Film Adaptation - Video Game Adaptation

Video Game Adaptation

Video games have also been adapted into films, beginning in the early 1980s, although films closely related to the computer and video game industries had been done previously, such as Tron and The Wizard, but only after the release of several films based on well-known brands has this genre become recognized in its own right.

Films based on video games tend to carry a reputation of being lower budgeted B movies and rarely receive the appreciation of either film critics or fans of the games on which they are based. However, a number of films have become successful with general audiences (such as Mortal Kombat, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Prince of Persia).

However, some such as Super Mario Bros. were not as well received. The aforementioned adaptation was often criticized for being too dark in comparison to the popular video game series. Many anime Original Video Animations (OVAs) based on popular games have been released such as Dead Space: Downfall, Halo Legends, Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic and numerous films based on the video game series Pokémon.

The main cause of failure among video game adaptations is often cited as the genre's tendency for its films to drastically differ from source material. Doom traded in religious elements of the video games for scientific plot elements and openly parodied the game's first person shooter gameplay, and the setting of Super Mario Bros. was radically changed from a light, cartoonish adventure to that of a camp parodied dark, dystopian thriller similar to the world of Blade Runner/Total Recall. Among the most well-known video-game filmmakers is Uwe Boll, a German writer, director, and producer who has become notorious among video-game fans and critics alike for making video games adaptations such as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Postal and Far Cry, all of which were almost universally panned by audiences for their deviation from the source material and simply bad quality. Boll is often compared to cult filmmaker Ed Wood, who created such films as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.

In other cases, structural conversion from video game to film format can be challenging for directors. As Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto said in a 2007 interview:

"I think that part of the problem with translating games to movies is that the structure of what makes a good game is very different from the structure of what makes a good movie. Movies are a much more passive medium, where the movie itself is telling a story and you, as the viewer, are relaxing and taking that in passively. Whereas video games are a much more active medium where you are playing along with the story. In some cases, you are progressing the story yourself, or perhaps you get to a point where it gets too difficult and maybe you give up. I think that people who like movies also have an interest in the creative work that goes into making a video game. So there is interactivity with the video game that you don’t necessarily have with a movie. In that sense, I think the structures of the two are very different and you have to take that into account when converting a video game into a movie. I think that video games, as a whole, have a very simple flow in terms of what’s going on in the game. We make that flow entertaining by implementing many different elements to the video game to keep the player entertained. Movies have much more complex stories, or flow, to them, but the elements that affect that flow are limited in number. So I think that because these surrounding elements in these two different mediums vary so greatly, when you fail to take that into account then you run into problems."