GM Luna

As for Mark Wahlberg…I like his movies, I do. But as Nathan Drake? No thanks! I prefer Nathan Fillion for that role personally.

Overall, though, I agree that Hollywood needs to allow game movies to stand on their own instead of trying so hard to butcher what makes the game so great.

I recently came across an article that made me look into the RE movies. The article was about the delay/cancellation of the Bioshock Movie. The article was about the disagreement between the creators of the game and the movie producers. Hollywood, as they are most of the time, were looking for the biggest financial return and not to make great art. They wanted a PG13 rating or the movie was off. The reason for this is the fact that a whole additional demographic of people could then go buy tickets and experience the movie. Notice I didn’t write “enjoy the movie”.

I believe the producers of the game said something along the lines of (Bioshock deserves the freedom that comes along with an R rating and PG13 is not acceptable). This is when I looked into the RE movies. I thought “surely these movies must be PG13, how could these pieces of crap get made, and cleared, by Hollywood without the additional revenue from those under 16. (is it 16? it has been so long since I have had to worry about that). Guess what, rated R! So how is it that Bioshock doesn’t get the go ahead? I feel like that would have a huge turnout.

OK, back from my tangent. Great article! I agree that something has to be done with games to movies and even movies to games. I am encouraged that the creators of Bioshock are looking to make great art and not necessarily great profits. (though, if it is done corretly, they will make both).

Your buddy

Schmidty

You don’t watch many movies do you? While it is certainly fair to question how well Wahlberg would have done as Nathan Drake, it is a pretty egregious offense to suggest that a dummy made of straw has more acting talent than someone that was nominated for an Academy Award in an acting role. In the proper role and under the proper direction, Wahlberg is actually quite a solid actor and his filmography has some outstanding movies with outstanding performances by him scattered throughout it.

And really? Resident Evil: Degeneration and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children are good examples of video game films? Seriously? You aren’t being facetious there? Advent Children is basically a 100 minute cut scene, and as much as I love Square’s animation, the plot and acting in the film is atrocious. The same could be said about Degeneration, with slightly lower quality animation.

Aside from that I disagree with pretty much every point you’ve made here, although I do agree that people making game movies should at least have an idea of what makes the games worthy of turning into a film.

I think the problem with video game movies is that the filmmakers are trying to please everyone. Instead of just setting out to make a good movie they are trying to please fans of the game and appeal to a mass market audience. Are there good stories to tell in the film medium that originated as video games? Sure there are. But a lot of what makes games great as a storytelling medium is the interactivity and films don’t have that. It is going to take better writers, better actors and better directors to coax those stories into actually good films. It is not just a matter of giving video game fans what they want, because what we want isn’t a good movie, its a good game. A movie needs to appeal to more than just those fans and it needs to do so via well thought out adaptation.

Oh and Tony does suck at games, all of them.

major problem with the casino, slots are TOTALLY lame. chocobo races are ok as a form of gambling, but the actual chocobo racing basically sucks.

I feel the gate system was a weird, unnecessary imposition into the FF13 world. IMO they used them as a story mechanism so they could slap DLC for sazh/fang/vanille/snow/casino onto the game. the complete absence of fal’cie and new l’cie is also weird… like… really ? They had SO much they couldve done using a time travel system to visit the time when fal’cie were active and the original war with cocoon, why avoid it??? gah. just so much wasted potential.

anyway, agreed that I think this is an honest review, well done.