A lot of games are hard to translate to movies.
Classic games like Mario often involve the character being kind of a semi-serious, pretty cute, not super jokey, kind of blank slate character and it's really hard to put them into movies. Have them crack a bunch of jokes? That's... pretty weird. Have them be a lot more serious and develop their character and that's also really weird and might damage the brand. You can have these characters be straight-men reacting to things the more comical characters do (like the Mario characters in Mario+Rabbids), but you have to pick some characters to be the over the top comedic characters and that can be hard or character assassination too or you have to introduce original characters to the IP which is also risky and weird. I'm trying to figure out what the Mario movie could be and it's a little weird to try to figure out the direction.
Then you have games where the setting is heavily inspired by movies and books and the defining aspect is the gameplay and trying to translate that to a movie... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Uncharted and FF12 and the Last of Us and other games were heavily inspired by movies and it's like... if you make this game into a movie, it's just going to look like a huge ripoff of the movie they were previously inspired by. Can you really translate Red Dead Redemption or GTA into movies without making them feel like random western or gangster films?
Many multiplayer games are also terrible to translate for pretty obvious reasons... Almost nothing there character-wise to work with. A lot of other games, especially older and smaller games, have little to nothing there character-wise as well.
Games based around player-choice seem just weird to translate as... movies don't have choice. Not sure if a Planescape movie would work.
Then there are games with stories that are just really silly or not good.
So we're down a lot of potential games already (not even considering all the games that are licensed and thus movies about their IP wouldn't be based on a game exactly). But a game that has kind of come to mind recently as something that could maybe work is Final Fantasy 9:
-Weird, alien world that wouldn't feel that generic in a movie (though the costume design would be very hard to do...)
-Largely good story with very relatable characters for people to get attached to (Vivi in particular)
-Comic relief characters
-Only gets into really silly stuff at the very end and you could probably change the ending without many fans getting mad.
-Dramatic plot with a lot of moving parts to keep things exciting.
But this movie would still be really hard as you're trying to cram 40 hours into two hours...
What games would you choose for the best option for a video game movie?
Classic games like Mario often involve the character being kind of a semi-serious, pretty cute, not super jokey, kind of blank slate character and it's really hard to put them into movies. Have them crack a bunch of jokes? That's... pretty weird. Have them be a lot more serious and develop their character and that's also really weird and might damage the brand. You can have these characters be straight-men reacting to things the more comical characters do (like the Mario characters in Mario+Rabbids), but you have to pick some characters to be the over the top comedic characters and that can be hard or character assassination too or you have to introduce original characters to the IP which is also risky and weird. I'm trying to figure out what the Mario movie could be and it's a little weird to try to figure out the direction.
Then you have games where the setting is heavily inspired by movies and books and the defining aspect is the gameplay and trying to translate that to a movie... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Uncharted and FF12 and the Last of Us and other games were heavily inspired by movies and it's like... if you make this game into a movie, it's just going to look like a huge ripoff of the movie they were previously inspired by. Can you really translate Red Dead Redemption or GTA into movies without making them feel like random western or gangster films?
Many multiplayer games are also terrible to translate for pretty obvious reasons... Almost nothing there character-wise to work with. A lot of other games, especially older and smaller games, have little to nothing there character-wise as well.
Games based around player-choice seem just weird to translate as... movies don't have choice. Not sure if a Planescape movie would work.
Then there are games with stories that are just really silly or not good.
So we're down a lot of potential games already (not even considering all the games that are licensed and thus movies about their IP wouldn't be based on a game exactly). But a game that has kind of come to mind recently as something that could maybe work is Final Fantasy 9:
-Weird, alien world that wouldn't feel that generic in a movie (though the costume design would be very hard to do...)
-Largely good story with very relatable characters for people to get attached to (Vivi in particular)
-Comic relief characters
-Only gets into really silly stuff at the very end and you could probably change the ending without many fans getting mad.
-Dramatic plot with a lot of moving parts to keep things exciting.
But this movie would still be really hard as you're trying to cram 40 hours into two hours...
What games would you choose for the best option for a video game movie?
