From the beginning, filmmakers have been looking to existing sources for story ideas. It started with adaptations of books and plays. Later it would branch out to television, and in the last decade comic books. There is one source, however, that Hollywood can’t seem to make work: video games. There has been no shortage of video game movies, dating back to 1993 and the release of “Super Mario Brothers.” While there have been some minor box office successes, none can be considered good films; so what’s the problem?
The first problem was that in the 1990s, when the first video game movies started coming out, there was very little story to go on. Earlier video games didn’t have stories so much as basic set ups that existed as excuses for the action of the game. Take Super Mario Brothers, for example. A princess is kidnapped by a monster and a plumber rescues her — that’s pretty much it.
So when it came to the movie, the makers had plenty of room to input their own story ideas, which is what they did. Husband and wife directing team Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel decided they wanted to incorporate darker ideas into the film. Rather than being the light kid’s film that audiences, and most of the cast and crew, had been expecting, it was a convoluted mess full of dreary cyber-punk imagery.
The next few films after that, such as “Mortal Kombat” and “Street Fighter,” saw the filmmakers try much harder to keep things in line with the video games. While this kept the movies from losing the feel of the games, it didn’t solve the basic problem of not having much of a story. Both of those films are based off tournament fighters and the films didn’t have plots as much as filler scenes between the fights. So story was a big problem for the earlier video game movies, but what about now, when games have more elaborate stories and characters to draw from? Well now there are different problems.
The big problem for more recent video game movies seems to largely stem from the fact that the studios making them don’t think highly of them. As a result they are largely given to hack directors rather than filmmakers who could actually do something special with the material. At this point there are strong stories in video games but the damage of the 1990s lingers and nobody is taking these seriously.
The continuous output of notorious director Uwe Boll, who has made a career of truly atrocious video game adaptations, hasn’t helped take the curse off the genre. Another issue is that studios seem to be going for name recognition over story potential. That’s how story-less games like Space Invaders have been optioned for movies but densely plotted games like Metal Gear Solid have not.
There is some hope for the future. Sony has been hard at work with an adaptation of “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune,” a game highly praised for being cinematic. Sony is taking this very seriously, first by hiring Oscar-nominated director David O. Russell. Russell is no longer working on the film, the reason being the story he created veered too greatly from the treasure-hunting adventure of the games. So Sony is showing it cares enough to bring in talent behind the camera but is also mindful enough of the source material to be sure it’s being honored. “Uncharted” probably won’t see release until 2013, but it looks like the best new hope for video game adaptations being more than just lame cash-ins.
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