Small Screen to Big Screen: Why Do Video Game Movies Miss the Mark?
You’ve played them, but have you watched them? For decades the film industry has tried to take our favorite video games and franchises and convert them to movies. Maybe you thought a game as plot-rich and full of historical lore as the Assassin’s Creed franchise would make a good film, especially with A-list celebrities like Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Perhaps you wondered how a button-mashing fighting game like Mortal Kombat could be translated to the big screen.
Either way, you’ve probably seen one or several video game movies. But, to put it bluntly, you may have noticed they’re not always that great. I would even venture to say they’re usually not that great. I’ll be exploring the disconnect between your favorite platform, PC, and handheld video games and the feature-length films that end up in a movie theater near you.
Assassin’s Creed
For centuries, the Order of the Knights Templar have searched for the mythical Apple of Eden. They believe it contains not only the seeds of man’s first disobedience, but the key to free will itself. If they find the relic and decode its secrets, they will have the power to control all freedom of thought. Only the brotherhood called the Assassins stand in their way.
What a mouthful! For reference, that’s the title crawl that opens the Assassin’s Creed film. I understand, the filmmakers only had two hours to tell a story that comprises 30+ hours of gameplay, but title crawls aren’t the place for vital lore. A title crawl should set the scene and circumstances and only be used when the audience won’t be able to glean context from the first ten minutes of the film.
The Assassin’s Creed title crawl is one massive spoiler — the Templars are trying to get the Apple of Eden and the Assassins are working to stop them. Congratulations, you’ve practically seen the movie. You can all go home. Granted, that’s the plot of almost every game in the franchise, but they don’t give it away in fewer than five minutes. Regardless, I’m not sure any movie can get away with a title crawl except for Star Wars.
Another information-sharing offense in Assassin’s Creed is the scenes constructed purely for info dumps. The worst is when Sofia, head scientist of the modern Templars’ Abstergo Foundation, notices Callum Lynch, naive son of a modern-day Assassin, behaving strangely in his room at Abstergo’s facility. She assumes he’s hallucinating, as that occurs with presumably all patients who enter the Animus. She enters his room to explain that what he’s seeing is known as “the bleeding effect” and then the two engage in one long question and answer session.
What is the machine? Why the aggression? What kind of prison is this? Here Cal insists he’s hungry, so naturally Sofia must take him through their labs to get to the cafeteria (huh?), giving him the opportunity to ask even more questions. Why do you have my records? How did you find me? Who’s Aguilar? Are the other people in the facility being experimented on too?
It isn’t just the questions though. Sofia’s answers are set up to make Cal more curious: they’re subtle, unsatisfying, and they hint at knowledge he doesn’t have. The lab itself is filled with pictures, files in plain sight, and replicas of the Apple of Eden on display. There’s even a photo of Sofia with her mother lying around so she can tell Cal that her mother was killed by an Assassin. Everything about the scene is constructed to dump background lore onto the audience.
It’s no wonder Cal has to remind Sofia that he’s hungry… like he was twenty minutes before the filmmakers devised this excuse for information overload. Thus, my first reason why video game movies fail is that they share information too quickly or in the wrong ways. The general audience needs to understand, yes, but it needs to be done with some finesse.
The second issue with Assassin’s Creed is that it puts the modern story featuring Cal at front and center, relegating the action and conflict that took place in 15th century Andalusia to background lore. This couldn’t be further from the games’ intent. In the games, the player spends most of their time in the guise of the modern character’s historical ancestor, attempting to stop the Templars and track the Apple of Eden. The knowledge gained in these long scenes in the Animus is then discussed momentarily by the modern characters before we’re whisked off to the Italian Renaissance or the Boston Tea Party again. In fact, during subsequent games in the series, the scenes in the present get increasingly shorter with less action until they’re done away with altogether.
