Screenhead

After reading Ken’s article, and with E3 coming up, I felt a need to respond to his thoughts on video-game movie adaptations with a few of my own suggestions. Video-game adaptations are a strange bunch. Ever since the Super Mario Brothers film in 1993, they always manage to get people flocking in despite being generally disliked. The only films ever to do substantially well was Resident Evil, which spawned two sequels, and Tomb Raider. The rest sank, and pretty much all of them were universally despised. I feel as if the makers of these kind of movies are incredibly lazy. They know that they have an in-built audience to bring in the bucks, and just attempt to throw in a few explosions to keep them amused. Story-wise, I’ve yet to see a video-game adaptation that doesn’t stink. The upcoming Hitman is based on the successful series of games. The games are almost entirely devoid of a story, but again their popularity is driving the producers, with their dollar-sign eyes, to throw an adaptation into the cinemas.

That said, there’s no reason why there can’t be video-game adaptations that are both thrilling and could potentially have a satisfying story. With Hollywood relying on sequels and remakes even more, it’s the video gaming world that is producing some of the most interesting and innovative experiences. Below are a few video games that could potentially be both entertaining and well received films.

HALF LIFE

An obvious choice, considering it is one of the most acclaimed video games in history. And I can understand why, for this creepy game, in which aliens invade a research facility, produced some stunning and memorable moments. The sequel even improved in the formula, adding complex physics-based challenges and highly intelligent enemies. The plot of the first game introduces the character of scientist Gordon Freeman, who dons a special suit enabling him to trade blows with all sorts of weird creatures, as he tries to close the rift that was accidentally opened between this world and another. The only problem with the games is their tendency to borrow from films. The walkers in Half-Life 2 (pictured above) are very much taken from War of the Worlds, and the head crabs that infest both games are pretty much based on the face-huggers of the Aliens films.

An attempt has been made to bring half-life to the screen. IGN reported in 2004 that a script was being developed, but nothing has emerged yet. A short film was made, entitled Half Life Uplink, but apparently it was pulled from distribution, possibly due to the awful reception it received. There is an amateur movie that attempts to adapt the movie, proving a general craving to see a Half Life film.

Personally, I could easily see Half Life as a movie. However, instead of following a gun-touting scientist, I would prefer to see the film focus on the security guard that was the protagonist in the expansion pack entitled Blue Shift. He’s a more accessible entry into the story, his ignorance mimicking ours as we learn what happens, with occasional interaction with someone like Freeman. A great sequence in the original game is realising that the military sent into the base are not there to rescue, but to eliminate everyone due to potential contamination. That idea already worked wonderfully in 28 Weeks Later, and could be explored even more in this film.

FLASHBACK

As a video game enthusiast in my youth, Flashback has to be the only game whose video sequences I didn’t skip. Perhaps it was the stylised artwork, or the soundtrack, or just the sheer challenge of this updated version of Prince of Persia, where guns, power shields, and teleporters accompany your platform-jumping skills. The plot involves a young man called Conrad, who is striving to recover his identity in 2142. After a series of levels Conrad uncovers his memory and discovers an alien plot to dominate earth by posing as officials. Conrad then decides to save the world by beaming onto the alien world to destroy them from within.

A movie of this game would be a little like Terminator 2 (for the morphing aliens) meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers (identity abducting) meets Total Recall. A detective film with plenty of sci-fi action, and even a few twists as Conrad uncovers the truth behind the conspiracy.

FINAL FANTASY 8

Most video game fans know what happened with the first attempt to bring the Final Fantasy world to the screen. The Spirit Within, using nothing but rigid CGI, pretty much flopped in the box office. Another film, Advent Children, was made, but failed to hit theatres. It was based on Final Fantasy 7, one of the more popular games in the series.

Now, role-playing games have never been my thing, but the only one I’ve ever stuck with is Final Fantasy 8. What gripped me is the story, which follows a young student, Squall, as he starts his life in a military school, learning to control his powers as he channels the forces of several sentient beings, or Guardian Forces. But as Squall gets involved in the school and the battles it wages, he learns that he, and his friends, have more connections with this war than they think.

The story isn’t exactly the most original in the world, as we’ve seen the school of magical powers before (Harry Potter), as well as the idea of evil sorceresses and global battles between good and bad forces. But what the game, and the story, does have is a darker edge to it. I’ve never fully bought the “darkness” of Harry Potter, it’s all too twee for me, and Final Fantasy 8 could outdo Harry easily. Plus, like most Japanese stories, they never dumb themselves down for their audience, taking complicated narrative risks and providing something a bit more mentally meaty than Hollywood fare.

DAY OF THE TENTACLE

Back in the day, Lucasarts were the king of point-and-click adventures. Games which can be solved by selecting object and clicking around the screen need something special to make them entertaining. And games like Sam & Max, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and of course the Monkey Island series, were so humorously scripted as to make them more like comedies than video games. My personal favourite is Day of the Tentacle. It involved three friends who were thrown across time (modern, civil war, and future America) after attempting to stop an evil tentacle from attaining world domination.

The ingenuity of the game was having the character in the past affecting the present or future in order to overcome obstacles. For example, the character in the past alters the USA flag to resemble a tentacle, in order to enable the character in the future to infiltrate the tentacle-dominated world. Clever and amusing, the game’s creators could easily whip up an entertaining script.

DEUS EX

Another cyberpunk story, Deus Ex is another film that did go into development for a while, with Greg Pruss acting as writer, but fell off the radar in 2004. The game feels like a first-person shooter but instead involves character interaction and the development of skills, from weapons handling to computer hacking. It is also commended for being non-linear, with the player having to make choices that will affect the game’s eventual outcome. This all means that the story is integral to the gameplay, bringing it to the fore, forcing the player to immerse him or herself in the world.

And what a lovely world it is. Set in 2052, the game’s dystopia is caused by a new plague which hits humanity. A cure has been made, but resources are so limited that only the world’s elite are provided with it. Which not only causes huge public upset, culminating in countless riots, but also rampant terrorism as groups attempt to steal the anti-virus and sell it off to the highest bidder. The game’s protagonist, Denton, starts off as a member of the UN anti-terrorist agency, investigating cases of stolen vaccine, but only to uncover a conspiracy involving the Illuminati.

With a storyline as dense as this, a film version of Deus Ex would differ from Flashback greatly. Deus Ex would be more like a detective story set in the future, with occasional bouts of action to keep people awake. It’s a dark and sinister world, so I would imagine a Blade-Runner-like gloominess to the film would please fans and also make this video-game adaptation a bit more convincing than previous efforts.

WORMS

Not an obvious choice, for sure, considering it’s a turn-based strategy in which the aim is to annihilate the opposing team of worms with ridiculous weapons. But this could be the kind of animated movie that the people from Pixar should be thinking about. Ratatouille attempts to please everyone, but despite the positive reviews, it has been disappointing in terms of the box office. Animation needs to spread itself to cater for specific groups, with a Worms movie being for the boys.

The Playstation game featured amusing video sequences between rounds, and while they often borrowed from Looney Tunes, they were still effective. A Worms feature could consist of the following story: two groups of worms have been at war with each other for their entire lives (2 weeks), attempting to build weapons to destroy. The tension is maintained by both groups’ interaction with magpies, who are pretending to act as lookouts but are secretly setting the worms against each other in order to expose themselves and serve as the magpies’ dinner. Oh, and considering that worms are hermaphrodites, expect plenty of self-pleasuring gags.