I will admit that this summer’s Prince Of Persia is looking quite sweet but it just looks like Pirates of the Caribbean in Prince of Persia clothing and after the steaming pile that was World’s End this does not leave me hopeful. My dream job in the future is that of a screenwriter, so needless to say that when I hear horrible dialogue and truly terrible stories I want to throw up and scream “why!?” at the top of my lungs. So I started to wonder where could a good, if not excellent, video game adaptation could come from and it lead me to one form; the mini series.
Now for those of you that don’t know, Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li bombed. Badly. Actually it grossed 12 million dollars worldwide and had a budget of $50 million. That is beyond very bad, even for a video game adaptation. Along with this financial bomb it was also slaughtered by many critics online, from The Totally Rad Show to IGN, this film was hated by everybody and proved that you can’t keep throwing us garbage and expecting us to eat it up. This failure of a movie wouldn’t be so soul destroying on recollection if their was a good video game adaptation to hold up to and realize what it should be like. But their isn’t and that is a crime. So many genre defining games have come out in the eighties and nineties that have changed the landscape of its genre forever.
Half-Life, Mass Effect, God Of War, Ico, Okami, Uncharted 2, the Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy Series’ and so many more. Yet Hollywood decides time and time again to take these properties and retool them into hollow shells of their former selves. Luckily, none of these games has been touched (except for Final Fantasy. What the hell were they thinking when they made spirits within?). However, when you look at the upcoming video game films that Hollywood seeks to adapt, all your classics and favorites are their on the pre-production list; prepping for their eventual rape. In all fairness, the format of a mainstream movie just doesn’t fit in with the depth that these games possess and the wealth of information they pump into the stories. Metal Gear Solid, for example, would be near impossible to turn into a coherent and faithful movie companion to the extremely complex narrative of the series.
The solution: The Mini Series. Much like the video game industry the TV industry has seen a bit of a renaissance in the past twenty years. TV shows like X-Files, Twin Peaks, Lost and The Wire have shown just how daring, edgy and complex the modern TV show has become. Along with these amazing TV shows we have seen the rise of probably the most important channels in the world today; HBO.
From Sopranos to True Blood, they have been transforming TV into a Rich spectacle that offers a wide range of content that constantly surprises and engrosses viewers giving it a distinctive stamp of quality unmatched by many other channels around it. HBO has also produced and funded two of the greatest mini-series to ever have graced television with Band of Brothers and Generation Kill. Both of them oozing with excellent quality in terms of production, acting and dialogue. Both have also proved that intensely heavy subject matter and intimidating depth can be tackled with grace and detail to attention drawing you in and never letting you go until the end, much like an epic video game.
Band of Brothers had a budget of $125 million over ten episodes averaging out to 12 million dollars an episode. It was also executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks; two of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters. Imagine if this amount of care went into a video game series with such trust put in the right hands and supported by a channel like HBO. We could finally get a truly exceptional video game adaptation. Picture the snow blanketed shadow moses popping onto our screens, filmed in the dead of night as Solid Snake emerges to bring the fight to liquid and metal gear. A truly triumphant image that could possibly bring tears to the eyes of many fans across the world. Or Gordon Freeman swing a crow bar with ferocity at zombie after zombie. The real question is why hasn’t this happened or been explored? I am not really sure.
I think it is time for a change. It is time for these executives to stop fearing the video game industry and join it to create a truly beautiful partnership. Since 2007 the video game industry has proven its worth and grossing power, surpassing the film and music industries. As soon as Avatar made a billion dollars at the box office in 17 days (it’s beyond $2 billion now), Modern Warfare 2 was right there with it grossing a billion dollars as well and taking the industry to unseen success. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Halo 3, Fallout 3, Assassin’s Creed 2 and GTA IV have gone on to sell millions of copies but never sacrificed quality and care in the hunt for a profit. Games are also reaching narrative heights that could never have been imagined with the likes of Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2 and the upcoming Heavy Rain offering cinematic presentation and engrossing story with the latter two allowing you to form your own narratives and relationships with characters.
So I say no longer should we all stand by and except these horrible adaptations on our beloved video game stories, characters and mythologies. Let the mini series be the new way to video game adaptation nirvana and carve out path for truly epic adaptations to follow.