Compare this to the film, where we spend roughly 31 minutes in historical Spain out of 101 minutes total, excluding the title crawl and credits, of course. This means less than 30% of the film is dedicated to what takes up 80–100% of gameplay. Even the time spent with Aguilar and his fellow Assassin, Maria, during the Granada War is interspersed with action shots of Cal in the present. For some reason the film’s producers made the Animus a giant claw machine, allowing Cal to run, fight, and jump (flail around), whereas it’s more akin to a simple chair or bed in the games. I have no idea why we’re constantly pulled out of the historical scenes except to serve as a reminder that all this is going on in Cal’s head.
Another theory is that the producers desired authenticity in making the historical dialogue wholly Spanish, but they believed forcing viewers to read too many subtitles would cause annoyance or detract from the film. Whatever the reason, players and fans of the games will be disappointed that we spend so much time with Cal and Sofia in the present and not enough with Aguilar and Maria in the past. This brings me to my second reason why video game movies fail: they focus on the wrong part of the game.
Resident Evil
The Resident Evil series, Capcom’s flagship franchise, spawning several main games and spin-offs, beloved by fans of zombie-hunting, survival horror, and constant inventory management, has also had quite the run in the film industry. I think most would say it had too long of a run. Although they always received poor reviews, Sony Pictures has created six films, making Resident Evil the most lucrative film series based on a video game to date. Constantin Film, the production company for the series, even confirmed they are working on a reboot.
It’s no wonder they receive bad reception: the Resident Evil films have continuity issues and more cuts during the action sequences than a paper snowflake. These problems have nothing to do with their conversion from a playable medium. But I’m not going to explain why the Resident Evil films are bad or why they keep getting made despite this. Rather, I’m going to cover what makes them bad as video game movies specifically.
Let’s start with a brief plot summary of the games. A pharmaceutical company of dubious morals called the Umbrella Corporation discovers a mutagen known as the t-Virus that can alter living and recently dead organisms. The t-Virus gives its hosts brain damage and organ failure, but mutates them into zombies with superior physical strength, savage aggression, and an insatiable hunger. The virus leaks from Umbrella’s facility outside Raccoon City, infecting a large swath of the population. A team of counter-terrorists and police officers confront the scientists behind this abomination and escape the overrun city. A nuclear strike meant to prevent further spread of the virus wipes Raccoon City off the map, but it’s too late: the t-Virus has gotten out and other bio-terrorist organizations have started creating new viruses and altering the existing t-Virus.
The plot of the films follows a protagonist named Alice, a test subject of the Umbrella Corporation not present in the games. The actual playable characters from the games and some of the more impressive, superpowered zombies we fight are thrown into the films haphazardly for a bit of fan service. This insincere pandering to fans is a problem, but still, it’s not the one I want to focus on. No, the main sin of the Resident Evil film series is, in my eyes, the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
There are the sound effects. When Alice and the zombie Nemesis are attempting to punch or kick each other in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, there are constant whooshing bullwhip sounds. When a fire extinguisher hits someone in the head in Resident Evil: Retribution, you can hear the reverberating cartoon-like sound of a hammer striking metal.
There are the convenient circumstances. Alice happens to find a bunch of live electrical wiring in a pit as she fights zombie dogs. In Resident Evil: Afterlife, a large chunk of glass falls from the ceiling in front of Alice so she can kick it, sending it slicing straight through a split-headed zombie Doberman Pinscher.
Most frustratingly, there is the fact that Alice gains superhuman strength, advanced healing, and telekinesis, which she uses to do everything from expanding flames to fill the sky and kill a flock of zombie crows, to causing a man she can’t even see to bleed from every orifice.
I’m not saying the video games don’t have their fair share of ridiculousness, especially in the later entries to the series. After all, there is a superpowered villain named Wesker who is only killed by being shot and stabbed a couple hundred times, taking a dip in molten lava, and finally being double-tapped by rocket launchers. But in the games, the absurdity is reserved for the enemies (and the voice acting in the first game).
The appeal of the survival horror turned action shooter turned some hybrid of the two Resident Evil games is that the protagonists go into deadly situations with nothing but fists, knives, and guns blazing. That’s what makes you feel scared and claustrophobic when you’re trapped in a mansion, or overwhelmed and out of your depth when you encounter chainsaw-wielding zombies and mutated scorpion-bats.
