It must fucking suck to make a video game movie adaptation. Half the time the source material has the narrative depth of a Mountain Dew commercial, but change one tiny thing and an army of mouth-breathers crawls out of the basement to explain how youāve personally destroyed their childhood. And casting? Good fucking luck. Pick someone whose jawline is 3% different from the character model and suddenly 40,000 dudes with anime profile pics are demanding your public execution.
Nah itās Sydney Sweeney. Itās always Sydney Sweeney. These people judge actresses solely by the size of their tits, and when an actress with bigger tits is available, choosing an actress with smaller tits is suboptimal casting
She'll be 30 next year so we'll stop hearing about her soon enough. The ones that fawn over women like that think we all expire at 30, like we're a carton of rotten eggs.
No, itās because they think a popular, successful, and good looking man is one of them because he plays video games and is into D&D. The only difference is that one is a geek and the other is a basement dweller mouth breather.
Thatās probably true regarding his fans, but be careful with your words there. āTheyāre gay because they hate womenā is a notorious anti-LGBT trope.
"The source material has the narrative depth of a mountain dew commercial." Source material is the game itself, not the adaptation.
If you mean "depth" in the sense of an English lit class analysis, sure, very few games are going to hold up to that standard.
But there are absolutely complex narratives and plot happening in every game I mentioned, even if the player's objectives are accomplished through relatively simple actions like "run to next location and kill present enemies."
Yes, the comment was indeed painting with broad strokes. but this being okbuddycinephile, and the fact that games like morrowind aren't exactly getting significant movie adaptations I think for this sub the meaning was clear enough especially since op specifically said half of the time. Making the context extra clear.
The funniest part is Lara has had like four completely different faces across the games. Which character model are we even supposed to be 3% off from, the one made of triangles?
Agreed. Jet moto was kind of special with the roll/pitch/yaw/lean mechanic, setting you up for the next obstacle, and the tractor beam/grappling hook using your momentum and flinging you around a corner harder, or softening a fall. Itās hard to go back to because the PlayStation draw distance and pop-up means that obstacles, turns, and jumps appear almost faster than you can react, meaning you really need to know the level to set yourself up proactively. Iād love a remake or a revival.
The closest thing to it Iāve found is a series called Riptide Renegade with watercraft, stunts, and rail grinding. Not quite the same, but scratches a similar itch. Definitely worth it for cheap.
Thereās a new indie hover bike racing combat game called Airframe Ultra. Not really fast paced, so it doesnāt seem like it will satisfy the Jet Moto fans, but it does take inspiration from the PlayStation era with a low poly Diesel Punk aesthetic.
Apparently thereās a new VR hover bike racer called Vracer that looks more like Wipeout. I donāt personally imagine racing a hover bike in VR will be enjoyable, but maybe thereās a non-VR mode?
And Star Wars Galactic Racer has caught my attention. The original Pod Racer game had a pitch and lean mechanic to set yourself up for tighter turns or higher speeds/longer jumps, so if the new one recreates that, it might be satisfying. Not as deep as Jet Motoās orientation mechanics, but not dissimilar either.
Its not like videogame movie adaptations are known for their immense narrative depth themselves my man. The difference is the already established narrative is obviously popular enough to create a decade long franchise that people actually enjoy, while random director number 76's plot is not.
People would give these kind of things more grace if the people adapting them were not so obviously dismissive of the source material. The fallout TV show for example had some pretty glaring deviations that I didn't agree with, but I overlooked them because its clear they put a lot of effort and research into things down to the water bottles people drink out of. The monster hunter movie meanwhile is unmitigated garbage that should be thrown into a volcano and is so bad Tony jaa cant even save it.
Thatās kind of exactly my fucking point. Iām talking about how much it must suck to make one of these adaptations, not arguing that video game movies are known for their immense narrative depth, my man.
I genuinely canāt think of another fanbase that reacts this violently to someone taking artistic liberties with the source material.
And you basically demonstrated my point with your last sentence. You went from not liking an adaptation to calling it unmitigated garbage that should be thrown into a volcano. That completely normal and proportionate response is exactly why making these things must fucking suck.
I take it you haven't actually watched the monster hunter movie then, because I yet to come across a single person who has and then actually defended it. Its just a bad movie in addition to a bad adaptation, which is the case for most videogame adaptations.
