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John Rhys-Davies Notes The Pitfalls of Game Movies
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jan 15, 2008 11:39 AM
from the there-are-many dept.
from the there-are-many dept.
Veteran actor John Rhys-Davies sat down with GameDaily Biz to talk about his role in Uwe Boll's latest failure of a movie, 'Dungeon Siege: In the Name of the King'. Davies is surprisingly candid about his interest in the role, and pretty much nails the numerous problems of making film adaptations of games. "One or two may succeed, and I hope this is one of them, but the structure of a game is completely unlike the structure of a film. And it shows the despair of the studios and producers that these movies even get a look at. If we had good writing, it would not happen. I think that right at the moment, the film industry in Hollywood is in a crisis because we have successfully excluded young and able talent for so long that now there is nothing left."
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Boll + Critics (Score:5, Funny)
QFG4 (Score:3, Informative)
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It is really fun going through from 1-4, and the voice acting that they added to 4 is actually really rather good
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Makes you wonder what they did in the down-time...;-)
Penny Arcade... (Score:4, Insightful)
Uwe Boll? (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw trailers for Dungeon Siege and wondered how something like that could get a greenlight, and then I find out its Uwe Boll's project, and for a while it makes an eerie kind of sense.
But now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense. How does he still get a studio to pay him anything?
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Re:Uwe Boll? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a German tax thing. Basically, everyone wins whether or not the films make any money - if the film loses money, the investors get a generous write-off, and if it makes money, the investors pay less tax on the profit than they would have on the original investment (it's a reward for investing in film).
Hang on, here's a link: How the flick does boll keep making movies [tinyurl.com]
Parent
Re:Uwe Boll? Heh... (Score:2)
differing reasons...) would be his movie version of Postal. Everything else, heh...
He's trying to out "Ed Wood" Ed himself because he makes a HELL of a lot more money that way.
In the end, I know why this batch of people went for the lame thing- I'll bet each and every
one of the actors made decent cash on this title and it was something to do, even if it was
one of his atrocious movies.
Re:Uwe Boll? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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If you hate Boll, read the article, it's like hot cocoa for the mind. He's pretty much done, as far as wide distribution goes.
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His initial movies were able to generate the return while losing money due to German tax law; the tax law has since been fixed so he has had to tighten up a bit and generate a real profit, which he now does. It's not as good as the profit to be made in other things, but the glamour of the movies overcomes that for e
Yay! (Score:2)
I honestly thought that Dungeon Siege was a dead project. I'm very suprised to learn that they've had their heads down the whole time and got something done.
Who else didn't think that the DS movie was still in progress?
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Who else didn't think that the DS movie was still in progress?
I hoped it had gotten dropped. Is that the same thing?
Pitfall Harry (Score:2)
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Couldn't be any worse than most other movies but I still wouldn't want to see it.
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Falling into an alligator pit? Oh, hell yes!
I have another reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the reason a lot of video game movies flop is because a lot of them are made by Uwe Boll, who is a complete and utter retard.
O RLY? (Score:2)
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The Resident Evil movies make money.
Silent Hill was generally well-accepted, even by critics.
These movies are all far from good IMO (though Street Fighter does have a hilarious Raul Julia as M.Bison), but they were successful as far as I know.
A note to John (Score:5, Funny)
Your talent dwarfs your competition. You were the bomb in "Sliders", so I'll kindly look the other way whilst you make some bankage.
Keep on truckin'!
Sincerely,
Jesterboy
Re:A note to John (Score:5, Funny)
Your talent dwarfs your competition.
Not if he's playing Gimli, really.
Parent
This just in: (Score:2)
Film at 11!
Problem translating games to movie scripts? (Score:2)
I don't agree with issues translating games to movie scripts, other than his suggestion that young fresh talent is excluded in Hollywood (I guess that's true... he's the expert not me).
I think the real problem with me seeing that is I'm a gamer. So when Silent Hill released, I rushed out to see it having played and enjoyed the game. The story in Silent Hill the game was entertaining... why wouldn't it be entertaining in a movie theater?
Wing Commander (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's what I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
But for this movie, you don't even use the title of the videogame for the title of the movie, you just put it in the subtitle. So the movie isn't even called "Dungeon Seige" it's called "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale." I mean, partly I think he's hoping that someone's Mom, on hearing her son wants "Return of the King" for Christmas, will accidentally buy "In the Name of the King" instead. In that case, though, why bother with paying for a Dungeon Seige license?
It's a puzzle that must be solved!
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It is cheap, it comes with a build-in fan-base and it is free advertisment, i.e. this discussion wouldn't exist if it would be 100% original content not based on video game.
Re:Here's what I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't think:
1) Buy movie writes to game
2) Make a movie and attach name.
3) ?????
4) profit.
5) Repeat.
It really is:
1) Buy movie writes to game.
2) Make good movie that is based on best selling game.
3) ponder why every one hates my movie.
4) Challenge and threaten any one who insults my movie.
5) Repeat.
Parent
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Heh... You're being too gracious...
Bad's one thing, Uwe Boll's in another category all himself.
I don't think there are current words in the English vocabulary that even begin to describe the horror that is a Uwe Boll movie.
