Geek Beat: Five Faithful Videogame Movie Adaptations
The best kind of lists are the ones born out of random fanboying snobbery of a Sunday evening, with nothing on TV and a ungodly chip butty that would reduce even the stalwart carb-haters to blissful starchy tears of joy. Enter the topic of movies based off of videogames that done it right. At deciding that this must make the Internet, and really delving into the topic, five seems a bit of a stretch which says a lot, but don’t worry, we’ll get there.
Doing five worst would be far too easy, and it would look something like this: Double Dragon House of the Dead, Resident Evil: Afterlife, BloodRayne Far Cry. The fact that most of those are by Uwe Boll… yeah, we’ll just leave that there. But finding five movies that do the source material justice, true justice and not a blatant lolwtfpwn-mash-up of all what made the games great? That’s a tall-ish order, but one that I feel wholly justified in producing as I’m an aforementioned fanboy snob, with an added dash of film and directorial highbrow thrown in for good measure.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
“EL-EE-VA-SHOOON.” Sorry, I literally cannot think of this film without invoking the shouty essence of Bono. I’ll spare you the “WOO’s.” Proving that tacking big names to a project doesn’t necessarily make for a dead cert, Tomb Raider succeeds ultimately in its faithful on-screen reproduction of the top heavy Lady Croft and the spirit of the franchise. That’s not just because there are actual tombs that she wanders around; and flares, don’t forget the flares. Jolie puts in a performance worthy of more praise than she got at the time, and does Lara’s character justice, so much so that if a third film is made without her, it’s really going to irk. Plus, her accent didn’t suck so, you know, double-thumbs up from me.
Sure, it doesn’t come without its misgivings, but you can and will get past whole robot training sequence that really was just added for a bit of lacklustre flavour – not to mention her ‘sidekicks’ – and find yourself going along on an adventure and enjoying every minute of it. I mean, hey, if those of us who played the original game stuck through it despite its awkward run-and-jumps and Lara’s pointy yet oddly erotic gazongas, you’ll be able to get past the sometimes clonky dialogue and exposition.
Silent Hill
Oh, that jangly guitar riff. I want that at my wedding, just as the guests are taking their pews. Still debating whether they throw ash as future-wife and I leave the church. Suddenly I realise that I’ve thought about this too much. Heralded amongst both staunch fans of the series and gamers alike, Silent Hill is the most faithful adaptation per square inch to make it to cinemas. Christophe Gans just got it – he really did, and gave us a film that you could argue was just for the fans, even if there are some creative decisions such as swapping out the main male character from the first game it’s based on with a female alternative. It oozes a permeating atmosphere that is as thick as the fog that hangs over the town, and just like the games before it, manages to do this through its heavily reliance on sound. It really is as simple as hearing the waning grate of dragging metal, complimented by an increasing haze of white noise to instil dread and make you feel as if you’ve fallen into Silent Hill’s special brand of hell.
Backed up by the acoustics is a script that for the majority has a pace to match, but does begin to drag some towards the end. Thankfully the performances by Radha Mitchell and Marita Covarrubias, err, sorry, Laurie Holden (she’ll always be Martia to me) are enough to keep it together. The only grievance I can really give is – as much as I love him – that the inclusion of Pyramid Head didn’t make any sense to me other than completely trying to pay fan service. For the majority it probably worked, but when you know why he exists, again, it just doesn’t make sense.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Not being a particular fan of the series at the time, it weirds me out to say that the film actually got me interested in going back to play the games. Now if that works on a gamer, imagine what it would be like for a casual who saw the movie knowing nothing going in other than it’s an action flick? In that respect, Prince of Persia is a winner, and even Jake Gyllenhaal doesn’t feel out of place in the role in the respect that I’d have honestly thought the role beneath him if you know what I mean which you probably don’t. The film does encroach a bit on the above ‘mash-up’ statement in that it draws on elements from across the franchise, but manages to do so without becoming unpalatable. Also, while it is based on the original game of the same name, the most notable creative liberty taken is that the plot is reversed which gives the film the opportunity to surprise series-long fans.
I’d be remiss in not saying that it is every bit visually stunning as you’d expect from the Disney spit-n-polish team, and that the film takes away the almost unheard of accolade of the highest grossing videogame movie worldwide. Goes without saying that is a feat in of itself.
Resident Evil
Alright, alright – calm down, and before you brandish me a hypocrite, at least hear me out. Yes, the lolwtfpwn-mash-up comment was completely directed at the Resident Evil movie franchise. Personally I am not a fan of them and what Paul W.S. Anderson has done to mar the videogame’s good name by stealing bits and pieces from here and there and trying to stuff them down through the camera lens like trying to get a square-peg through a round hole before finally setting on putting them through a mincer first. Still, out of the movies, this remains the best one and had a lot of potential going into the sequel, and I applaud him for having the guts to veer off from the games, though it would have been nice for him to colour between the lines instead of going balls to the wall over-the-top and colouring the page into one solid block of crap. Thankfully the crap comes after, and I’ve since resigned myself to believing the subsequent movies as a different franchise entirely.
What Resident Evil has in its favour is a sense of adult horror and does a respectable turn in delivering it. The plot is the most plausible of the series, and is more grounded in its burgeoning stages than that of the first game quite honestly where you rely on information in the sequels to fill in the gaps. The action’s good, the pace for the first half quite realistic and the mystery of Alice’s (Milla Jovovich) unravelling memory is decent enough to keep you interested. Honestly though, where this movie shines is when you compare it to the ones that follow, and you’ll see that they are worlds apart in quality.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Yes, the film that originally was not going to be affiliated to Final Fantasy that then became a Final Fantasy film and was expected to launch the ‘careers’ of artificial actors and actress. And yes, this is absolutely getting a place over Advent Children. Controversial. The why is that Final Fantasy is a series – with the odd sequels and prequels, yes – that essentially reinvents itself with each new game. In that, The Spirits Within is its own movie but justifiably grounded in the game series at the same time, and no, Anderson cannot use that to defend the ‘Lol-isdent Evil’ films.
While the death knell to Square Pictures, and bombing at the Box Office, it brought attention to the capabilities of computer generated animation and photorealistic rendering and was very much before its time. It also went some way to showing the majority of the Western audiences that ‘anime’ is a viable and totally not kiddy method of entertainment. The plot was about as far removed as you could get to the rest of the Final Fantasy franchise, but if you look beneath the jarring and stark futuristic setting – which we’re more accustomed too now after Final Fantasy XIII – that flare for spinning a grand-esque tale can be found, even if it is buried deep beneath a crater and filled with alien spirits. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth the time and an experience that you’re probably not used to.
So what do you think? Is there a film missing from our list? One that needs to be removed and relegated to the Uwe-bin? Let us know in the comments below.
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