What It Will Take to Make a Good Video Game Movie.

Chances are if you were at all a fan of video games in your lifetime; something that more and more people have been getting behind with the rise of mobile games and the revival of casual gaming with the Wii, you might have seen the distaste many a gamer have for the shoddy film adaptations of popular video games over the last 30 years. From the original stinker of the Super Mario Brothers Movie, a movie that turns a story about a princess saving plumber into a convoluted mess that looked nothing like the source material; Mortal Kombat, an earnest effort to turn the wacky violent fighter that resulted in a cheesy action flick redeemed only by its amazing opening credits, and more recently films such as Alone in the Dark, House in the Dark, and Bloodrayne being stitched together with no effort and often being considered the worst movies produced by Rotten Tomatoes. Some of the worst movies ever made come from a bevy of film makers who weren’t able to transfer an interactive medium to a non-interactive medium. Which is not to say that this is a bad thing, if you want to experience the story of a video game, it’s always going to be best portrayed in a video game; and no Hollywood magic is going to change that.

That's right, even this!

The problem is though, is that Hollywood is still trying to embark on this fool’s errand with the logic of “if it worked for comic books, we can do that for video games”. Netflix tried to get the rights of Legend of Zelda to make an original series, a disappointingly bad movie based on the Hitman franchise was release this august, and surprisingly, the viral hit that was Five Nights at Freddy’s has been picked up by Wanrer Brothers to the confusion of gamers everywhere. Personally, as someone who has played all of these games to varying amounts of appreciation, I find it unnecessary, though I don’t see the problem with creative people trying to be the first to defy the stigma of the bad video game movie. Instead, to anyone who wishes to adapt any interactive story to the non-interactive medium that is film; I simply request some of the following items that should go into making a movie of this nature.

Listen up WB! Unless you want Markiplier leading an angry mob to your studios.

The first would be that unless you want to ruin any chance this film has of being good, do not directly adapt the story of the game. The reason all of these video game movies failed is because that it’s both impossible to replicate the stories of the source material to the same effect and quality and unnecessary to do so. The fact of the matter is, why on earth would I want to watch the story of master chief with the slim chance that it is competent, when I could just as easily play the story of master chief with the better chance of it being properly told? 

The second step to making a video game movie solves this problem, which is to not focus on the stories of these game, rather the worlds that they built. Going to Five Nights at Freddy’s, most people who dismiss it for and easy cash grab for Pewdiepie, have ignored that it has a large amount of lore and subtext found within the game. So when I found out that they were making a movie of this, I thought, “sure that could be cool, as long as they focus on the disturbing lore rather than the obvious jump scare fodder.” So if any video games movies are going to be told, it should be a story that expands on the established universe of the game rather than just poorly copying and pasting the Wikipedia plot of the game.

Seriously, if your not a fan of the games but love scary stories, you have GOT to check out this messed up lore here.

The third thing, which may probably serve the most difficult with the state of Hollywood, is to actually give a damn about what you’re adapting. Video games have had a terrible film career because they haven’t really put much effort into not making these things terrible. Most of these movies are being made not because they have rich stories or they have interesting ideas, but that they have large fan bases that Hollywood can exploit for all of their money.

Especially from this asshole.

The point I’m framing here is that the state of Hollywood is too greedy and exploitative of an environment for a legitimately good Video Game adaptation to be created. If the Five Nights at Freddy’s actually does follow the three steps to make a decent movie, I will be legitimately surprised since I can easily predict how it will more likely play out. It will be a direct adaptation of the first, more iconic with less lore, game and make it a cliché slasher with all of the terrible Hollywood horror tropes one could expect, except it uses creepy animatronics. It will be released too much disappointment because it had little to no effort being put into it, and will probably join the ranks of terrible video game movies and be forgotten. Because the fact of the matter is, Hollywood is more concerned with exploiting the love of the games for money rather than actually producing a worthwhile piece of film, and even if they put a competent film maker on the project, the studio won’t accept any more than the shallow cash grab they are calling for.

There is a way for this to change though. With online filmmaking coming more and more into the public eye as legitimate film making, the Indie film scene is turning into a source of original films that have a great deal of creativity and originality put into them. If you look up any fan trailers or fan films of a certain property, you’ll find that there is a large community of people who not only are capable of making a good adaptation, but want said adaptation to be made. Granted, the chances of an indie studio getting the rights to franchises that are worth billions of dollars are slim; the opportunities for film tie-ins to the smaller, more creative independent titles give video games the best chance they’ve ever had to transfer to film well.

Or you could just hand it over to the genius behind the Poltergeist reboot. *shudder*