The Video Game Movie Renaissance

@Tobias Drake I'm all for that kind of movie on two conditions: We get a larger backstory of Samus in flashbacks to clear up a few confusions and we get a Ridley that is truly a malicious Complete Monster that he was in the manga.

I do wonder why Ratchet and Clank are not doing so well with the reviews though. Animated CGI films is not the same as live-action and thus it doesn't have the excuse of not being able to stay true to the video game look. Maybe it's the story or something. If that is the case, perhaps they should just remake Pokémon I Choose You as a feature-film.

The first two episodes of the Pokemon anime aren't good movie material.

Or the anime in general, honestly.

I personally found the episode to be a good basis of Coming of Age story, with our focus being Ash and Pikachu and their struggle to get along and be a team. It's also the episode that really summarizes what it means to be Pokémon Trainer and what Pokémon is about, and it does it under 22 minutes. It would certainly be better than say focusing the movie on like the Pokémon League or trying to cram the entire Kanto journey in two hours.

RE: Pokemon The problem with that idea is that the original episode lasts 20 minutes. To stretch that out into a film you'd need either a whole load of Adaptation Expansion, which would come off as filler due to the source material being so short, or fashion out of the first episode and several others. If you were to do that, maybe they could include Pikachu's Goodbye, but change it so that Pikachu actually does stay with all the wild Pikachu. Not permanently of course, as Pikachu would return at the end to save Ash from some threat or other.

RE: Ratchet and Clank I went to see it today, and I thought it was okay. It's one of the better video game adaptations I've seen, but it's not great by any means. (Frankly, that says more about how low the standard is than it does about this film's quality.)

I liked some of the Adaptation Expansion the film did, like introducing Dr Nefarious early (and yes, he does steal the show whenever he's on screen, as always) and more depth to Quark's role In the film, Drek plays on Quark's insecurities and his need to be the center of attention at all times to make him switch sides, whereas in the game he was just a Villain with Good Publicity. the animation was excellent, and it was clear from all the references and in-jokes that there was a real love of the source material, but for whatever reason, it just didn't come together. I couldn't tell you what exactly was missing, as I'm not sure myself yet, but it felt like less than the sum of its parts. I'd give it a 6/10, and as a big fan of the games, it's really disappointing that I can't go higher.

Does this mean that Warcraft is the new Chosen One, or is that Angry Birds since it comes out first? Or is all this pointless, and there's something about videogames that makes them inherently unadaptable, as we've seen countless times before that In Name Only adaptations don't work, and this film didn't buck the trend despite having Insomniac on board?

Ratchet and Clank currently sit at 19% on Rottentomatoes and at the box office tag behind Keanu and the Jungle Book. For what its worth the individual reviews aren't scathing.

I think it's safe to say this isn't the movie that kickstarts an era of videogame movie golden age.

edited 1st May '16 2:14:38 PM by Ghilz

Oh... C'mon Warcraft and Angry Birds! You two have it in ya!... Well, maybe not Angry Birds, but I got faith in Warcraft!

I wonder if that supposed Mass Effect movie is still in development.

Well, let's hope we have a good December 21st.

Currently, The Angry Birds Movie is sitting at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes.

By video game movie standards, that's...actually pretty good. Could Angry Birds be The Chosen One?

edited 12th May '16 6:57:46 PM by kablammin45

I really like the Assassin's Creed trailer(with the exception of the strange decision to put Kanye West as the trailer music), plus it looks like it'll be somewhat faithful to the games.

I just hope it can compete with Rogue One, which release less than a week before it.

Looks like Warcraft might not be the one to shift the trend of Video Game movies.

Aw jeez... Well, looking on the bright side, that's only two bad video game movies out of three, saying as Angry Birds simply got lukewarm reviews. There's still more coming out!

Angry bird's down to 43%

Lukewarm feels a bit generous here.

That seems like an idiotic decision honestly. Even IF it's a good video game movie, considering the amount of box office The Force Awakens made, it seems like a bad idea to put it up against it. Sure, it's a spin off, but it's still a Star Wars film. Makes one wonder if the studio's got much faith in Assassins' Creed, or is just putting it up there knowing it'll bomb so it doesn't much matter.

edited 3rd Jun '16 7:44:00 AM by CobraPrime

I'd be more than a bit hesitant to try an Other M movie, even if we "cleaned it up". It takes place near the end of the Metroid series, has a ton of backstory it'd need to explain, and doesn't utilize most of the series's charms. Even if it was told better, it would still be a very generic sci-fi story.

Now, to be fair, I'm not sure if Metroid's "charms" would translate well into movie. What I like about Metroid most is exploring abandoned alien ruins that carry a sort of mystical quality to them, and the feeling of isolation/solitude that comes with wandering about them. This would be rather difficult to do a movie about. I suppose what could be done is giving Samus a Jarvis-like AI she can talk to. In fact, it would make sense for her to have some sort of AI companion (someone has to be writing those scan logs).

In universe ADAM is the closest thing we have to JARVIS.

Yeah. She should probably call it ADAM. Though, the problem is that the real Adam died in Other M, at the end of the series-which is why she named her AI ADAM in the first place.

edited 3rd Jun '16 9:36:32 AM by Protagonist506

I think having the Federation send ADAM to help Samus on her missions makes sense and stays consistent to the game's canon. The Fed (who is hinted to be corrupt) would like to have something monitor their most powerful mercenary.

Wouldn't that be a plot twist? By the third movie in the trilogy, this ADAM we've come to know and love has been planted there all along by the feds to spy and keep tabs on Samus. It'd be a great turnaround and refocus the final chapter into fighting against the system that employed her.

Samus Aran: Winter Hunter.

Considering that Nintendo balks at the idea of Samus actually hunting bounties^note During the production of Prime 3', the devs wanted to add sidequests where Samus would pick bounties from the Galactic Federation and hunt them as side quest. Nintendo nixed the idea coz they believe it's not something Samus would do. Hunting bounties (Coz Nintendo believes "Bounty Hunter" means "Space Hero" and not... Bounty Hunter), I doubt we'll see "Fight the system!" Samus ever :-P

edited 3rd Jun '16 10:37:02 AM by CobraPrime

Yeah, Samus is less of a bounty hunter, and more of a mercenary. She's the person people turn to when stuff needs blowing up.

Perhaps it's a translation mishap?

Maybe this is due to Values Dissonance, but I don't think "Fight the System" is necessarily out of the question (it's a very common sci-fi plot right now). On the other hand, from what we do know about the Federation, they might be too morally ambiguous an enemy for Nintendo. While the Federation has a few colossal screw-ups, most of their soldiers seem to be outright good guys.

In fact, even its actions in Other M and Fusion are arguably more along the lines of Well-Intentioned-Extremism than outright evil (given that, in their lifetime, they've seen threats such as Mother Brain and Phaaze, they have a very good reason for wanting superweapons)

Yeah, being a merc is so much more heroic and morally sound than tracking down fugitives and making them go to trial.

Fire Emblem Fates has a "fight the system" plot for the Nohr campaign

Xenoblade Chronicles also has one, in a more cosmic scale.

Fates isn't exactly the pinnacle of storytelling. And I love that game.

We need a Team Fortress 2 movie. You could come up with literally any Excuse Plot and it could probably work as long as it was an action comedy.