Video Game Movie Adaptations: Why Most Flop and a Few Succeed

The Major Difference

Video games and movies have long been the most popular forms of media yet when combined, they often fall short. I am talking about the video game movie. The movie which almost always fails, not only with the audience but also with critics. But why? Video games are inherently just movies with interactivity. Well, therein lies the key difference. Interactivity.

Lately, there have been a lot of games that put story first and give us great cinematics but primarily, they were made just for the gameplay. No one really expected much in terms of story so they never really had anything that would make a good movie. When trying to adapt such games like Super Mario (the 1993 version), Assassin’s Creed or Doom, the filmmakers must fill in a lot of blanks, going way off source material. This ends up being a movie that displeases the fans of the game while being too derivative and uninteresting for common moviegoers.

The Challenges

Even high budget franchises like Borderlands, Far Cry, Resident Evil all fall at this hurdle. They don’t have enough depth in their characters, in their stories, which is fine… if it is a game. The major challenge is to please two different audiences: the hardcore game fans and the casual moviegoer. So they need to find a middle ground where they remain faithful to the game’s lore while also deviating enough to create something fresh and new.

How do they do that? Well, let’s see the successful movies. The Sonic movies, Detective Pikachu and the Angry Birds movies. These are select few that have managed to shake off the curse of the video game movie. They have not only drawn audiences but also managed to please the two different moviegoers. They respect the original source material while giving it pleasing visuals and offering new lore that fits well with what we know of the characters.

Right Story, Right Medium

It can also be noted that video games are a large medium. The difficulty of adapting a 20 hour story into 2 hours cannot be understated. That’s why TV shows are being used more and more these days for video game adaptations. While The Witcher turned out to be disappointing, Fallout and The Last of Us season 1 showed how the longer runtime could do justice in adapting it’s story for the big screen. Arcane, Cyberpunk, Castlevania, Devil May Cry use animation to further enhance the storytelling and have all succeeded.

In essence, a video game adaptation really isn’t rocket science. It is hard but it can be done. It requires the right medium and the right story with the right execution. Something that we expect from any good movie.

#VideoGameMovies, #GamingAdaptations, #FilmVsGame, #GameNarrative, #CinematicGaming