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Remember that hugely popular game from your childhood that everybody played, and spawned many many successful sequels and spin-offs? For me, it was the Street Fighter series. Ever since Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, I’ve been hooked on fighting games – and almost every fighting game I’ve played since then has been directly influenced by that series.

With this in mind, you can see why video games are an attractive prospect for movie studios. Game to movie adaptations are an awesome idea… on paper. You’ve effectively already got the story sorted out, the characters are already developed, and there’s already a sizable fan base. So how do movie studios get it so wrong?

All too often movie studios take a great concept like the Resident Evil series, and they butcher it to within an inch of its life, skewing too far from the subject material and losing the whole point of adapting it in the first place.

If we take my childhood obsession – the Street Fighter series was doomed to be a steaming turd of a movie from the start really. There isn’t a rich storyline behind the game at all. What story there is comprises of very small individual back stories for each character, and there is little to no interaction between the characters save for Ken, Ryu & Sagat. The only circumstance I can imagine a Street Fighter movie working is with anime, which has already successfully been done as a movie (good), and episodic installments (bad, though the later Street Fighter Alpha series was ok).

In fact, of all the game-to-movie adaptions I’ve seen have been fairly poo save for one: Silent Hill. I thought that almost everything about the movie was spot on. The atmosphere, the visual aspects, the music, the acting – everything I wanted to see on the screen for a movie based on that subject material was there.

What I don’t understand is why critics slated the movie. One criticism I heard was “Its just like watching someone play the game”. Surely that’s the idea? If the aesthetic was changed, then it would probably be slated because it wasn’t as visually accurate.

With this in mind, in my opinion, I think that any movie adapted from a game is going to be shot down by critics purely because they see the art form of video game production/direction as childish. Personally I wouldn’t want to say that in front of a man like Hideo Kojima.

Kojima’s work with the Metal Gear Solid series has helped to bridge the gap between movie and game tremendously – his latest work with MGS4: Sons of the Patriots is a clear example, which often plays like an interactive movie with the way the cut scenes intersperse the gameplay.

It is this evolution in modern-day gaming that has made me want to write this blog, suggesting games that have a rich storyline for movie adaptations. There’s a fair few titles on the list, and I will try not to jabber on about one title too much.

System Shock 2

This is one of the best games ever made in my opinion, and games like Bioshock and Deus Ex have a lot to thank it for (Bioshock is widely considered the “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2). Designed by Kevin Levine, SS2 is a Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Horror game released on the PC in 1999 as a direct sequel to the 1994 game System Shock.

It tells the story of a lone soldier in the year 2114 on board a starship trying to quell the spread of a genetic infection that’s been spread deliberately by the starships’s egotistical A.I “SHODAN”, creating “The Many” -  creatures cultivated by the A.I to help establish her god-head, that have since evolved out of her control. SHODAN then issues an ultimatum to the soldier, stating that his only chance for survival lies in working as her “avatar” to destroy her rebellious creations.

Why would this be a good movie? Well the storyline alone has an air of I, Robot or 2001: A Space Odyssey about it, plus there’s also enough twists and turns to keep M. Night Shyamalan happy. Visually speaking, cyberpunk has always been an attractive medium for me ever since Bladerunner. My suggested director for the movie would probably be Ridley Scott.

Bioshock

As I previously mentioned, Bioshock is the spiritual sequel to System Shock 2, designed again by Kevin Levine. Released in 2007, Bioshock is a steampunk survival horror game set in an alternate history 1960. The game places the player in the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the underwater dystopian city of Rapture, and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it.

Why would it make a great movie? The game is praised for its exploration of morality, psychology and philosophy, the style is absolutely amazing – the first time you see the city of Rapture, it looks awesome. The steampunk style is rarely seen in movies, though comicbooks explore it a fair bit (see The League of Extroadinary Gentlemen)… and steampounk in general is visually engaging.

For a director, this is a toughie… though I’m going to go with Peter Jackson, with the Weta Workshop behind him for the effects work. Jackson definitely has what it takes to get the scope of the city of Rapture over perfectly. If you need a reminder, check out some of the sweeping shots of Minas Tirith in the Two Towers and Return of the King.

However as a deal to create a Bioshock movie has already been brokered, it seems that the movie will be directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Carribbean) and penned by John Logan (Gladiator). I have four words to say to those gentlemen: don’t fuck it up.

Deus Ex

This is my favorite video game of all time. The escapades of J.C Denton kept me playing this game repeatedly to make sure I saw all 3 endings. Deus Ex is another cyberpunk themed action/stealth/roleplaying first-person shooter game released back in 2000.

Set in a dystopian world during the 2050s, the central plot follows rookie United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition agent JC Denton, as he sets out to combat terrorist forces, which have become increasingly prevalent in a world slipping ever further into chaos. As the storyline unfolds, Denton becomes entangled with The Illuminati, The Hong Kong Triads and Majestic 12.

