How to end the curse of Bad Game Movies

Despite the (perhaps contentious) exceptions of Prince of Persia and the first Silent Hill, it has become an accepted truth that movies of games are universally awful. You only need to clap eyes on the litany of failed adaptions to see that this is true. Illustrious names like Super Mario Bros, Doom, Max Payne, Final Fantasy, Hitman, Resident Evil, the entire output of the director Uwe Boll. All movies based on great games, all varying in quality from bad (Resident Evil), to so awful that the world is a slightly worse place due to their existence (the entire output of the director Uwe Boll).

I've come to realise it doesn't have to be this way. The way I got to this point is long and winding, a bit like the plot of the literary adaption that helped form this theory. But bear with me.

The Lord of the Rings. Three films. 654 minutes. Coming up to 11 hours. Far. Too. Damn. Long. For a film at least. I've famously bitched about this in real life many times before. There is way too much content in The Lord of the Rings novels to squeeze into three films with acceptable runtimes. It is however, the perfect runtime for a TV series. I only realised this after watching through the Death Note box set. It's a literary adaption that really benefits from the long form of a TV series. Now I'm not saying LotR would make for a good TV series, but HBO's recent mega budget adaption of Game of Thrones, which I've moved on to post Death Note, shows that a really sizable story can be successfully adapted to the small screen.

In separate, yet related events, a recent pub conversation quickly degenerated into the cartoons we watched as kids. Unconditional love and praise was lavished upon the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Earthworm Jim. There were also fond memories of the Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda cartoons that showed in the half term holidays while we were at school. Something along the lines of, "If they could get it right with these, why can't Hollywood get videogame movies right?" was said. There was some metaphorical beard stroking, then we shut up and got more beers in.

Whilst I was nursing the inevitable hangover, I had an epiphany.

This is where Hollywood has been going wrong with games. They're making movies. Think about it. A decent game is typically over ten hours long. If it's well written, the story will be designed to fit into that runtime. Far too much content to squeeze into a movie of respectable length. Videogame movies typically fail on story, either by compressing a story so much as to miss some of the key beats or by adapting a title with a plot so sparse that there's little in the way of structure holding the movie together. A long form adaption, such as a high budget TV series in the vein of Band of Brothers or Game of Thrones, or a miniseries such as the well received Dune would be the way to go.

So first of all the game you choose to adapt needs an exemplary story. Anything less won't work. A lot of game movies fall at the first hurdle with this. The story of the game is too sparse, so the script writers Make Shit Up to fill in the gaps, which inevitably ends in a disjointed film. Second, you need the original writer of the game in question on board. Part of the reason Game of Thrones works so well is because George RR Martin is involved in the production. It helps keep the adaption faithful to the novels, to realise the setting and makes sure that any changes in the story fit smoothly. Changes to certain in game events will be necessary to make a game's plot flow properly in a non interactive medium.

Let's take Spec Ops: The line as our hypothetical video game TV adaption. The following paragraph is highly idealised and probably in no way similar to the way a major TV production is brought about. But for the sake of this little thought experiment, let's say it is. By some miracle HBO have optioned the game for a series. They've given it a substantial budget, have the original writer on board and the production team behind a notable Iraqi war film. For the sake of example, let's use The Hurt Locker. The production team like the themes the game presents and want to remain as faithful as they can to the story of the game, but need to cut some of the many firefights to maintain the flow of the episode. However, cutting the firefights down to the major setpiece battles shortens the runtime of the final product, so that it doesn't fill it's projected ten episode run. So we need extra story, and here's where having the original author on board is important. Where a screenwriter coming from outside the original story would firmly be in Make Shit Up territory at this point, the original author would probably not be, having already made his shit up months or years in advance. He likely has some material cut from the game that elaborates on the motivations of the trio of factions that are battling in post apocalypse Dubai. So in place of the cut firefights, we now get scenes with the CIA working up the remaining civilian population and the private reaction of the Radioman to the carnage being caused all around him. The story is fleshed out, the situation for its protagonists gets even more FUBAR, the target runtime is reached and it hopefully knits together seamlessly because all of the additions have come from the mind of the person who conceived the story to begin with. All that remains is to film it. The production team decide to merge the formula of the seminal Band of Brothers with that of their own desert war movie and we have a series that might just work.

It's not a sure fire way to end the curse of the Bad Videogame Adaption, but it's perhaps the most feasible. And think of the possibilities it could unlock. Ponder for a moment, the potential of a series based on Mass Effect. While the intricacies of the choice based branching plot would have to be hammered out, it could still be the first worthwhile space opera on TV since Firefly was cancelled. Of course, if you like your sci-fi a bit nastier, there's always Dead Space, with it's dense unitology backstory and its clever combination of the aesthetics of The Thing and Aliens.

Or how about an adaption of Sly Cooper. The game itself is basically Hustle with animals. A hand animated series where each episode is a heist tied together by an overarching plot would work beautifully. It's got it all. Daring stunts, outlandish baddies, high tech gadgets, a great buddy dynamic, and the simmering attraction between Carmelita Fox and Sly. Stir in a splash of James Bond glamour and sprinkle liberally with the stolen essence of Aardman's ability to appeal to both adults and children and you have a surefire hit on your hands.

Bioshock could work nicely in both movie or TV format, depending on whether you wanted to film the first game, or the novel and both games. It would be expensive to implement and would need a bit of reworking but would be entirely worth it. On the surface, Bioshock is basically one man rampaging through a crumbling undersea city, listening to a voice on the radio, shooting the mad inhabitants and picking up audio logs. Not a very interesting concept for a TV show. Jack is a non character that only exists for the player to interact with the world, it's the story around him that makes Rapture so compelling a place to inhabit. So we make the story the focus. Instead of focussing on Jack, focus on the characters and the events that brought him to Rapture in the first place. Film the audio logs. Use an ensemble cast. Weave the resulting scenes together into a Pulp Fiction style tapestry bookended by Jack's arrival and departure from Rapture. Intersperse the tapestry with flashes of Jack being directed through Rapture by whoever has latched onto him at that segment of the story, Atlas, Ryan, whoever. It would be a difficult, yet absorbing picture, that would not only need the hand of Ken Levine, who recently killed a Bioshock movie project, but also a skilled and deft director to make sure the whole thing doesn't fall apart under the weight of its own ambition.

Hollywood execs rightly see the videogame world as ripe for movie adaptions, it's just a shame that most of the time they're the wrong people looking at them. TV execs that should be approaching the major game studios as well. In addition to this, the studios need to make sure that they retain creative control of the property being adapted, so that the vision of the original game isn't compromised by the transition to celluloid. This is something Ubisoft have already learned. They are about to make their first foray into feature film with Assassin's Creed, in which Michael Fassbender is rumoured to be starring. If I can see what needs to be done, then it really can't be that hard, can it?

Assassins Creed is another title I think would work better as TV series, given the scale of it's vision. But hopefully the powerhouse that is Ubisoft can end the curse of the Bad Game Movie and produce a good film. All the ingredients are there, and if they can't, then there's really no hope of ending the curse at all is there?