When Worlds Collide...

As a gamer and cinema worker its getting pretty regular that my hobby and working life collide, I'm always filled with a sense of dread when I hear "totally-awesome game heading to the big screen".

The recent announcement that the fantastic "Devil May Cry" is getting a movie make over has hit me with a mixture of, oh for the love of... and could be actually be alright. The movie rights have been sold to Screen Gems, who admittedly have done a decent job with the Resident Evil films. I thought the first film was brilliant, the following 3 films, Apocalypse, Extinction and Afterlife (in 3D!!) were ok, not god awful but not brilliant.

Thinking about it, movies based on video games have generally fallen into two categories, Passable and Oh God Why?


My personal examples of Oh God Why?:

DOA: Dead or Alive
Based on the Dead Or Alive series, the main selling point to the games being "realistic boob jiggle" dependant on how old you said you were the more the female characters chests bounced. I think there were a surprising amount of 99 year olds playing the games.
The cast included Australian pop star Holly Valance, professional wrestler Kevin Nash, and bizarrely Eric Roberts (yeah Julia Roberts brother) as fighters... hardened fighters... well except Roberts character. He was an evil git, who stole the fighters moves with nano robots and used them himself to show off, even the game had a more believable story... just.

House Of The Dead
The story of the arcade game was simple.
Here is a gun, the zombies, mutants and freaks are in that direction, see you at the end. Ok, there was also something about a special division "AMS", can't actually remember what that stood for ever being explained, searching for a misunderstood Dr who just wanted to save his son and ended up releasing all sorts of hell.

The film had a brief mention of AMS, 20 seconds towards the end. The rest of the film was about American teenagers going to a party on an island, coincidentally on the same island a madman has been trying to perfect the secret of immortality. Though all he had perfected, was how to create a lot of zombies.

This wasn't even a film that was so bad it was good, this was a film that was so bad I almost lost the will to live. To make it worse the director was Uwe Boll, if you know games you will shudder at his very mention, the German born director did not stop at one video game movie, to date he has 7 under his belt, and has no-sign-of-stopping.

The Passable attempts included..

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider/ Cradle of Life
The game had you playing as Lara Croft, British explorer extraordinaire. Hunting relics, solving puzzles and shooting dinosaurs. Personally I only played the second one a few times and that was to try and kill her in as many ways as possible (diving head first into the floor in the mansion was always a favourite).

The films were traditional adventure movies, in the style of Indiana Jones, except with Rimmer from Red Dwarf as the butler, and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. To be truthful I don't remember too much else about the story. I've a vivid memory of her walking out of the shower... and that's it! I must of enjoyed the films though, as I cant remember anything particularly bad about them.


Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat is up there with Street Fighter in terms of popularity, while both have spawned animated tv shows and movies, Mortal Kombat is better. Mainly because it didn't star Kylie Minogue or Jean Claude Van Damme, it didn't rely on big names. Ok the first MK movie had Christopher "there can be only one" Lambert as Raiden, the thunder god and protector of earth realm. He didn't do anything more than teleport about and fire a lightening bolt at someone. The action was fun to watch and the dialogue genuinely cheesy but funny at times. The sequel "Annihilation" was nowhere as near as good in quality though, and did try to force too many characters into the story.

writing these out has made me think, there has only been one absolutely decent movie adaption of a video game..

Silent Hill
The Silent Hill series was genuinely creepy, yeah its lost its way a bit recently, but the originals on the Playstation 1 freaked the crap out of me. Christophe Gans directed the movie and did such a brilliant job, everything that made the games successful made it into the movie. It was also the first film I've seen in a long.. long time where Sean Bean did not die at the end. I could try to explain the story, in all honesty its too confusing to do without giving away spoilers.

I hold out a small hope, a tiny glimmer that one day there will actually be a universally approved video game adaptation, could it be Devil May Cry?
Or maybe David O. Russell can do it with the Uncharted movie... Though Nathan Fillion would of been the better choice for Drake...
Just saying...