My reason for suggesting this as a game to movie adaption (my fanboyism aside) is the sheer wealth of choice the game offers. The stealth elements enable you to get through the entire game by only killing 2 people should you so wish. Or, you can choose to go all-out Rambo style and kill anything that moves. This opens up scope for many different movie styles, and the ideal director would be able to attain the perfect balance of this.

Because of this, my preferred nomination for director of a Deus Ex movie would be Doug Liman or Paul Greengrass – whom I thank muchly for bringing the Bourne series to the big screen.

Half Life

Never has a crowbar been so iconic as in the Half Life series. Half Life is a science fiction first-person shooter released by Valve Software in 1998. Chronicling the story of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a recent MIT graduate theoretical physicist who must fight his way out of a secret underground research facility whose research and experiments into teleportation technology have gone wrong.

Half Life isn’t just a game, its a franchise. A legacy. With its sequel, and numerous episodic add-ons and spin offs in the form of Portal, HL is a freight train of a movie in the making. And unsurprisingly, there hasn’t been an adaptation made yet.

And why is Half Life a great choice for hollywood? The sheer wealth of storyline in the series is enough for more than one movie. And the amount of content available can allow the prospective movie to be approached from multiple angles. The game always impressed with its unique visuals and atmospheric gameplay, and this can only be a good thing when it comes to transferring it into celluloid form. For directing duties, I’d have to go with James Cameron.

The only drawback of a Half Life-orientated movie is that the main protagonist doesn’t speak, so a dilemma ensues – tell the story from Freeman’s point of view, and make him talk… or tell the story from Half Life 2′s Alex. I can’t decide which is more acceptable…. comment and let me know what you think!

Gears of War

Gears of War (GoW) is a tactical third-person shooting game released in 2006 by Epic Games, and one of the most popular Xbox 360 games of all time. The story follows Marcus Fenix, a war veteran released from prison at the beginning of the game in order to help the soldiers of Delta Squad as they fight to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from a relentless subterranean enemy known as the Locust Horde.

The first thing that struck me about GoW is the cinematic style of the whole game, even mid-firefight the game feels like a balls-out action movie thats intent on burning a hole in your retinas because you don’t want to close your eyes. A director capable of bringing that vision across has to be James Cameron again.

Cameron’s work on the Terminator movies is the reason for this choice – I don’t know about anyone else, but I always wanted to see a firefight between loads of Terminators and Humans in the future, with some big guns, big explosions and great action set-pieces… I’m sure we’ll get that in McG‘s Terminator Salvation, but we all know in our hearts that it’d be better with Cameron at the helm.

Assassin’s Creed

This is a new addition to my list, as its a fairly new game in general. Assassin’s Creed is a stealth action game from Ubisoft Montreal released in 2008. The story within Assassin’s Creed is set in 2012 AD, and follows barman Desmond Miles who has been kidnapped by the Abstergo company, and is forced to relive the memories of his ancestor Altaïr using a machine called the Animus in order to locate a particular artifact that was lost in the 12th century.

Assassin’s Creed is a strong candidate for the making of a great series in the right hands. The game is the first in a series of three, and with a storyline as convoluted as this, it should make for some great viewing.

The main pulling point of an Assassin’s Creed movie is going to be the action – the freerunning, stealth killing and awesome swordplay in the game is enough to make me want a movie spin-off. I’d love to see a director like Tarantino tackle this, but I don’t really see this as his style. However I do think that Watchmen hemler Zack Snyder would be perfect – his work in 300 is more than enough proof to show he has the vision and the stylistic approach to action that could do a movie like this justice.

Metal Gear Solid

Created by Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid (or MGS for short) is a stealth-action series of games with an anti-terrorism theme to their titles, and a strong emphasis on new technology and unique technological design.

Kojima’s MGS series is well known for its cinematic prowess, almost half lending himself to movie direction in the process of producing an Metal Gear title. With the latest in the series; Sons of the Patriots, this is especially true with cutscenes often lasting a long time. Plus the opening scenes and titles are often in a movie format anyway, which helps to blur the line between the two mediums – I’m half expecting Kojima to start producing an animated MGS movie himself a la Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

However if I were to choose the director, I’d probably go for someone like Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer, due to their work with the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises.

Well there you have it – my list of videogame adaptations that I think would make decent movies – there are many other games that were suggested to me to add to this list, but frankly I didn’t want to waffle on too much.

Some of the other games suggested were: Clive Barker’s Jericho, Halo, Day of the Tentacle, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, World in Conflict & Dawn of War. Do you think they’d make good movies?

Please comment and let me know of your opinions, be it criticisms of my choices or suggestions of other games & directors etc – all are welcome!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 00:03 and is filed under Gaming, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.