Which movie would you remake, and how? SPOILERS abound!!

[YogSothoth]

@Justin_Bailey

References to the ghost ship (and Shang Tsung’s island) were in the game series.

It’s been so long I forgot! Well played, you game-inspired namesake.

@Raguleader

Biting my thumb to the idea of video game movies being EXACTLY like the video games. You’ll notice that many of the best video games had entirely absent plots. What’s the plot of Mario Brothers? No really, what’s the plot? I’ll wait.

What pains me, is when you have things where the original really did have a solid plot, and they even followed it 80% of the way (like Wing Commander) but then arbitrarily changed details that didn’t seem to need changing, like redesigning all the ships everybody used (like Wing Commander). Let’s not talk about the whole Pilgrim thing. I didn’t mind the plotline, but a lot of people evidently did because it didn’t actually have any relation to anything in the games (although it COULD maybe explain why they used Blair’s DNA to help create the Black Lance supersoldiers…)

Also, there was a fireball in the Street Fighter movie, but it happened at close range, and you had to be paying attention to see it because you didn’t see it directly. Ken (IIRC, it coulda been Ryu) used it against Vega (I think) as a finishing move at the end of a fight. Mostly he does the pose, you see Vega flying, and briefly you see the fireball’s light reflected on the good guy’s shirt.

If I had my way I wouldn’t have made Mario Bros. into a movie at all. Some games just don’t lend themselves to film, or any other medium. But the few who do get bastarized and, like you said, arbitrarily changed.

Just watched Resident Evil: Afterlife last night. As much as I like Milla Jovovich, would the series of movies have been worst off had it followed closer to the plot? In the first movie, you have Alice stumbling through a mansion that turned out to be an underground Umbrella facility where bioweapons are made. The movie would have worked just as well with Milla in the title role as Claire, and with more mansion and less futuristic lab. The first half of the film could play out more like a traditional horror film as they discover the mansion isn’t what it is, instead of moving immediately from mansion to lab. And what the hell really was the point of that talking computer? Completely unnecessary when it comes to zombie films.

This list of travesties forced upon gamers shows just how deep the distain for games that Hollywood has. No wonder, they keep screwing it up. I’m embarassed to say that I’ve sat through a lot of the live action films released in the US, all of which had arbitrary changes. Tomb Raider could have been a more campy version of Indiana Jones with a female lead. Doom made up some shitty storyline about an extra chromosome and aliens instead of Hell. Dean or Alive failed in the casting when Devon Aoki tried to fit into the G-cup bra of Kasumi. Postal, something that should have been mindless, violent, and sickening tried to do some humor shit with Osama Bin Laden. And I will never even understand why, after all these days, they decided to make a Street Fight movie featuring Chun-Li starring people who couldn’t fight.

[Justin_Bailey]

@YogSosoth

And what the hell really was the point of that talking computer? Completely unnecessary when it comes to zombie films.

That was the director’s attempt to fit the Resident Evil puzzles into the movie world. You can’t very well have a movie where chess pieces fit in locks and weirdo paintings give out diamonds that, when attached to a statue, open a trap door in some other room.

What you can have is a killer AI who likes to play games with the humans in her facility (e.g. the laser room).

[GrandWino]

Just saw this one again this afternoon so why not…

Mr. Holland’s Opus.

I really love the original, but even when I saw it in the theaters back in '95 I had a real problem with the titular opus that the orchestra made up of all his former students plays in the film’s finale. Holland spent his entire life writing “The American Symphony” and… it just wasn’t very good. Way too much synthesizer. Final scene here, symphony starts at about the 7-minute mark but the whole scene is worth re-watching if you haven’t seen it in awhile.

Oh damn, I just realized after 15 years that the “opus” in the title is not the music at all, but really all of the lives that he touched through his teaching over the years. I suppose that was the actual “masterpiece” of his life. Still though, his symphony was kind of crap.

How about a parody called “Mr. Dallas’ Opus” starring Bill the Cat as himself and Donald Glover as Opus.

[TBG]

@YogSosoth

There are a lot of horror and action films over the last few years that came out with the silly PG-13 rating in order to maximize viewers. I’d remake them all into R. Off the top of my head, I know there were Japanese horror films, a Die Hard movie or two, a Predator or AvP movie that suffered from wanting to get those snot-nosed punks into the theater.

Most of those had unrated DVD versions, though, so unless you really want to see them in a theater in that version, there’s no point remaking them as R.

@Raguleader

What’s the plot of Mario Brothers? No really, what’s the plot? I’ll wait.

Something’s gumming up the plumbing,
Poor Luigi’s in a bind.
Giant turtles out to get him,
Creepy crabs are right behind.
Fighter flies, jeepers yikes,
They’re all coming out the pipes!
MARIO! WHERE ARE YOU???