Wrong Games (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring that they tend to use terrible writers, I can't help but wonder if they are just choosing the wrong games.
Mario doesn't really have a story, so it's not that surprising that it was hard to make a good movie out of that. Games like the Final Fantasy games or Mass Effect have good stories, but they would lose too much if you cut it down to even the length of a long film (2.5 hours).
What you need to do is set it in the universe. The Resident Evil movies got that part right. There is no reason those couldn't have been made into good movies. Get good writers, it could have worked.
Portal would be interesting. It has a great character, interesting special effects, but it's too short. You might be able to make an interesting mini-movie out of it (say a half-hour TV show?). I don't think you'd be able to make a decent length film (1.5 hours) out of what's there.
You could expand it. Start with a little of the back story of Aperture Science (maybe show the introduction as a new employee comes in?) As things go on you could see the guy work on GlaDOS a little and her development and as the tests on previous subjects. You move on to GlaDOS doing what she did and then finally Chell and her attempt to escape. Basically GlaDOS is the main character of the movie. I could see it working, but keeping that great dark humor balance as well as the creepiness balance through the whole movie would be an incredible challenge. I don't know how you'd fit in the description of the portal device ("man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain") without breaking any sense of reality. Since part of the mood of Portal comes from having no idea what is going on, the script would be a real departure in some ways which would make it even more challenging. I think we all know that GlaDOS could be the next HAL easily. HAL didn't have cake.
Set a movie in the world of Ivalice (from FF: Tactics/XII). Maybe something set in the Ratchet & Clank universe. Heck, make one of the Phoenix Wright cases into a comedy/drama. There are options.
Instead, producers find the biggest game they can (let's take GTA), then conceive a movie that fits in (a gangster plot!), then make it fit in more (we'll have him not own a car, he'll just take them when he needs one), then beat it with a bad script stick ("You can't tell me what to do, I've already committed Grand Theft Auto..."), then add some flashy effects (everything blows up, lots of blood) and there is nothing to differentiate the movie from any other bad formulaic summer movie except there is a video game's name on it.
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Plot murder occurs too (Score:2)
Take for instance Doom. OK... well... it had a BFG (which incidentally wasn't even *that* like the game BFG). The plot, sucked. However, when I played through the actual game (Doom 3, that is), I remember being quite interested in the plot: alien race opens portal to nether dimension,
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Part of the game's excellent story came from the fact that you were the lab rat. You could watch GlaDOS peering at you, waiting for you to complete an objective before voicing her sarcasm laden approval of your success.
Another part of the game's excellence is how it was about learning. You had to continually learn how to use this nifty device you were given. This was, of course, backed up by the lab rat atmosphere.
How do you
I saw the movie... (Score:3, Informative)
Polar Opposites (Score:5, Interesting)
A game is interesting because the protagonist (you) must never screw up.
"Romeo and Juliet" the play/movie is interesting because the characters make tragic mistakes and suffer horribly.
"Romeo and Juliet" the game would suck precisely because they would all live happily ever after.
"Doom" the game was cool because you ran around killing monsters, and tried repeatedly in difficult scenarios until you overcame the scenario.
"Doom" the movie sucked because watching someone else playing a game perfectly for 2 hours is enormously dull so the scriptwriter threw in unrelated "and the protagonist screwed up" material.
Some may counter by tweaking game rules so that "correct" behavior includes "screwups"; no, "screwing up" means failing to exercise "correct" behavior (whatever the system defines that as).
Some may counter by inserting "and then something horrible happens" moments in a game; no, the tragedy comes from the protagonist messing up, not by Demonos Ex Machina events being thrust upon him.
People want to hear stories about how someone else screwed up (regardless of whether they overcame the screwup in the end).
People want to do things correctly and successfully.
Implementing these to cross-purposes is not interesting
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Many games have slim to none emotional arc. That is okay. There is nothing wrong with an action game like Doom not having much of a story. But when you make it into a movie, you need to add an emotional arc.
Some games do have emotional arcs. They
Pitfall - The Movie (Score:2)
Video game movie party game (Score:2)
No inherent challenge in game-based movies. (Score:3, Insightful)
That aside, let's take any story-driven game. Regardless of how a player is allowed to complete the game a fairly linear story is told. Mass Effect, Halo 3, Bioshock, Half Life 2 all provide straight-forward stories. How the story is told may differ from a movie, but otherwise there's a progression to the plot that is essentially the same as most movies and novels. A setting is established, a conflict is presented, there's a gradual buildup, a climax and resolution.
Really, the only games that are difficult to base a game on are those with randomly generated content and perhaps MMOs. However, even with MMOs there's generally a rich enough setting and back story that a creative writer has plenty to work with.
If anything I'd argue it's easier to base a movie on a game than a novel. Remove the gameplay and enough story is provided to easily fit a standard-length movie. I'd argue it's far more difficult to effectively condense a 300+ page novel into a two hour film.
The challenge in basing a movie on a game is the often weak and generic source material. Also, often just enough content is provided to meet the needs of the game essentially forcing a movie writer to expand on it. But again, it goes back to creativity and skill. A great writer and director could make a movie based on anything with compelling results. Of course, once a movie studio gets involved all that goes out the window. But again, the problem isn't the medium.