I watched both Resident Evil and Tomb Raider and IMHO they’re only redeeming qualities are Milla Jovovich and That Chick From Hackers. Here’s some games I would really like to see made into a movie.
American McGees Alice. What can I say? The game rocks. Stunning visuals, a true Mind F***. If they can translate the obsenely sureal visuals to screen it can’t lose. For those of you that have never heard of the game, its about alice when shes an adult, and both her and Wonderland is twisted. Its pretty much a grown up version of the Alice children’s story.
Fallout. Once again, stunning visuals, very surreal at some times, very unique plot elements/characters/etc, a very detailed and involving plot. For those of you that never heard of it, in 1999 there was a Nuclear War that devastated the world. Most of humanity retreated to huge underground nuclear shelters called Vaults. The game starts 40 years after the apocalypse, the vaults water chip (used in the computer that controls the water purifier) is broken and the main character is chosen to leave the vault and find a new one.
Unreal. Same as above. For those of you…A prison transport ship crashes on a planet which is a space version of the sargasso sea. The only servivor is one of the convicts. As he tries to find a way off the planet he comes across many strange aliens, also marooned there, and the native aliens.
HalfLife. Same as above. An experiment goes awry and opens a portal to another incredibly weird dimension. One of the researchers seeks to fix things as the Military tries to wipe out any witnesses.
Homeworld (or Homeworld: Cataclysm). An industrial age civilisation discovers a starship buried in the middle of the desert, and discover that they are aliens on the world they call home. They reverse engineer the starship and build a starship of their own. When they test its Hyperspace engine and return to their world they find that another space faring civ has destroyed the entire population of the planet, and only those onboard the starship remain. It turns out that milenia before they were in a galactic war with the other civ and lost, and signed a treaty saying that they would never use Hyperspace tech again. They leave on the slow journey to the other end of the galaxy to reclaim their homeworld and get revenge.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Half-Life would make an awesome action flick. Frantic firefights, wierd aliens, government coverups, what more could you ask for? The game itself had a great deal of dramatic flair.
Fallout would require the right touch. A part of what I love about the Fallout series is it’s wickedly dark sense of humor, combined with it’s ability to genuinely creep you out on occasion. Great story, memorable characters. With the right people behind the helm, this could be a great film.
Fallout film would rock my socks off. I think Fallout 1 would translate better to moviedom than Fallout 2.
When talking about adventure games made as films, I’ll always remember this one quote. It was about (planned, at one time) Leisure Suit Larry, and was said by (I think) Niko Nirvi, veteran Finnish game reviewer - “Who wants to see a little guy walk around for three hours and talk shit?” Still, there might be some potential in Grim Fandango movie.
I think the problem with most video game movies is that the video games they choose are light on story. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat… fun games to play, but the story is thin at best. Resident Evil probably has the best built-in story of the three, and it showed in the film, which was actually pretty good until about 30 minutes in… then once they started actually shooting zombies it got boring fast (though watching Milla in action was fun). Unreal would probably not do so well, for much the same reason.
In my opinion, this would be the same problem for most Blizzard games. They’re absolutely great to play, but the stories are weak. They’re very basic plotlines with a simple goal. I doubt that a film based on Warcraft or even Diablo would amount to much.
I agree with BioHazard about Homeworld… the game plays like a movie in which you can control the camera and the ships. It would make an awesome film, mostly because it has a strong, rich plotline with some real surprises. I’d love to see it on the big screen. Homeworld: Cataclysm, not so much… its story was a little mess original, a little more derivative of the Borg-esque uber-villain. Though it still beat out 80% of the games out there in terms of story.
Half-Life would likely do well, too, for the same reason… a good basic story already built in, and something more there than just lots of guns.
Others that I’d like to see:
Clive Barker’s Undying, one of the creepiest games I’ve ever played, and a surprisingly good story, including a little jaunt back in time to pick up an ancient weapon.
One of the Myth games might work. It seemed to me that that Myth II actually had a pretty decent story, though it’s been a while since I played it.
Star Control II, which, as it is, almost plays like a movie already. The Legend of Zelda could probably produce a good adventure film, but they shouldn’t do it this soon after Lord of the Rings.
How about Hunter: The Reckoning? Especially if it’s based more on the role-playing game than on the video game? Especially-especially if it’s written by a fellow doper?
I hope it would be a better movie than game. I’ll tell you, I really hated the gameplay of Alice. The graphics, visuals, and plot are great, but I hated, hated, hated, HATED the gameplay. It was the same ole’ crap we’ve seen and before, only done more poorly, with fewer good puzzles, and little or none of the inventive wit I would’ve expected. The begining blew, the middle part dragged on, and the ending blew. However, I can see a good movie in there somewhere. You just need someone to write it.
