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It's kind of ridiculous that 50+ years of gaming and we're just now getting quality Video Game TV and Movie adaptations.

Bman94

Bman94

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,557
In the past few years we've had Cyberpunk 2077 Edgerunners, Arcane, Sonic the Hedgehog movies, the Super Mario Movie, The Last of Us and now Fallout release to critical acclaimed from fans and critics. Why did it have to take this long?

It seems like the successes came from a simple standpoint of making smart decisions with the source material and understanding of the world's. Of course budgets play a huge factor into Star talent, writers, editors etc., but I feel like many of these things could have been present many years ago.

Like Resident Evil should have been such an easy project to make into a feature film. It's just a horror zombie story with a seedy organization running the shots. Somehow that was too difficult to do correctly. Or how multiple fighting game adaptations could just be martial arts films with your favorite characters Fighting, but we get extremely odd and poor movies like the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter movies.

Are we finally having stability with video game adaptations? Can the stigma of terrible video game TV shows and movies finally go away and we can continue to have projects with love and care of the Franchises to the forefront?
 
cursed knowledge

cursed knowledge

Member
Mar 15, 2019
3,055
Brazil
it was only natural considering the cinematic inspirations that games took in the last 10 years

games didn't have hours long and fully acted stories in the early days
 
Mr. President

Mr. President

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Oct 27, 2017
2,867
The Kirby anime is 20 years old and it's as great of an adaptation as you could ask for.
It's like a mini Japanese Simpsons.
 
Wil Grieve

Wil Grieve

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Oct 25, 2017
6,265
I maintain that Super Mario Bros (1993) is fucking cinema gold and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me.
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,052
I'm just happy that we can now see a video game-based TV/movie announcement and not fear the worst (and have those fears confirmed) like we used to. Better late than never!
 
Shadowrun

Shadowrun

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Oct 26, 2017
1,787
It took people who grew up with gaming to get jobs in the film and tv industry for gaming to be taken seriously. It makes total sense.
 
Servbot24

Servbot24

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
43,504
I don't see why it's a given that just because game stories exist, movies should duplicate what takes place in those video game stories. In a vacuum I would expect movie creators to have their own stories to tell.
 
MadLaughter

MadLaughter

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,176
As the medium's cultural and financial share increased, that allowed studios to spend more money on making these adaptations. And money helps buy better talent, sets, effects, cameras, etc.

So it feels pretty natural for the quality of adaptations to increase over time as it became easier for companies to justify the spend.

(The gamers in the industry thing is the other half of it)
 
Lowrys

Lowrys

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Oct 25, 2017
12,666
London
It took us nearly 1,000 years to get decent TV/film adaptations of novels!

Edit: I see I'm equally late to the party lol
 
flashman92

flashman92

Member
Feb 15, 2018
4,572
Over 30 years, Sonic has arguably had 5 successful tv adaptations, and one that we don't talk about
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,887
Ibis Island
It is a little funny it took them this long to go "wait, gaming and television works?"

Though I imagine the big case was that for awhile "prestige/big budget" tv wasn't a common thing until recently and most games need more than say friends or something
 
The Quentulated Mox

The Quentulated Mox

Corrupted by Vengeance
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Jun 10, 2022
4,670
yeah, fucking baffling why ASTEROIDS and PONG didn't get great adaptations back in the day, there was so much to work with!

it is kind of ridiculous that after 30+ years of games being a storytelling medium worth a damn we're still begging for them to be any other kind of medium. hint: nobody took them seriously because y'all don't take them seriously!
 
NukeRunner

NukeRunner

Member
Feb 8, 2024
421
I'd not say it's that strange, the reality is that the medium of videogames was seen primarily as an immature little boys medium, and that notion didn't really start to shift until maybe 15-20 years ago. On top of that, most games are just not that well written or well designed from a story perspective, so all you really gain is branding. People who grew up with games and might have entered into that career path are likely the reason any of this stuff can turn out good at this point.

Movies are products just like anything else, but the drive to go make an amazing film out of something like Space Invaders likely isn't that significant. What's more confusing to me specifically, is why Resident Evil material is always so awful, the actual source material is so easy to imagine making a great show from, and yet it's always universally horrible.
 
Kill3r7

Kill3r7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,751
We got a few of them in the 80s/90s but most of them flopped. Also, there was the issue of games being seen as something for kids, creators (movie directors, writers and execs) not being passionate about them, and games of yesteryear lacked story structures that would easily translate to the big or little screen.
 
UraMallas

UraMallas

Member
Nov 1, 2017
19,485
United States
They are gonna mine the shit out of video game worlds and I'm here for it. And I want all types. Retellings, reimaginings, new stories in the existing worlds.
 
