Box Office Thread

Which essentially means that they had card blanche. The only thing they needed was a female heroine who is really good in climbing around stuff and searches for something for some reason in an interesting place. The hard part comes in because those kind of adventure movies are currently not particularly popular, but with a snappy script and some effort put into her character....they had all freedom in the world to make it interesting.

But I guess this is the general problem with video game movies, a lot of them are waaaaay too concerned to put in stuff from the game instead of worrying first and foremost to make the characters likable and the world interesting.

Speaking of other video game related adventure movies, Jumanji 2 has finally reached $400 million at the domestic box office, just shy away of $3 million from Spider-Man.

edited 18th Mar '18 3:08:14 PM by 123tbones

I think the lack of supernatural stuff also hurt Tomb Raider.

There's a general rule that all films made from video games are bad.

Unless it's a movie almost entirely based on video game tropes, like what "Edge of Tomorrow" was, like its Japanese source material, "All You Need Is Kill". That movie was awesome.

It’s amazing how much that film should have been terrible, but was completely awesome.

Black Panther is $18 millions shy of passing the Avengers in domestic box office. So it should happen, considering it made more than $25M in its fifth week.

From what I gathered the Tomb Raider reboot is mediocre more than it is bad. It's solid, it's not stupid, but it's bland.

Nowadays, you need to add something if you want to tell a generic adventure story and you can't rely on people paying just to see the universe where it is set. It can be stunning visuals, subtext, or humor.

At least I think it's a step in the right direction if new VG movies are not aggressively stupid anymore. There are many VG universes remaining in which excellent movies could be set.

edited 18th Mar '18 6:51:53 PM by Julep

I wish that there was a video game film that could be an Establishing Character Moment for game adaptations the way that we've had all of these successful comic book films. A genuinely good film that appeals even to people unfamiliar with the original source material. It just doesn't feel like game flicks are made with the same kind of love.

I think a lot of it has to do with the way the movie industry works. They don't tend to give big budget movies to young, inexperienced filmmakers for obvious reasons, and those young filmmakers are more likely to have grown while being fans of video games.

It is hard to pinpoint an age at which video games went from "geek leisure" to "dominant media". I am 30, and I think it was a few years before me...probably people born in 1982-1983? In any event, there aren't that many filmmakers younger than 35 with the references to get handed the budget of a VG adaptation AND the dedication to deliver something truly unique instead of the calibrated products execs expect.

But if I were to hazard a guess, those filmmakers who grew while VG were a super influential media are going to become more and more numerous with each year. We already have Ryan Coogler in 2018 who is about the right age, now we need to wait for his nerdy equivalent.

...I'd still prefer if the formula was found before they try to do Mass Effect.

There was a great article that once said a major part of the problem is that Hollywood loves making movies of games that don't really translate well to cinema. For instance, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were insanely popular in the 90s, but they sure as hell weren't known for having deep, engrossing plots or rich, well developed characters.

The Tomb Raider reboot was actually a really good choice to adapt, but they still managed to fuck that up somehow.

edited 18th Mar '18 8:06:02 PM by comicwriter

Mortal Kombat actually does have a pretty engrossing plot and deep, rich characters. It's just that in the early years, it was difficult to communicate that plot given the genre.

Honestly, I do think fighting games could more easily be translated to film than some of the other genres specifically because there's so much room for the writers to insert things. It's why the first Mortal Kombat film is considered a cult classic and often cited as an exception to Video Game Movies Suck; the filmmakers had a bare handful of specific plot points they had to hammer out, with a ton of leeway to do their own thing as a result.

The film invented a lot of things wholesale. Raiden being the Protector God of Earth, Liu Kang's brother and personality, Kano being a hilariously entertaining Aussie, Johnny Cage's fight with Goro, the more serpentine Reptile, etc. So many things that made the film enjoyable were invented wholesale for it, because the filmmakers had a ton of creative license to run with.

Street Fighter did not meet similar success and is only fondly remembered as So Bad, It's Good in part because of its ridiculous casting, but also largely because it couldn't even wow its own target audience. With the notable exceptions of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat kept the basic characters intact and just wove the plot through the undefined space between them. Street Fighter...well....

A friend of mine likes to say that Street Fighter's very enjoyable if you watch it from a certain frame of mind, and that frame is that the film's goal is to take a bunch of completely random people who have nothing to do with the game and tell a story that will result in each one of those characters wearing one of the game's iconic outfits. That should just about tell you how faithful it is as an adaptation. Mortal Kombat won over people who'd never played a Mortal Kombat game, while Street Fighter couldn't even please Street Fighter fans.

So there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, but getting back to my original point, there is so much to work with in a fighting game and yet so little in the way of absolutely obligatory scene inclusions that will make the fandom riot if you don't get them exactly right, that it's ultimately a great material to work with.

It still has the caveat of requiring repeated instances of people punching each other in the face one on one. Nowadays the movie standards are more "hero mows down hundreds of enemies until he encounters a boss, repeat 3-4 times until he reaches the final boss".