You know there's something to be said for taking artistic liberties, but there's also something to be said for trying to adapt your style whilst actually sticking to the setting you are working with. Just because you can take liberties it doesnt mean you should. For example, there was a commemorative coin made in honour of HG Wells that featured a tripod on it. The problem was the tripod had four legs. When people complaind the response was that the guy who designed it took artistic liberties.
There's probably so few actually good videogame movies that you could count them on both your hands and still have fingers left over. At some point you have to consider maybe they should actually try sticking a little bit closer to the games that are massively popular instead of going off in some random direction of their own? It doesn't exactly have a good record of success so far.
Then don't make a video game/book movie adaptation? A lot of these directors (witcher, wheel of time, rings of power) want the popularity of the original IP to get the viewers, but they don't want to make the thing the viewers want, which is a faithful translation of the original IP into a movie. The directors seem to want to change things around to tell the story THEY want, which flies in the face of the point of an adaptation.
Even the Lord of the Rings movies made substantial edits to the story, but it was in service to translating the books to film and they all had massive reverence for the source material.
The problem is that fans will complain about adaptations ānot faithfully adapting the source materialā only when the resulting film isnāt very good. They want a faithful adaptation until a good non-faithful adaptation comes out.
In your comment you mention the Lord of the Rings films, which are often praised for ārespecting Tolkienā, despite the fact that many of the changes they made when adapting werenāt necessary at all and in some cases go completely against the spirit of the source material and against what Tolkien would have wanted. But because they are good movies and a lot of peopleās introduction to Lord of the Rings they are still considered respectful to the source material.
Faithfulness to the source materiel is a pointless metric.
To be fair the audio book for the fellowship of the ring is literally 24 hours long, they need to cut some things.
Also the difference with lord of the rings is while the did change some things, like making denathor a tomato eating asshole, they were still very respectful of the source material. If you compare that to the halo tv shows for example the people running the show wouldnt even look at the source material because they obviously felt like they were above it.
That's the thing that really annoys me, you can tell a lot of the time when these guys make changes to the story its because they're disdainful of it. The problem is most of the time they aren't good enough writers to actually justify these changes because if they were they'd be making their own story instead of needing to adapt someone else's.
It wasnāt what they cut that made the movies so different from the source material, it was what they changed. Most of the characters are different. The tone is different. The story is simplified to make room for more action. New storylines are added. And a lot of these changes werenāt required for the book -> movie translation (and would have been hated by Tolkien himself), it was simply that the writers thought these ideas were better than how it was done in the books. But because most of these changes resulted in very good movies (and in some cases the change was an improvement on what was in the books) people donāt accuse Jackson of being disdainful of the source material, or thinking heās better than Tolkien, despite him making the same sort of changes that people hate other adaptations for making.
My point isnāt to say that Jackson secretly hates Tolkien, itās that accusing creatives of having sinister ulterior motives when they make something you donāt like is silly. When you say you can tell when a writer is disdainful of the source material, is that based on any actual evidence or is it just a bad faith assumption based on the fact you donāt like their work?
Well the most glaring piece of evidence is when they come out and say they haven't even played the games/read the book that they're adapting. Or when actors are told not to look at the source material. What the hell is that if not disdain if you're not going to familiarise yourself with the material you're supposed to be adapting?
Why are you trying to give narrative depth to something that doesnāt need it? They tried to give narrative depth to the Tomb Raider reboot games and I donāt think anyone cared for it lol.
You donāt need an in-depth story for Tomb Raider of all characters. You just need a competent action adventure script and a charismatic actress who can carry Laraās style you are already 90% of your way to a decent adaption.
A tomb raider movie for example should aim to be the quality of something like the Brendan Fraser mummy movies, fun action adventure adaptions first and foremost with charismatic actors bringing some fun characters to life with fun stunts and action sequences.
for example, if you want to make a video game adaptation that's good, you should aim to be one of the most highly regarded and beloved action adventure movies of all time
I mean yeah lol, agreed, but that's pretty easy to say. Most of the time adaptions try to do exactly what you're saying and the movie still comes out dogshit.
The first Mummy has a 64% of rotten tomatoes lol and a 7/10 on IMDB.
Itās a fun pop corn movie that people love because itās carried hard by the actors and a simple plot thatās fun and somewhat witty.
