Well, that might be allayed by the fact I haven’t objected to your presence–simply remain confused about why you’re remaining in a thread about discussing which games have the potential to make good movies. This isn’t a tactic, it’s simple bafflement.
That bafflement is easing now, however–you’re here in order to change what the thread’s about. Note again, no objection to that–thread drift is part of what message boards are about.
But about your objections to game movies–I’m not really seeing a strong case. So far, your points of objection have been:
1: I don’t like them. Subjective personal tastes cannot be disputed, sure enough. Dead end, discussion wise–if you object to simple listing.
2: They’re unnecessary (retracted). Also a dead end.
3: I didn’t find Max Payne funny. I’m guessing–it’s not clear–that this is a single instance of the stance that no video game, as-is, would make a good movie as direct translation. Not so much a dead end, but I don’t think anyone’s arguing the opposite–that they are works in two different mediums makes changes by process of conversion pretty much a given.
4: Potential doesn’t mean anything. This I remain baffled by, because it’s an argument against making anything. I suspect it ties into point 2.
Speaking of “no offense”, I think you overestimate just how interesting all that is.
Also, I admit I could have described my view of Max Payne a bit better. Subtle was a poor choice of words.
What I mean is that there’s nothing about Max Payne to really suggest it’s all a joke.
There are a few pop culture references, several of them rather humorous, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen that in dozens of games, most of which otherwise take themselves quite seriously.
The thing is that parody needs to wink at the audience to include them in the joke, even if that wink is extremely subtle. The film Adaption is a good example of this, many wrote off the ending as being stupid, shoddy filmmaking and too jarringly different from the rest of the film to make much sense. But the ending makes perfect sense and the clues that it’s all a joke are there for the viewer who is paying attention. Max Payne lacks anything even approaching that.
You found the cheesiness of Max Payne hilarious. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I also think you’re seeing something that wasn’t intended to be there.
I meant hilarious in the way that really bad movies are hilarious. You know, laughing at incompetence? Ever watch Mystery Science Theater? Are you telling me you sat through all those incredibly overwrought metaphors without cracking a single smile?
And who’s trying to get you to shut up? I’ve got, like eight posts in this thread directly addressed to you. I’m trying to have a conversation with you, not shut you down.
The Terran and Zerg part were sorta done in the movie StarShip Troopers.
I want to see something that follows Contra from the Nintendo system. Contra. . . the war the universe forgot. You go thru jungles, and bases, and a waterfall, and a spiky hangar, then at the end in the alien base you shoot a huge, innervated brain that is protected by aliens and you save the entire UNIVERSE!! Jason Stratham and Bruce Willis could play the parts of Scorpion and Snake.
And how could I forget Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball. The cast would be most memorable, especially who ever gets to wear the “Venus” bathing suit.
I disagree about the wink. If you admit that it’s a joke, it ruins the joke. To me, the best parodies are the ones that never admit to being parodies. Like Chuck Barris claiming to be a CIA assassin, or the George W. Bush presidency. The fun of an in-joke is being the insider: the harder it is to spot the joke, the smaller the in-group, the more satisfying it is to be in on the joke.
Although as far as Max Payne goes, I don’t think it was all that hard to spot it. It takes a fair bit of talent to write that badly. Writers who genuinely suck tend to produce prose that’s bland and forgettable. Not like the baroque and labored monstrosities that Max spouted off in every cut scene. Before this thread, I assumed it was general agreed that it was parody: certainly all my friends who’ve played it assumed the cheeze-factor was intentional. But then, my friends are likely to think the way I do, which is why they’re my friends.
Okay then, let me see if I can explain myself better.
Max Payne had great potential as a game. A movie and/or any potential sequels to the game may make better use of that potential, and indeed I hope they do if they ever come into existence.
However, how much potential Max Payne had doesn’t make a single difference to the game Max Payne, because that potential wasn’t utilized. The fact that Max Payne had potential doesn’t make it a better game. In fact, dwelling on the idea that it wasted what potential it had makes it look a bit worse.
Wasted potential means nothing. If you have potential but don’t use it, then the fact that you had potential at all matters not a bit.
Potential matters, but only if you use it. Everything has potential, but potential alone means little. The comment from you I quoted above seems to be suggesting that the mere fact that Max Payne had potential somehow makes it a better game than it was.
Hey, it’s interesting to me. That’s all that matters.
Sorry, I think my experiences on other boards have made me a bit too confrontational for my own good. I’m working on that, really I am!
And yes I sat through all those incredibly overwrought metaphors without cracking a smile because, sadly, that’s what I’m used to from video games.
I love video games. I love everything about them, including the cheesy plots and bad acting that infect all but a handful of titles.
I can appreciate the badness of a bad movie because I’m used to films that are at least competently made.