A movie with a huge casting like a fighting game indeed leaves room to create a story, but writing an engaging story that requires fighting duels is not exactly easy, especially if you are looking for something that tries to be grounded and, if not realistic, at least logical and consistent with its inner workings.

I personally think that the best VG for movies are those with interesting universes. But an adaptation needs to be written by someone who understands the appeal of that universe - which is often quite different from what makes it popular.

There's also the pacing/duration issue that hasn't quite been solved yet. Many VG would be better of as miniseries than they would be as movies. Mass Effect 1 told in a single movie would be a total disaster. With three episodes though, you could have three successive stories with beginning, growing stakes, climax, ending (unlike several Netflix ones...) that would tell the entire story and give time to develop the universe and the characters - not because it is important for fanservice, but because it serves the story to know what's going on and why everyone's here.

The biggest issue is that video games and movies are different mediums. Video games tend to be light on story and heavier on padding, because the padding is what constitutes the gameplay. Especially in RPG's much of the "story" is pestering npc's for more backstory, with the order of events depending on how the player navigates the story. In more linear games the story is mostly an Excuse Plot to hang the various action scenes, and even those games praised for their story is generally because it has more complexity at certain intervals (usually regarding character arcs), not because the narrative is well structured.

This is all also not taking into account player choices, which means the fans of the work will scrutinize the story based on their particular experience, when there was 10 different possible paths to take. Imagine trying to adapt a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

Beyond that it suffers from the same struggles with adapting novels or comics, condensing characters and simplifying lore for the audience. The first Mortal Kombat film is seen as one of the better video game movies, and that's mostly because they stuck with their main human characters and the Enter the Dragon premise instead of overcomplicating the lore, which is why Scorpion and Sub-Zero are relegated to minions.

Regarding Tomb Raider, it seems like the main failings are the light story and not specifically any video game faults. I'm not entirely sure how popular the current games are, so it's hard to say what the box office would have been if it wasn't in big competition with Black Panther. At the least it seems to be a modest blockbuster with a budget around 100 million and not an engorged budget too big to make money.

Honestly Assassin's Creed had the right idea. An original story set in the same universe. It just failed at the execution. I wouldn't mind another movie like that but set in a different game universe that's not difficult to explain for people who have never played the game. Dragon Age shouldn't take that much effort to explain for example.

The Mortal Kombat movie actually had a clear plot, more than a lot of game movies can say. It just happened to be a remake of a much better film.

I mention that a lot, but in MK’s case, it’s a good thing. Too often, games have hodgepodge plots bordering on direct Excuse Plot. So the end result on film is a mess (Super Mario Bros). In other cases, the plot is done well enough in the game that the film is...unneeded.

edited 19th Mar '18 11:57:44 AM by Beatman1

I think we need LESS attempts to do original stories but just actually stick to the plots of the games.

Desmond would have been better, I think as a role for Fassbender.

Unfortunately that would just lead to complaints of seeing that story already but done better.

Justice League (2017) has officially finished its run at the box office and has become the lowest-grossing film in the DC Extended Universe, making $10 million less than Man of Steel. For something that was supposed to serve as an Avengers-level hit, this truly a heavy blow for Warner Brothers and DC.

The problem with the line of thought about creating an original story is that usually the reason you want to adapt a video game is because you think the game would make for a good movie, so why would you change the story and, in the case of Assassin's Creed, create wholly new characters in its place?

Like we've been saying, the reason Mortal Kombat was well received is because it didn't get bogged down with excess plotting, and let itself unfold naturally. Video Game plotting is more often than not overcomplicated, so imagine taking a video game and giving it a Mad Max: Fury Road simplicity. I think more than anything else that is what is needed to get a truly good video game movie.

Mortal Kombat was a thoroughly bad movie all around. I never understood why people held it to such high regards. Most of the video game movies that came out over the years have surpassed it just by being mediocre (except Assassin's Creed, that movie is just terrible) . IMO Warcraft is the best video game movie that we got so far just because it is just average to decent, though it seems Tomb Raider might took that "crown" based on what I've heard of that movie (I've yet to watch it myself).

I do agree that most video game (Warcraft, Mass Effect, etc) would fare better as series as you can't really condense what is essentially an entire Game Of Thrones season worth of story and characterisation into a two hour movie.

One reason: A bad-ass soundtrack. Mortal Kombat is the best proof how much of a difference the right kind of score makes.

I just realized that all 5 of the superhero movies with the highest worldwide grosses are MCU films (Avengers, Age of Ultron, Black Panther, Iron Man 3, and Civil War). That's a pretty dominant position for Marvel.

Well for now, but you never know eventually....oh, who am I trying to kid? Thanks to the MCU Marvel will dominate the box office for at least five additional years.

Unless Wonder Woman 2 matches its predecessor’s strong domestic performance & improves on its overseas gross.

Yeah, as bad as the movie was it still have one hell of a theme song.