The films remove a lot of the suspense of plain humans fighting this genetically engineered threat and turn it into a wacky ride where the main character gains superpowers and things go comically right for her when even when she doesn’t have them. My third reason why video game movies fail is they execute combat and special feats poorly. They don’t have to be realistic, but they do have to capture the essence, purpose, and style of combat from the games.
Warcraft
On the surface, Warcraft wasn’t a bad movie. The CGI was top notch, the orc actors were great, and the visuals were reminiscent of the game: bright, garish, and a little cartoony. You might recall the disaster that was Super Mario Bros., a movie with the color palette of a Dark Souls game, but based on the colorful world of the Mushroom Kingdom. But if none of those factors was a problem, then what made Warcraft a flop?
The film’s plot is loosely based on Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a real-time strategy game, but there are references galore for people who play World of Warcraft, the hugely successful MMO that launched from this single-player predecessor. Stormwind looks as it does in the present day, with multicolored rooftops representing each district. Khadgar polymorphs a guard and makes note of the spell’s 50-second time limit. A murloc with its gurgling sounds even makes a brief appearance. Fans of the game may be entertained, but the general audience won’t grasp the references.
Warcraft also does a poor job explaining some essential lore to the uninitiated, particularly about the mages. Why wasn’t everyone suspicious of Medivh from the beginning? He uses some magic to kill the orcs during the ambush that is suspiciously radioactive green and fel-like, leaving withered, desiccated corpses, but not one character says a word. Meanwhile, everyone watching saw the pains the filmmakers took to establish blue = good magic, while green = bad, demonic magic.
Furthermore, why is Khadgar so strong? Why is he slated to become the next Guardian if he left the Kirin Tor? What does it mean that he broke his vows? Who’s the old lady in the black cube and why does the phrase, “From light comes darkness and from darkness, light,” save the world? In the game lore, Khadgar is Medivh’s apprentice until he discovers the Guardian’s corruption, but they make no mention of that in the movie. People who have never played the games or read the lore, and perhaps even those that have, are left with quite a few plot holes on their hands. The film still wasn’t a huge hit with gamers though, so what gives?
The Easter eggs are charming and funny, but Warcraft wasn’t faithful to the franchise where it counted. The plot and lore are all over the place. One glaring example is that Stormwind is invaded and occupied by the orcs by the end of the game, but in the film, the humans rout the orcs and rescue the prisoners.
The characters use plenty of spells, but when it comes down to it, most bouts come down to swordplay or fist fights. There is no healing, summoning, or ranged combat, and even the fel-infused warlock Gul’dan tries to pummel his way to victory. It turns out he’s jacked under that cloak.
Finally, why was Warcraft: Orcs & Humans used as the film’s basis at all? Ostensibly it’s because the entire thing was set up for sequels, but fans of World of Warcraft may neither know nor care about these characters because they’re either not relevant to the game’s current plot or not that intriguing as storylines go.
We’re left with a film that wasn’t exactly bad but wasn’t what anyone really wanted. Fans got a bastardized version of the lore but a few Easter eggs that made them want to eagerly point them out. The uninitiated got an okay fantasy action film, but they were left in the dark when it came to plot. This leaves us with my last reason video game films fail: they appeal to the wrong audience, or worse, to no audience at all.
Takeaways
I want to be clear that the issues I’ve found and discussed aren’t exclusive to these films, nor are they exhaustive. Many video game films fail because they’re bad movies altogether. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time cast actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Kingsley to play who are supposed to be Persian characters named Dastan, Tamina, and Nizam, respectively. There was no coming back from that cultural debacle.
I chose to highlight problems that come up when converting an interactable video game into a non-interactable film. It isn’t easy to take a video game, potentially one with deeply entrenched lore, and present that game in about two hours or else come up with a serviceable plot that uses elements from the game. In the end, it’s best filmmakers ask themselves if a video game even needs an immersive cinema experience to begin with since the best games already provide hours of entertainment from one’s own home. But if the answer is still yes, explore what aspects of the game make the most cinematic-worthy experiences, and discover what gamers love most about playing. That, and have good actors, a competent director, and a creative screenwriter.
