stories I’ve ever seen. The grand victory against the Burning Legion paralleled to this former scion of good’s ascension as a supremely deadly threat makes a great narrative.
Metroid done right. Again, it won’t happen. But basically something akin to Alien with super bad-ass fight scenes, and almost no character interaction at all. Make roughly two-thirds of the movie pure psychological tension as she finds her way through Zebes and figures out ways around environmental hazards and Pirate security. Have some awesome back-and-forth between her and Ridley at the beginning and end. Make Mother Brain and Ridley’s balance of control over the Pirates a key point (MB is the long-term planner, Ridley’s the field commander, both answer to a mysterious council; the High Command). I don’t even know if it could be done, but if someone pulled it off, it’d shut up people like Ebert who say videogames can’t be art: I certainly don’t know of a movie so devoid of interaction and with such a feeling of isolation as the Metroid series has.
Final Fight. But not some Fight Club or The Warriors wanna-be either. Just a fun beat-em-up action movie from start to finish that plays fast and loose with the story to make it a little less cartoonish and slightly more plausible. I actually wrote out an outline for a trilogy based on the series once, but again, I think there’s way too many potential pitfalls for it to ever be done correctly.
I have a number of RPG’s I’d love to see made into series (especially Chrono Trigger since it’s already broken up into episodic mini-arcs), but I’ll save that for another conversation.
Heh. Had to think about that one for a second.
If I enter the special code when I buy my ticket, do I get to watch a good movie instead?