David Matter

David Matter

Banned
Apr 16, 2024
304
Shadowrun said:
It took people who grew up with gaming to get jobs in the film and tv industry for gaming to be taken seriously. It makes total sense.
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Click to shrink...
exactly, if you go and see what the old directors say about game... they just dont know anything, shows are being made actually by people that gre up with games, and I suppose even more shows and movies will come in the future, sony just have a complete division dedicated to make movies of their IPs, Xbox is starting to do so, Nintendo is starting to do so, Sega with sonic is starting to do with recent sonic movies, etc... now they have to mantain quality, the one doing it since years and years ago is capcom with RE , but that saga has so bad reputation in movies and series that I dont know how capcom keeps making the same mistakes with such beloved franchise
 

Ring Dings and Pepsi

Member
Jan 23, 2024
394
I'd say it's for three reasons:

1) Some of the best stories on the medium don't translate all that well to film, or a lot of what makes a game's story special would be lost in translation. Video games are interactive so the way that the audience engages with the work is vastly different; things that can work on a controller would definitely not work on the screen and vice versa. Similar to how TV and movies can significantly change dialogue and scenes from adapted books, since a 1:1 adaptation almost always makes for a worse end product.
2) Video games are a VERY new medium compared to film, especially compared to literature. There are a lot of very good stories in video games, but the vast majority especially in the early decades were nonexistent (pac-man, pong, etc.), simply not very good, or borrowed their own storytelling and aesthetic from TV and film (lots of games borrowing wholesale from Mad Max, Escape from New York, Alien, Rambo etc. etc.). If anything, adaptations usually came in from the other way: TV shows and movies being adapted into tie-in games (and those were usually not great either).
3) Younger filmmakers (directors, writers, etc.) grew up on video games and can recognize the value that the medium can bring to being adapted to film and TV. The older generations of filmmakers who didn't grow up with video games didn't really see or understood the value of it, much less understood how to adapt it.
 
Derbel McDillet

Derbel McDillet

▲ Legend ▲
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Nov 23, 2022
16,088
Did you want them to make a Pong movie in 1980?

Shadowrun said:
It took people who grew up with gaming to get jobs in the film and tv industry for gaming to be taken seriously. It makes total sense.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
/Thread

Though I'm not sure about this take away of we legitimatize video games in the eyes of serious people, making them movies. Is a game adaptation winning an Oscar gonna give people that validation?

I was good in 98 personally.

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skeezx

skeezx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,395
honestly I don't find it too surprising it took so long. games are about player agency, movies are about sitting on your ass and getting invested on whatever you're watching. fundamentally different

only now you have creative talent who actually understand the source material. whereas back in the day it was a fat guy in a ponytail with a gold chain going "kids LOVE the street fighters. I know, we'll get jean claude"
 
Night

Night

Late to the party
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Nov 1, 2017
5,234
Clearwater, FL
Hey, it's ok. It took a few go-arounds to discover some pitfalls and learn some lessons and now we're getting quality stuff.
 

Rahkeesh

Member
Jun 20, 2022
4,141
I don't think half of these "hit" TV shows would've hit the right audience versus budget actually on syndicated TV. Its really the streaming services that have made these begun to make sense, at least in the west, and those have only really come into their own recently.
 

strangelove777

Member
Nov 23, 2023
544
It's a generational thing - people who grew up with videogames with good/interesting stories(personally it'd be around late 90s to present to me) have become adults and have started working in the entertainment business.
It's why something like Xmen 97 exists in 2024 - some 40 year olds who were kids when they saw the cartoon have the power to make more of it so they did.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

ThereAreFourNaan

Member
Nov 8, 2017
13,317
This isn't just about people growing up to become film-makers who care about the source material, it's also about critics growing up being fans of the source material and in general about nerd culture going fully mainstream in the 2000's and 2010's.

I think Mortal Kombat 1995 is basically good. It's not a 10/10 but it's very entertaining and easy to watch. Some "famously bad" movies like Super Mario Bros from the 90s and Doom from 2005 I would rate much less harshly than contemporary critics did. I would give Doom 2005 one thumb up (18% critic score). Silent Hill 2006 is pretty good (33% critic score). Resident Evil 2002 is good (Critic score 36%), even though the sequels basically all suck (a few are enjoyable-ish).

I think you can see the shift just in cultural receptiveness to these brands and types of stories when you compare stuff from the 90s or early 00s to their later incarnations. The Angelina Jolie Tomb Raiders are hovering in the 20% critic score range while the Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider is at 50% - the former are a lot more fun and I would say much better films. But they were also silly films, which hurt them with professional critics. Similarly, looking at the progression of Resident Evil Films, the actually really solid 2002 original has a lower score than "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter", which is a total pile of dung. What changed? Well, by 14 years later, the inmates were running the assylum. The kids who grew up on this stuff were now in charge of reviews at a lot of outlets, and they were a lot more ok with movies being silly dumb fun.
 
Mobius and Pet Octopus

Mobius and Pet Octopus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,778
It's actually the audience that needed to grow up.

Super Marior (1993) was clearly meant for little kids with low standards. And Super Mario (2023) is clearly meant for grown ass adults.
 
Leancarp900

Leancarp900

Member
Feb 13, 2023
577
I mean, videogames with adaptable stories have really only existed since ~25 years ago. It's not hard to see why Pong and Tetris never got movies.

(I know Tetris has a movie but that doesn't count)
 
nonoriri

nonoriri

Member
Apr 30, 2020
4,275
I mean I also think we're in an unprecedented time for prestige television. Before Netflix it felt like it was really only HBO and Showtime doing 10 episode high budget shows. And the format really lends itself to game adaptations.
 
AmFreak

AmFreak

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,538
How long did the whole superhero movie thing take to unfold. The higher-ups responsible have been slow and out of touch for a long time.
 
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