What Gamers Want from Hollywood!

Just before Christmas 1996 I, for the first time ever, went to spy on my presents. Since my mother thought I was a good boy, it wasn’t too hard and soon I found the box labeled: SONY PLAYSTATION. I held the next generation of video gaming in my hands. And next to it…A game called TOMB RAIDER.

The first two cutscenes went by, graphical splendor unknown to the eye, and then I was controlling Lara, entering the catacombs of Vilcabamba, shooting and attacking wolves and bats, diving through unknown pools, discovering secrets…It was the first time I ever controlled a character in a three dimensional virtual world and it was magical.

Fast forward to May 2011, fifteen years later. I just finished watching the first Tomb Raider movie and it proved to be perfect preparation for this article.

I won’t say that LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER it is a great action film but I have definitely seen worse. Yet, it does almost everything wrong in being true to those moments I experienced back on Christmas 1996.

The film feels like they looked at the cover, saw the title and the image of Lara and said: Hey let’s make a film about this.

I have to admit: So far I’ve done nothing but complain about Hollywood’s lack of understanding on how to turn the stages of our precious virtual experiences into a good film. Now let’s point out what gamers want from video game adaptions.

1. The Background

This means the story of the original video game, its characters or to sum it up–the world.

So what does the first Tomb Raider offer in that regard? Not much to be honest. Some ancient locations, Lara’s mansion, a thin plot about an evil woman hunting an artifact. The strongest ingredient here is Lara herself. A diehard archaeologist who’d rather dig in the sand in some distant country than consult a mirror about what to wear on the next cocktail party.

But what of this is in LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER? Almost nothing. Lara’s mansion is crowded with technology and people that appear intimate to her yet played no role whatsoever in the games. Angelina Jolie herself seems to be most concerned about looking cool and showing what a badass Lara Croft is. I never for a second believed in her being an archaeologist.

So what would be a good way to incorporate the background of a game into a film adaption? Let me give you an example from a game adaption that managed to send shivers down my spine with a single, very subtle reference to the game.

Remember that moment in the first RESIDENT EVIL film when (SPOILER!!!) at the very end, the guys arm mutated? When it slowly dawned on you that he is just becoming fucking Nemesis? It didn’t take much screen time and you could understand the scene without that knowledge. But it was great when you knew it from the game. (SPOILER END) That is exactly what I want in terms of referring to the background of a video game. Imagine what a movie about World of Warcraft or Fallout could offer in that regard!

2. The Theme

The theme is probably the most important element. You have to ask: What, at its heart, is the source material really about?

Related Article: Can video Games Make Great Movies

Every self respecting screenwriter should know how to find the theme in any source material. All the big screenwriting bibles are pressing this as maybe the most important thing about a movie. So let’s look at TOMB RAIDER again. I dare say that the first game was all about exploring. That was what made this game so perfect for the third dimension. I recall so many instances of just looking around, searching cliffs that Lara could reach or mechanisms and riddles to crack. The whole game was about finding your way from one end to the other.

But was that film in any way about exploring? Did it ever make the audience wonder whether Lara would discover what she was looking for? I’d say it was more about the characters talking to each other in regards about what to do next, and everyone getting somewhere before the other party could. That works as a theme for lots of great films, but it just isn’t what the source material was about.

Now for an example where it was done better: The Final Fantasy games are usually about a group of people who have to face their personal demons to jointly save the world from some apocalyptic archenemy.

In FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN, while there was not really that archenemy and it was centered pretty much on the two main characters, it did a pretty good job. It did not equal the epic 40-hour-storyline of say FINAL FANTASY 7, but the theme definitely went in a similar direction.

3. Atmosphere

Usually we play a video game far longer than we watch a movie. That might not include modern shooters but for almost every other game it is true. So when playing a game for 10 to 100 hours total (or per month in WoW) you really adjust to the atmosphere and the overall feel of the game which is predestined by the game mechanics.

For example: An ego shooter lets you become one with the protagonist while a third person game will almost always leave you with a better sense of orientation. These are impressions that define your experience with a game. So a film would be well advised to try to mimic some of these.

With a lot of games this is really hard. Even though the Tomb Raider movie fails miserably in this department, I’ll argue that the Tomb Raider atmosphere is freaking hard to adapt: It consists of total solitude and hours and hours of looking up walls. That might make a good book, but leads to a super boring movie.

I think that adding a little of that wouldn’t have hurt the Tomb Raider films–at least they could have tried. But going for a “fast paced and dialogue heavy” film is certainly something totally different.

I feel that the Final Fantasy film might have done the best job in regards to this so far. Finding a way through a world populated by monsters while trying to figure out what is going on is what playing a Final Fantasy game is all about…

I will return to these three core elements later in this series when talking about what filmmakers can learn from video games. For the next article, I want to not only look at adaptations. For that I ask you to mail/comment ANY instances of a video game appearing AS or IN a film. Be it a simple adaption, something like the World of Warcraft scene in ZOMBIELAND or even a sci-fi film like GAMER.

Ben Dressler is a guest blogger for the Jace Hall Show. Since local film schools successfully fought him off, Ben Dressler turned his love for games into the zero budget short film /AFK. He also has a BS in Psychology and tries to convince people it doesn’t give him mental powers. Follow him on Twitter: @BenDressleror e-mail him at ben@afk-movie.com

 

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