Why Don’t Video Game Movies Work?
I have some questions.
Who thought that making a live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie was a good idea? Why did they have to give Sonic grotesquely human teeth? Why does SEGA not seem to care that one of their best intellectual properties has been continually dragged through the mud for over ten years now? Who asked for a Sonic movie? Why is Gangster’s Paradise the song in the trailer? Why after decades of failure does no one understand that movie adaptions of video games do not work?
Ever since video game franchises started becoming household names, film companies have tried to capitalise by making movie adaptions of them. Unsurprisingly, no video game movie has ever been able to satisfy fans or do any game justice. At their very best, video game movies are moderately average. At their worst, they stoop incredibly low and are outright unwatchable.
It’s not as if video games don’t have good stories to tell, so the real mystery is why can’t anyone make a good video game movie?
To be honest, the problem goes deeper than the specific case of video game to movie adaptions. In truth, good adaptions of any form of media are lightning in a bottle. Phenomena such as Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are so popular that people forget that they’re even adaptions. Moreover, they forget that adaptions which prove to be that successful are a total rarity.
One reason adaptions are hardly ever met with success is because fans of the original work are extremely protective. How many times have you heard a Harry Potter fan say that the books are far better than the films? People are protective of the things they like and video game fans are no different.
Another reason adaptions rarely work is that different art forms are just that: different. It might seem obvious, but there’s a significant difference between the time it takes to read a book, and the time it takes to watch a film. Because of this, adapting one from the other means that there must be significant changes to the original work. Whether it’s taking out seemingly crucial details from a book’s third chapter because there isn’t time to play around in movies or fleshing out characters in a book that in no way served the plot of a movie, there will never be a perfect translation.
Now let’s apply this to video games. Games are unique compared to every other art form due to their interactive element. Movies, TV shows, and books all dictate an experience to their viewer, but video games are different because there isn’t a viewer, there’s a player. When experiencing a video game you have an element of control that you don’t have in any other medium, so it becomes impossible to replicate it when creating adaptions.
So much of the time, the gameplay is the most important part of a game because it’s how people access the experience. What’s more, because of this interaction, the methods of storytelling that video games can use are completely different. One perfect example of this is What Remains of Edith Finch. That narrative-driven game tells each chapter of its story through totally varied gameplay sections. In one chapter the player may see some important text on-screen that frames a dramatic moment. In another chapter, the player is taught mechanics that communicate exactly how mundane working in a fish factory is. The storytelling methods in games are so much more varied than in film or TV so they become extremely limited when adaptions are attempted.
On the other hand, sometimes this gameplay means that story and character take a backseat. Ironically enough, the perfect example of this is Sonic the Hedgehog. Nobody plays a Sonic game because of its enthralling story. No one. The appeal of Sonic is entirely through its gameplay experience. Although there is a story unfolding, it isn’t the central focus, and much of the time it’s only a device to keep people playing. So to make a game like Sonic into a movie, you’d need to strip away what actually makes it special.
This is the folly of so many video game movies that have failed to recognise this crucial difference between games and movies. The problem is that so many film companies think that games like Sonic would make great movies simply because they have mass appeal. But when you take the interactivity out of Sonic to just tell its story, you’re left with something that seems totally ridiculous, unappealing, and in the case of this live-action version, frightening.
In another example, Assassin’s Creed’s main appeal is its historical gameplay. There used to be an interesting story going on that combined time travel and The Matrix but herein lies another problem with trying to adapt video games to film. Even though games can have amazing stories and can tell them in unique ways, it doesn’t mean that all game stories are good.
Once again, take the interactive gameplay out of Assassin’s Creed and what do you get? A jumbled mess of a story that no one would be able to present in an entertaining way. Even if Michael Fasbender is the main character. Seriously, why don’t you try sitting someone down and explaining the plot of Assassin’s Creed to them?
Of course, the adaptive method suggests you should simplify such a story, and although that’s precisely what the Assassin’s Creed movie tried to do, it didn’t help to make it a better film. Instead what you got was an unappealing story that attempted to recreate the fun parkour gameplay with stunt sequences. But even then, most fans sitting through it would probably think “I’d much rather do this myself in the game than watch Fassbender’s stunt double jump off a church.”
Ultimately, I think there’s a gross under-appreciation of video games in the movie industry which leads people to think that their magic can be recreated with ease. However, as almost every movie adaption of a video game has shown, it isn’t that simple. The real mystery, then, is why do game developers and publishers still allow them to happen?
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