Topic: You've Seen the Movie, Don't Play the Game

[nitsu niflheim]

An interesting article about Enter the Matrix and other license based games.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2083664/

[Shift Key]

It's quite interesting how, despite the movie and video game industry being in competition, no-one has had a movie-to-game or game-to-movie conversion that has been successful.

I point out:
Super Mario Bros -  the Movie
Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
Tomb Raider

There have been so many movie to game conversions that have sucked, that i won't even attempt to compile a list.
Someone else can if they feel like it.

[ThePerm]

goldeneye

[PIAC]

star wars games well not all of them, but alot of them are actually good, even the side scrolling Super Starwars, Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi SNES games, they were awsome

[mouse_clicker]

"no-one has had a movie-to-game or game-to-movie conversion that has been successful."

While I do agree that most movie-to-game and game-to-movie conversions suck (with the exception of Goldeneye and various Star Wars games, as already pointed out), to say they're unsucessful wouldn't be true. Goldeneye sold extremely well, as is Enter the Matrix right now, and many movies based on games have bee box office hits (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil). However, I think we can all concur that almost any licensed videogames have a lot of bad history to overcome to be popular.

[Infernal Monkey]

Interesting article. I didn't know Dave Perry designed Global Gladiators on the Mega Drive!

Quote
I used to write video game ads for a living. One of our clients was a company with a richly deserved reputation for putting out awful games based on licenses purchased from television and movies. During a meeting about a particularly awful licensed game, I remember one of the marketing people saying, "That show's so hot right now, we could put out any piece of crap and people would buy it." The client's company then put out several pieces of crap based on the license, and as predicted, people bought them.

That sounds like THQ to me. They were well known back in the 8/16-Bit days for their horrid games based on movies and television series. Wayne's World got one of the lowest scores ever, Ren and Stimpy Veediots was dreadful, Tom and Jerry (SNES version) was utter rubbish. The list could go on...

But yeah, it's no secret that the majority of movie based games are bad. And it's certainly no secret that they sell very well.  

[Fish]

Quote
Originally posted by: PIAC
Super Starwars, Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi SNES games, they were awsome

Got to love the laziness of developers back then, just slamming word "Super" infront of all games.

[Grey Ninja]

Actually, I personally have some good memories about the go-betweens between movies and games.

For Movies:
Resident Evil was quite good, and I look forward to the sequel.
Mortal Kombat was also pretty good, although the sequel sucked.
Tomb Raider was a heck of a lot better than the game.
Final Fantasy kicked a hell of a lot more ass than recent Final Fantasies.  I liked the movie.

For Games:
Goldeneye and Star Wars games, as mentioned.
Robotech: Battle Cry was WAY better than the anime it was based off.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was pretty good.

[Termin8Anakin]

I loved the Mario Movie.
Screw those who didn't!
It was funny, adventurous, and it had many things that made it Mario in real life, and I can't say I can imagine them doing the movie any other way (I've said this before too many times).
Streefighter sucked, even though it had some sort of 'all-star' cast (Kylie is still hot).
And they really tried hard to have a reason for the Mortal Kombat movies eh?
Tomb Raider 1 sucked hard, but I'm looking forward to number 2.
Resident Evil was OK, and I'm looking forward to 2 (a city that's totally abandoned is pretty freaky).
Final Fantasy was actually pretty good. I don't know why people always compare it to Pixar's efforts (beside being CG). The story was good. But John Lasseter made a good point when he said 'why fo they have to do fully photo-realistic humans in CG when they could save millions just by using real actors'.

[Grey Ninja]

Quote
Originally posted by: Termin8Anakin
But John Lasseter made a good point when he said 'why fo they have to do fully photo-realistic humans in CG when they could save millions just by using real actors'.

Because they could.  

[Termin8Anakin]

They could, yes, but they had to re-do the human models pratically every year since the technology kept improving, so that would mean that they spent more money than they should have, when they could have improved the story.

[Infernal Monkey]

Quote
Originally posted by: Termin8Anakin
But John Lasseter made a good point when he said 'why fo they have to do fully photo-realistic humans in CG when they could save millions just by using real actors'.

Because then we'd be going back to those horrid days of Black Hole Assult and Red Alert style video clips, with the real actors that displayed no personality at all.

[Termin8Anakin]

*shudders*
I remember that.
The first jedi Knight game had real-life actors in the cut scenes. That was scary.
I guess that's a valid point for games, but then I was making the point for movies.......meh.

[Infernal Monkey]

Ooooh, movies. Well... Er, actors seem to be pricing themselves out of the business now. We'll most likely get to the stage where it'll become cheaper to do Final Fantasy: Spirits Within type movies than actually hiring an actor to do it all

After all, CG actors don't need stunt doubles, food, transport or $20, 000, 000. And they don't bitch!

[Grey Ninja]

You have to remember that Square is a game developer though.  The importance of GOOD CG characters cannot be stressed enough in game design.  The movie was essentially a game without all the gameplay, which is what Square has been doing in increasing quantities in all their games.  

But really, CG is an art style in itself.  It's like asking why people make cartoons when they could easily do the same things in real life to a certain degree.

I must mention that Titan AE did mix CG and cartoon artwork to a great degree, and it worked PERFECTLY though.  Their CG work was very different from Final Fantasy though, and I doubt that the cartoon artwork would have worked in such a movie.  But picture real actors in Final Fantasy, and tell me how much that would have sucked.  

[Termin8Anakin]

Yeah.
Titan AE was pretty good, but I think the CG for 'New Earth' sucked. You know the bit where the camera pulls back from Cale and Akima out to space? The cliff that they're on well, didn't look to good. See it for yourself.

When Photo-realistic CG Humans are like a walk in the park for Computer Animators, well, yeah. It's just that the only thing going for FF:TSW was that it had realistic humans and Aki Ross's hair was a technological breakthrough. I asked my friends, and most of the didn't know the story of it until the read the subtitles on the DVD version. My parents didn't know that it was computer animated.

My point is that until it's easy to do CG Humans, than they shouldn't sacrifice the story so much that the CG itself takes over.
Kudos to Sqaure though for trying, but the loss of the movie also made Sony buy a share of Sqaure to save them.

[Grey Ninja]

The story was quite easy to follow I thought.  The thing is that realistic humans aren't going to be perfected unless people keep trying.  That's what Square did.  As for Titan AE, I never really noticed any ugliness about Planet Bob.    I guess I should check that out next time I watch it.

[GCNMasterX]

Games that turn into movies turn out better than the movie-to-game ports. Is that Metroid Prime movie still in production?? If it is, it's gonna be sweet.

[Termin8Anakin]

Yeah.
And now there's going to be an Eternal Darkness movie and TV show. How's that for getting the game more exposure!