How To Make A Good Film Adaptation Of A Video-Game

idontknow As of 2016, video-game movies are not the best genre in film, putting it politely. For me there are only a few not bad video-game film adaptations, key phrase being not bad (Wreck-It Ralph is not an adaptation so, unfortunately, it does not count, but it's a great film)

Mortal Kombat 1995 (it's good)
Warcraft- 2016 (it's okay)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider- 2001 (it's fun but not a good film, just a guilty pleasure)
Prince Of Persia The Sands Of Time- 2010 (It's okay guess)

I still have not seen Final Fantasy Spirits Within although I hear it's underrated.

Notice how from that list, not one of them is great, the rest (that I know of), are, to put it politely, crapfest (I haven't seen the Uwe Boll films and I don't even plan on it).
When it's not the awful Resident Evil films to the atrocious Mario Bros film thing, I didn't know what that was and when it ain't that it's the Mortal Kombat Annihilation which the title clearly describes what the film is and countless and countless of others video-game film failures.
Hollywood has been trying to make a great video-game film for a long time, even now in 2016 there are 4 Video-game films:

Ratchet And Clank The Movie: Great game, but an awful and boring film.
The Angry Birds Movie: I enjoyed the trio and their chemistry, but the film was just too silly,boring and forgettable.
Warcraft: I enjoyed this, but there's no question that this was a massive disappointing,over-bloated mess.
Assasins Creed- Still hasn't come out yet and I'm hoping it's great (hopefully no Kanye in the film).

While A.C is not out yet, the 3 other video-game based films have been disappointing themselves.

So this raises the question:
Why are video-game based movies bad and (if possible) how do you make a great one?

As Occam's Razor states, the simplest answer is the best, the steps to make a good video-game based film is just to make a great standalone film, just like any other. There really isn't specific steps, just make a great film and not rely on our knowledge on the video-games for the film (cough cough Warcraft).

It really is just another comic book film adaptation. I still believe video-game based films can be great if the filmmakers just make a great film that stands on its own.

To give an example of what I'm saying, take a look at Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them which takes place in the same world as Harry Potter, but the film did not rely our love of Harry Potter to just make the film a Harry Potter commercial and begging us to watch it. It's a completely stand alone film which was very different than Harry Potter and that's one of the biggest praise I can give this film, that and it's a well-made film, which is what the video-game based movies need, a well-made film.

Secondly, the thing is to be wise with the video-game they choose to adapt, because unlike books, the visuals and the worlds are on the screen, for example, I think that a live-action Kingdom Hearts film would be kind of pointless as the story has already been told to its height in the video-games, so making a movie would just be like adding action sequence and it would not add anything other than it being a film, kinda like a remake (cough cough Psycho 98/Ghostbusters 2016), by the way this is coming from a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, Kingdom Hearts II being my favourite game of all time.

If video-game based movies are given the treatment they deserve, the could very well be the next Comic Book movie extravaganza that we are getting today and it would be awesome.

I'm curious to see what you think? Do you agree or disagree? Comment below and don't forget to check some of my other stuff out (Shameless plug alert by the way :) ) and follow :)

Also as an additional question; What video-game would you like to see adapted to the big screen done right (can't be announced), personally, I would love to see the Jak and Daxter trilogy on film, also so it could fix the issues of Jak 3's story and it could be a great trilogy for film in my opinion.

Comments

You made some amazing points here. Great post. I wouldn't mind seeing a Super Mario Bros movie on how they got to the Mushroom kingdom. I know the live action movie was kinda like that, but Nintendo has made commercials using CGI. If they can animate like that, then they should make an animated film. - nintendofan126