I fail to see the humor in a game whose plot is intentionally cheesy because I’ve played dozens of games whose plots were unintentionally cheesy.
If cheesiness was the intent behind Max Payne, the designers could have done a far better job of making that intent clear, and they wouldn’t have needed to be obvious about it either.
Also, to quote Sigmund Freud sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes bad writing is just bad writing.
You think Max Payne was a parody of hard-boiled action noir movies, I think it was just another game with a cheesy plot and bad writing.
You could be right and I could be wrong.
It could be that Max Payne is a brilliant parody and I got wooshed.
But then again, I’ve played through the game about a half dozen times and never picked up on any hint that the game was meant to be a parody, and I tend to be pretty good at picking up on things like that.
Perhaps my instincts have failed me?
Oh well, guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree where Max Payne is concerned.
Ah. We talked right past each other re: MP’s potential. That was not what I was suggesting–the potential I was talking about had to do with that pesky thread topic–originally, what games had potential in them to be translated into good flicks–not what games had the unrealized potential to be better games.
Max Payne the game was bang-on, far as I’m concerned. Pixel-kill, bullet time, bang-bang. People pop up, you shoot, they fall down. Good murder simulator (I’ve played enough of them. I’d go on a shooting rampage, but I can’t find where the really good guns spawn, and this level is so huge I haven’t got the gist of it yet). The gameplay was fine.
But I was referencing the potential in the story hooks that a movie version could make use of in the translation of it into the movie medium. Gameplay is an irrelevant factor to what would make a good movie out of things, being that part of the medium which just doesn’t translate. That’s the bit that makes me really dubious of all the folks who pop up and suggest Half-Life–which was all about the presentation of the gameplay.
Wow! Doom and Metroid are in early development? I didn’t know about the second, this has to be a must-see. Does that mean that we may expect it, sooner or later.
Btw, your nick reminds me something… it wasn’t a cheat for the original Metroid?
No, not really. I disagree with Miller that Max Payne’s writing was good parody. I agree with him that awful writing is often hilarious; I disagree that to really produce it takes a strong talent. This last bit I propped up with one of the most justly-famed astonishingly awful-hilarious pieces of writing around. Unlike the better (relatively speaking) writing in Max Payne, the story has almost no potential medium-translation leverage points to get at.
I wasn’t complaining about the Max Payne’s gameplay potential Drastic, because I loved the game in terms of how it played. I was talking about its story potential within the context of the game itself. However, I freely admit that’s a bit silly.
As I’ve said before, gaming has not in the past been much of a storytelling medium. However, I think that has the potential to change. I honestly believe that one day, games will have stories, characterization and dialogue as compelling as the best of movies while remaining fun to play. That it hasn’t happened yet does not discourage me from believing that it will.
Movies are much better as a storytelling medium than games. That fact isn’t even in question. However, for some reason there has yet to be a truly great video game movie.
They either stray too far from the original game concept/story or stick too close to it, revealing in the process just how little was there to begin with in terms of plot and characters.
Though a mediocre movie, I feel that Tomb Raider at least had the right approach. It took the character of Lara Croft and the basic concept of her being a sexy British treasure hunter and used that as the basis on which to build a competently made but otherwise unremarkable action film. Tomb Raider the movie didn’t try to be like Tomb Raider the game, it tried to be like other action movie. In that regard if no other, it succeeded. Resident Evil achieved this as well, albeit to a lesser extent.
That’s what Hollywood needs to do to make video game movies work. Forget the games. Forget trying to cram in every character, or work in concepts from the game that don’t translate well to live action simply because they were in the game, and forget trying to stick in any way to the original game story because games have very little story to begin with. Just make a movie and try to do it well. Take the basic concept, chuck the rest and run with it.
Only a couple of movies so far have even attempted this, and so far only Tomb Raider has even come close to getting it right.
Ah, gotcha. Also, strangely enough considering how this thread has progressed thus far, I agree with you.
Bad writing can be hilarious. That Miller found the bad writing in Max Payne particularly hilarious doesn’t make it intentional parody. Indeed, parodies that attempt to be intentionally bad almost always fail because they make their intent too transparent.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible that Max Payne was intentionally cheesy, just that if that had truly been the intent of the creators, that intent would have been somehow obvious.
Vladimir: “I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. I’ve always wanted to say that.”
The Finito Brothers: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the pain in the butt.”
“Yeah! Pain to da max!”
“There was something disturbingly familiar about the letter before me. The handwriting was all pretty curves.” - Max
“The truth was a burning green crack through my brain.
Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step”. - Max
They breach the fourth wall and this isn’t enough? Maybe they should write COMEDY in neon letters on a giant baseball bat and smash it into your face. Oh, wait, that’s just too subtle.