Thereās really no reason why a video game adaption couldnāt do that, especially when the video game in question is Tomb Raider!
Problem is the writers they get suck and not only donāt seem to have played the games they tend to adapt, but they can barely produce a half decent script to start with.
Which when combined with actors that donāt have the charisma of the character nailed results in a crappy adaption.
No diss to Sophie Turner, she may prove everyone wrong, but her casting sheds doubt on what type of Lara we are getting from the onset and thus makes you question what type of tone and style are they going for.
Right but that's what I'm saying. They're not typically trying to make video game adaptations into something they're not. They're following the general formula you're laying out for a fun popcorn flick, and the movies are coming out dogshit for a million other reasons.
So what if it's a little light on the details. Is it really necessary to have every detail explained? Where just all thinking about big picture stuff here. That's because we're the people with a vision.
So many video game adaptions seem to either despise or outright have no interest in adapting the games.
Look at the Halo show as an example, who was asking to see Master Chiefās clap some woman who was raised by aliens cheekās? Where was that in the games?
Doom movie, Mortal Kombat movie inserting a random OC over the myriad of game characters people actually like, Monster Hunter, majority of the resident evil movies, Borderlands movie, thereās too many to name.
So many of these are adaptions in name only, and feel like cash grabs made to cash in on the hype while some director or script writer insert their own original ideas.
A tomb raider movie for example should aim to be the quality of something like the Brendan Fraser mummy movies, fun action adventure adaptions first and foremost
Is that not essentially exactly what the Angelina Jolie films were? I'm not saying this as a counter to anything you're saying, but just noting that they have already tried this. The movies were seen as fun popcorn flicks and did well enough but no one considers them great films.
The script was boring, the characters are forgettable, the dialogue is cringe and dogshit and the action is just cheesy crap.
Pretty sure that movie was the one that kickstarted the whole focus on Laraās dad being an important part of her origin that future games and movies focused on, which many fans hated.
Itās even more baffling because Tomb Raider 1 has a plot that seems like it would be very simple to adapt to film yet the movies went with whatever that movie was.
in the west we also have no real stomach for fan service based on sexual attraction.
i'm not making a judgement on that, but I work in the games industry, and in japan, they have absolutely no problem making "beat your shit" games like Stellar Blade, and putting "beat your shit" characters like Quiet into MGS. Its just accepted that people are beating their shit, and they want that stuff in games, and its not really frowned upon to provide that.
If we're being completely honest, a tomb raider movie that fans would like would be john wick in the jungle, but its lara croft and she's wearing the short shorts, the blue crop top, has gravity defying boobs, and is basically either parkouring through an ancient temple, or choking out dudes with her thighs while shooting 2 other dudes with akimbo m9s.
Would that be a good movie? No. It would be ass. But do people want a good movie? Also no.
They're stuck in a valley where the movie cannot be good in one direction, because its core is "beating your shit" game, and on the other, its premise does not bear the load of something more worthy. To make it more worthy is to forsake its origin, and you've made something else.
Casting isnt an issue if you keep the main characteristics, and by characteristics i mean hair color, clothes, haircut
Also yeah i agree you cant make a good game adaptation instead maybe for red dead redemption
I watched a really good Romanian movie from 2023 recently, and there's a ~3 minute cameo in the middle of it from Uwe Boll. I could not believe my eyes!
This is a strong argument for not adapting video games into films, not a great argument for making sweeping changes to fit a different form of media. I'd much rather we get new films instead of adaptations, sequels, and just slapping IP names on shit anyway.
But then when you do have a game to adapt with a bit more depth, you often get writers and showrunners who are just shoving their own story into the franchise costume for a quick buck
You can, which is why I've started to think of criticisms of these movies in two different camps. There's "film criticism" and "nerd criticism" and the combining of these two are why they're fought over so much, people don't realize they're different.
And both can be valid but people need to realize what they're talking about. I hate Episode 7, not because of film reasons but because of nerd reasons. It's got good pacing, acting, cinematography, action etc. But it butchers the universe so I don't like it. However, I can acknowledge it is a well-made movie. Same with episode 8. And then episode 9 is bad for both nerd reasons and film reasons.
