How to make a successful game to movie adaptation (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, March 18, 2018, 10:11 (2435 days ago)

There have been some successful video game movies financially, but I can't think of any that are critically successful. The highest rated one on rotten tomatoes is Resident Evil Vendetta, with a 50%, just beating out Tomb Raider (2018).

So why? There have been successful adaptations of nearly every other medium - broadway, novels, comic books. Why has nobody gotten it right with games?

Here's what I think an adaptation needs to be successful:

1. It has to have a good story
2. It has to gain something in the transition

Let's start with 1. This seems really obvious, but the fact is that stories function very differently for a game than a film. For a game, the story is meant to enhance the interaction - to give reason to what you are doing and make the actions more fun. The key is that the story serves the interactivity and not the other way around. Most stories are such that they facilitate some kind of physical conflict since is games are good at simulating those types of physical things. Shooting, running, jumping - easy. Emotional conflict? Hard. Some games have more sophisticated stories, but then we hit 2.

It's pretty easy to see the benefit to adapting a broadway musical. You can use the camera to emphasize actions and emotions, you can set the story in real locations, and you can use editing to pace the story and emotional beats. You lose a little bit, but what you gain is what the stage can't provide. A novel? Obviously everything can come to life with picture and sound. I've written before about the strengths of audio visual vs text. Comic books are the same, the images can come to life and you aren't limited to little text bubbles of speech.

We are at the point though where the visual fidelity of games is such that everything has already 'come to life' in an audiovisual way. This particular aspect is not an improvement necessarily, it's just a translation. You already have characters on screen interacting, with convincing voice acting and the use of film techniques with virtual cameras and editing. For a lot of things you basically already have a movie, but one which is tailored to a story subservient to the interactivity.

In my opinion, there's no reason and nothing to be gained by adapting most modern AAA games. Uncharted doesn't need to be a movie. What could a movie really do better?

In my opinion, the best games to adapt would be:

1. Games that lack the visual fidelity of film language.
2. Games with good stories based on more than just physical conflict (although that can be an element).
3. Games that don't really have business being games in the first place.

The more of those you hit the better! I think the adventure genre is actually rife with great games to adapt to the screen. Most focus on story and characters, don't use film techniques to present the story, and for many the puzzles just get in the way of the story (but make the game fun to play). I've been working on getting one such adventure game turned into a movie for a while now. If that happens, I think it could easily be the best game adaptation ever. Because the source is very well suited for an adaptation, and there is a lot to gain!

Something like Angry Birds was not actually a bad choice, since you can take the characters and general premise (Birds vs Pigs), and craft a cool animated movie with a story around that. I didn't see it, but I guess it wasn't pulled off well.