Do video games really need movie adaptations?

Do video games really need movie adaptations? It’s a simple enough question which you can give a simple enough answer: No. They don’t ‘need’ them, but do they actually do anything worthwhile? In other areas of art (Yes, I am including video games as a form of art) there is a lot of cross over in this regard, the most notable being novels adapted into films, Gone Girl being the most recent successful example of this. There is certainly success with book to film adaptations, and whether this taking from books is or isn’t a problem is something to discussed at a later time, but for now, the question is can there be success with video game film adaptations?

The recent precedent that has been set with Video Games adaptations isn’t promising. Who remembers Doom? You don’t? Then you’re one of the lucky ones, you didn’t have to see one of the most revolutionary and significant games get made into a laughable action film. It even had scenes where the shots were in first person POV as if you were playing the game, which far from being a homage, was just an example of the lack of experience in adapting a game into a film. Another significant recent adaptation is the resident evil franchise, which may be one of the most successful video game adaptations, albeit not very good but successful nonetheless, due to the amount of money it made. The problem with both of these examples, however, is how they transverse the mediums; Doom was poor because it tried to show, literally, a video game as a film, and Resident Evil only found mild success from completely changing the plot from the games. Neither were true adaptations, so neither was truly successful.

There is another way to look at this question, and it is in view of films that are inspired by video games. While they are not real adaptations, there are many examples of successful films, good films, being created from this approach, the most obvious being Tron. Tron was inspired by pong, such a simple concept, and yet it became a somewhat groundbreaking film that was well received. The digital aspect of pong and the emphasis of shapes, is very noticeable in both the original Tron and its sequel, Tron legacy. This taking of a simple concept is a lot easier to transform into film, due to the ability to build upon the simplicity of the concept.

Finally, it would be apt to look at some upcoming video game adaptations, specifically, Assassins Creed and Uncharted.  For all the details that have been released, it would be difficult to say outright whether these films will be good or bad. However, what I can do is say why these films could be the first of many to be successful adaptations. Recent video games such as Assassins Creed and Uncharted are generally more concerned with both story and cinematics, and for that simple reason they could be good films because they already possess what is important in films. The gaming industries recent trend of popularity towards both AAA games and indie games both lend themselves to the adapting process by taking the story from AAA games without having to deal with the complexity of interwoven game mechanics, and the ability to build upon the simple basis laid out by simpler indie games.

So, do we need movie adaptations? As games get ever closer to filmic standards anyway, probably not, but as they are going to happen anyway, it’s nice to some evidence to suggest they won’t suck massive balls.

Conor M.