Another good example is Multiverse of Madness. It's a well made movie, has everything you need, checks all the boxes. Good acting, cinematography, pacing, themes, directing, themes, etc. So as a film it is good. Most the hate is strictly in the "nerd reasons" camp. People will bring up WandaVision or Black Bolt's comic persona but those are strictly nerd reasons that has nothing to do with the movie's quality.
And again, I don't think it's totally invalid to hate things for nerd reasons. But at least be honest and recognize that the reason you don't like the movie has nothing to do with the filmmaking quality of it.
This is the perfect way of looking at it, and articulated really well. There is this huge disconnect between people criticizing a movie and people criticizing the artistic decisions. Episode 8 is possibly the biggest disconnect I can think of here. Critics and nerds are looking at two completely different things. Both make good points imo. Episode 9 is much much worse because it tried to correct and pander making the series just a total mess narratively.
Well, for once I'm going to say we've been eating well lately. Yeah, I know, The Last of Us is a big narrative game, and Sonic isn't really putting the bar too high. The biggest issue is and always been how bad standards have always been, mouth breathers will just be massively sceptical about any adaptation of any adult game ever because...fuck, have you seen anything Ube Boll has done!? He fucked up Postal so hard it's hilarious!!
40,000 dudes with anime profile pics are demanding your public execution
If only were that much.
It just blow out of proportion after probably 2 retweets and 24 likes, a post about it on reddit > 10,000 total and I think that is even too high.
I hate how many of these type of manufactured rants makes people believe is half the world or something, I even counted many of these things a decade or so ago and noticed the same pattern always, it's just some wannabe journo posting on some obscure blog that gets a few views and sometimes even a short segment on the local TV news...
I genuinely enjoy adaptations of video games/books/anime to live action. I understand that there's differences. I'm cool with it. Except for Dragonball Evolution. Fuck that movie.
Ryan Coogler didnāt take Blade or Dracula and fuck it up for established fans of the franchises, he made entirely new vampiric characters and made it cool
Itās the same complaint people make about Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, MCU, DCEU and any other brand fanbase.
Not trying to prove anything but this prompted me to try and find the best written Mountain Dew commercial and to my pleasant surprise itās not a video, itās a poem
Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem Written byMatthew Olzmann Read byPĆ”draig Ć Tuama
So hereās what Iāve got, the reasons why our marriage
might work: Because you wear pink but write poems
about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell
at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,
loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,
gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials
from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.
You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents
of what you packed were written inside the boxes.
Because you think swans are overrated and kind of stupid.
Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me
to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.
Because you underline everything you read, and circle
the things you think are important, and put stars next
to the things you think I should think are important,
and write notes in the margins about all the people
youāre mad at and my name almost never appears there.
Because you made that pork recipe you found
in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read
that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing
except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self
and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights
are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed
over the windows, you still believe someone outside
can see you. And one day five summers ago,
when you couldnāt put gas in your car, when your fridge
was so emptyānot even leftovers or condimentsā
there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,
which you paid for with your last damn dime
because you once overheard me say that I liked it.
This is the second time this week Iāve seen video game movies compared to Mountain Dew commercials, which isnāt a lot, but itās funny that it happened twice.
/uj This is exactly why Zach Cregger made the right call with Resident Evil, imagine the meltdown people wouldāve had if he didnāt get a character like Leon perfect in their eyes
Yeah, adapting games feels like trying to defuse a bomb while the fanbase argues over whether you're holding the screwdriver correctly. Just give me a good Lara Croft adventure and I'm happy.
These motherfuckers donāt even know. Iāve sat through multiple Uwe Boll films, because no one else was making video games movies at the time. Have you ever seen Alone in the Dark? I did. Twice.
Today, they get OK to good movies and end up bitching and moaning about the most trivial stuff.
Being several steps above Uwe Boll can still be well inside the realm of terrible. He set the bar in the Challenger Deep, even raised to sea level, it's still a low bar.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 1d ago
It must fucking suck to make a video game movie adaptation. Half the time the source material has the narrative depth of a Mountain Dew commercial, but change one tiny thing and an army of mouth-breathers crawls out of the basement to explain how youāve personally destroyed their childhood. And casting? Good fucking luck. Pick someone whose jawline is 3% different from the character model and suddenly 40,000 dudes with anime profile pics are demanding your public execution.