Why make video game films/live-action projects at all?

I'm ont sure this kind of topic is allowed, but in case it's okay, two things : silent hill and prince of persia are actually generally regarded as the two exceptions to the rule that movies of video games sucks and CERTAINLY NOT resident evil.

that aside, the main reason is just plain old money. Films fail critically but still makes enough cash to be worth doing again, even movies that didn't got sequels. The only real box office flop of those movies is the final fantasy one iirc.

edited 25th Dec '17 8:38:50 AM by Yumil

The attempt at bringing Dead or Alive to live-action film was DREADFUL. Nobody liked it, period.

The Silent Hill film wasn't too bad, though. It has its scary moments, does a decent job at staying true to the source material, and that one scene where the cop lady was held up above the bonfire as a means of slow and painful execution still sticks to me this day when it comes to thinking of graphically horrifying ways to die.

Honestly... I wouldn't mind seeing this thread stay open for a bit. Quite some time has passed, and the public's perception of what constitutes a good film has become just a tad more cerebral, more well-written, and no longer requires a film to be a non-stop action and fanservice fest. Heck, a part of me wonders if the Silent Hill film might've actually done BETTER had it been released today, largely due to viewers being more open to cryptic films that require a bit of interpretation or vague scenarios.

edited 25th Dec '17 9:17:04 AM by SgtRicko

I saw a vid on the entire subject on Youtube, and they said that the movies INTENTIONALLY suck because they're not really movies. Reconstruction Germany wanted to boost its movie industry, so the government created tax breaks for movie production. A studio only paid taxes on the movie when it was a success. People started making flops on purpose as a tax shelter. Video games were the victims. Germany has since amended that law, I think, so we should see the bad ones start slacking off. Or game movies just not getting made as much. Plus there's the whole interactivity angle. You really lose a lot when you convert a dynamic game into a static movie.

Well that would explain why the House of the Dead film was so unbelievably bad; even most cheaply made fanbase projects did a way better job than Uwe Boll ever did.

Still... he made the Postal film, and I recall some of the fanbase actually reporting that he did an okay job with that particular franchise.

Honestly the DOA film wasn't any worse (or better) than DOA's actual story. It had a tournament, a bunch of sexy women in skimpy outfits fighting in a variety of locations, a cheesy, over the top villain, and didn't waste time putting on airs that it was anything better than it was. It wasn't a good film, no, but it worked just fine as an adaptation to Dead or Alive.

A lot of these films are working with storytelling material that's great when it's just a side dish to a main course of gameplay, but fall apart when they're the core of the experience. As to why to make them at all

I'm guessing the same reason adaptations in general are so popular: name recognition alone can put asses in seats.

Historically, there's also been a tendency for movie studios to look down on video games in general as inferior art. And, of course, there's nearly always a degree of They Just Didn't Care when adapting something Japanese over to Hollywood live-action. So, let's see...

Street Fighter was on the road to being a trainwreck for this precise reason. It was going to make bank regardless of its quality, they made Guile the hero because Ryu was Japanese, and they used a shoestring budget ($35 million is shoestring by Hollywood standards). As we know, they accidentally got something watchable because Raúl Juliá had way too much fun with it, but that's not something you can plan for.

I suppose the key to success is the same as it is for any adaptation. Care about the source material and try to keep at least some faith with it, while working within the constraints of the new medium and being willing to streamline or eliminate complex plot elements when a newbie wouldn't get them.