Why do most video game movies suck?

[supernifty]

In my opinion, it's the franchises that are chosen. Just because a franchise is popular on a counsel DOESN'T mean it'll be a good movie. Doom...REALLY, Street Fighter...REALLY, and now Prince of Persia? Even Mortal Kombat is spreading it pretty thin(hold ur flames on that one). Not to mention the absolute embarassment that was Mario. Why not Metal Gear Solid? Why not Zelda? Even Castlevania(vampires always sell) would make a better flick. Either the producers live in an alternate universe where shits worth its weight in gold, or they habitually smoke the crack. I dunno... what do yall think?

[JoshM22]

I have to agree the Doom movie was very mediocre. All the Doom games kick ass! Street Fighter games are pretty good. I am just getting into them as an adult.Here is a list of some crappy movie games.

Back to the Future (NES)
Back to the future II
Dick Tracy (NES)
Terminator (NES)
Terminator 2 (NES)
Predator 2 (NES)


I don't think I need to list anymore.Not saying the NES is a crappy system, cause it is a classic every gamer should own. This is just my opinion guys. The good movie games I have played are all Lord of the Rings games on PS2. The Bourne game for PS3 was really good. A little frustrating at first, but very well made game.

Speaking of movie games. I think Resistance 1 & 2 could be made into a great movie. Has a pretty good story line.

[Zach]

The inherent flaw is not the franchises that are chosen, its the people who are making them, and in some cases trying to squeeze the content of a single or series of games, into one movie that is usually 2 hours or less..

Look at The Lord of the Rings.. All the previous incarnations of it sucked, until Peter Jackson came along. If I recall correctly he refused to have it cut down to anything LESS than a trilogy, and with good reason. The original draft submitted for publishing for LOTR was a single book that was 1000 pages. They had to cut it into a trilogy because no one had ever printed a book that huge at the time and it would have been insanely expensive with the technology currently available..

A lot of games may seem simple, but they can be epic in their own right, and many of the games turned into movies truely should have been done with multiple sequels carrying spanning one continuous plot.

Also, Hollywood doesn't know what people want, much less gamers. These people do not understand that when we go to see a movie based on a game, we want to see a representation of what we actually played. It doesn't matter to me personally if I know how the movie will end, or tons of dialogue before I see them on screen for the first time.

That's one reason advent children bombed so badly outside of Japan. It was nothing like we expected an FF7 based movie to be and frankly, made no sense.

[FatTrucker]

Its also true that mostly (but not exclusively) games are fairly vacuous and shallow, often mired in cliche, with simple contrived plots and incredibly generic subject matter, drawing the main part of their attraction by virtue of their interactivity. If you take away the interactivity and don't do anything creative with the subject matter you get a sh*t film.....a bit like Metal Gear Solid 2!!!....

[Zach]

Yeah but you just described 99% of Hollywood movies.