Where have I seen those characters before?

by George Rabbeth on 4.02.09

When Dante killed a room full of demons with a rack or pool balls and a single bullet. The first time we saw Grey Fox in Metal Gear Solid. The time 47 stabbed the Meat King in the face. We’ve all experienced it, the moment we look at a game and think “that would make a sweet film!” Similarly, most of us have watched game to film releases and thought “man, this film sucks!” What is the cause of this terrible phenomenon? Focussing on a couple of the more recent conversions, 4Q endeavours to find out…

An easy opening line would be to say that the relative brevity of a two hour film isn’t enough to capture the complexity of a game and its lovely little nuances. True, they’re no sixty hour-triumph like Final Fantasy 7, and the 2001 Spirits Within ‘adaptation’ was indefensible. However, that isn’t really a fair comparison, so we have to broaden our horizons.

Aside from life changing RPGs, I’m afraid I have to go on record as saying that on the whole, game storylines aren’t really that great, and perhaps even as formulaic as their box-office counterparts. For your delectation, here’s a bullet point summary of a few of them:

Hitman
• There’s a shadowy organisation.
• There’s a bit of skulduggery.
• He holds his guns in a cool way.
• He kills some foreign types.

Resident Evil
• There’s a shadowy organisation.
• There’s a bit of skulduggery.
• Zombies!
• We turn the undead into soup with a shotgun.

Max Payne
• Yep.
• You guessed it.
• Holy shit! Bullet time!
• Kiefer Sutherland ragdolls some baddies.

Maybe it’s because these storylines are all a little thin they look worse as films. Hitman versus the Bourne Supremacy? No contest.

Some conversions like Silent Hill have a good go at creating their own story whilst strongly referencing the original source material, and provided that material is unique or interesting enough, they can come up with something that, although far from perfect, is at least interesting. For me, I was more concerned with them getting the creatures to look right than a twisty plot, and immediately following the first encounter with Pyramid Head, was sold with a “That looks just like in the game that does!”

Some, including 4Q Gruppenfuhrer El Smit, argue that it’s the fundamental lack of interactivity that films have to offer an audience. Was it that we were collectively unable to combine herbs to heal ourselves before a boss battle the reason Resident Evil was destined to, well, die on its arse? For me, no, kinda. Even in games we have a limited number of options or actions. Max Payne was relentlessly linear, and if you didn’t enjoy jumping sideways in slow motion then you were shit out of luck. Plus, I enjoy the idea of being shown another approach toward a character I’m invested in. Don’t you enjoy end of level cut scenes, or watching Hiehachi get blown up by a pack of Jacks in Tekken 5? Why not think of a film as an extended cut scene, albeit a slightly limp, skewed one. It isn’t such a stretch. Have you played/ watched Metal Gear Solid 4?

Could it be ( dun, Dun, DUN! ) ‘Hollywood’ and its money-grubbing studios that is to blame? Chasing major demographics and all that? If that were true, we could expect a deliberate lowering of the ‘gore factor’ in order to get more audience friendly certificates. I concede that the violence in the Resident Evil films was deliberately aimed toward the undead, but the laser slicer thing was cool, I don’t think anybody could say otherwise. Hitman, however, doesn’t suffer from such an affliction, within the first few minutes we rack up a bunch of head shots, limbs hacked off with a machete, and a plastic throat bomb. For me, that’s easily as ‘dark’ as getting a lap dance from a girl in a gasmask.

I think the disgruntled gamers need to admit that you can’t pull off as much in films, especially in regard to character design. After all, most game characters look kinda stupid – I refer you to Armo(u)r King, Baraka, the Bandersnatch (wtf?)- and are destined to look silly in films. Ok, Krauser looked sick, but agent 47? A bald man with a barcode on his head won’t translate all that well into a film. It was fine dressing as a gimp in ‘Contracts’, but on the big screen it would just be plain wrong.

In 4Qs extensive research, we heard the argument that the film counterparts were always invincible, so there was no real suspense to be had. In games, we get injured, die, continue over and over, smash the controller, eventually kill the end boss and get hammered in celebration. In the film, we get a minute of choreography and it’s all over bar the head-scratching. Fair enough, but who hasn’t replayed these games with juicy uber-bonuses? Chicago typewriter, anyone? We all enjoy a little bit of invincibility, because in the words of Michael Jackson, no-one wants to be defeated.

In the humble opinion of 4Q, film conversions ultimately suffer not because of Hollywood’s treachery or the inherent superiority of game storylines, but because of the dilution of a game’s central themes. Each game in a series furthers and enriches the mythos of the original title, whereas subsequent film sequels are frequently a sluggish series of cherry-picked set pieces. It may not be anything as specific as casting the wrong lead, or getting the costumes wrong; a sequel often means a new director, a new artistic vision, with less time for storyline in order to combat the curse of diminishing returns. Not to mention terrible, terrible dialogue, with the exception of “My shit is custom!” from Resi Apocalypse, of course.