The Gaming Thread

[PowerBlade]

I am betting every one of them will be shitty. Blizzard may have enough cinematic experience to create a nice looking movie but I don't expect it to be anything more than that.

Stay pessimistic if you want, but this is not like other video game movies. These new ones have huge budgets and big actors and directors etc. attached. Warcraft budget is over 100 million dollars, and Assassin's Creed is over 150 million dollars. You only ruin it for yourself if you go into it with that attitude to be honest. So far we haven't even seen trailers from other movies than Warcraft... Warcraft doesn't look like an Oscar nominee or anything like that, but it won't suck. It won't be a fantastic movie either, but it'll be pretty great for fans of the games I think. The second trailer is coming out soon and so is the trailer for Assassin's Creed.

I'll take this upcoming wave of video game movies over another Marvel movie that's just the same

They wasted their money on Warcraft without dwarves, they shouldve went with Starcraft all the way. I would just go to the cinema to masturbate to zergs.

Havent heard anything but rumours about Half Life though. It would be pretty generic action movie and Freeman wouldnt be mute probably.

Also heard rumours about MGS adaptation but i cant see it succeeding either, 1/4 of the game has more dialogues and cutscenes / story than you can fit in a movie.
I could understand series, that could be pretty epic if done right. Then again there would be probably some faggot casted as snakes and my penis would be sad

JJ Abrams said that Half-Life and Portal are still happening, but nothing else than that. And guess what? A video game doesn't need to be copied and pasted into a movie. They can take any story from it and from the lore... I mean the Warcraft movie is based on the story about Warcraft 1 ffs, so of course there aren't any damn dwarves in it

 

[Aexalven]

I do realise that, but still every game adaptation turned out to be a disaster. Just the current ones i saw:

Hitman, i dont even want to talk about it. They couldnt even make the guy bald.
Easy fixes: Find an actual bald looking badass guy. Make him a fucking assassin that kills quietly. Add generic plot. Success.

Bloodrayne, same, not gonna talk about it. I dont know how you screw up such movie.
Easy fixes: Just find hot girl and make good costume and add lots of gore and action, plot not needed. Success.

I mean, I can type "bloodrayne cosplay" in google and cosplayers did better job than the movie actress:

 

[PowerBlade]

I do realise that, but still every game adaptation turned out to be a disaster. Just the current ones i saw:

Hitman, i dont even want to talk about it. They couldnt even make the guy bald.
Easy fixes: Find an actual bald looking badass guy. Make him a fucking assassin that kills quietly. Add generic plot. Success.

Bloodrayne, same, not gonna talk about it. I dont know how you screw up such movie.
Easy fixes: Just find hot girl and make good costume and add lots of gore and action, plot not needed. Success.

I mean, I can type "bloodrayne cosplay" in google and cosplayers did better job than the movie actress:

I actually liked the first Hitman

But look on its budgets. 24 million... This new wave has budgets 4, 5 times that! It's unprecedented and that's why I'm saying that it's arbitrary to be prejudiced about them in such a negative way. I never heard of Bloodrayne but I saw on IMDb that Uwe Boll directed it and that guy is an idiot so of course it bombed. I don't think I need to repeat myself but use your damn head and stop being so pessimistic because these upcoming ones aren't like these 10 year old ones. Back then not as many people liked video games too. Now it's very mainstream, and so the movies based on it will be much more attractive too

 

[Aexalven]

Id rather be pessimistic then be let down by every single game that came out in 2015/16.
Im gonna give Warcraft a chance, although the trailer looked lame and too fake, like hobbit.
Im still gonna be for: 1. Costumes +a bit of CGI 2. Full CGI. Realism + shittones of CGI looks just meh and awful. I could understand Warceaft, because orcs here are actually tones of meat, but in hobbit it just gave me cancer.

I really want Warcraft to succeed, because I want Starcraft movie. But again, would prefere full CGI, because I know Blizzard can make them.

Im curious about Half Life movie. Dont give a single fuck about Asscancer's Creed, because those copypaste games pissed me off enough.

 

[Belac]

There were always tons of gamers, I don't think gaming population has really changed much unless you factor in casual games which don't count in this situation... And although the budgets have increased that can easily just translate to an over the top snooze-fest.

I just don't think games translate well to film. Either the game is epic enough that it does not make sense to basically just re-shoot the big set pieces into live action, or the concept of the game is so vague/strange that making any attempt at a proper movie is just a bastardization. Or if it's too story driven and you would have to cut out 75% of it and try to make it work as a Frankenstein version of itself.

The reason I singled out Blizzard/Warcraft is because I think that is the only one of the list that has any potential to be decent. That's because the movie is based more on the backstory and lore instead of trying to recreate the game experience/story, so it has enough creative freedom to stand on its own.

But Half-life?? I don't know how the hell are you going to re-tell Half-life without either Copy\Pasting it (which would just be idiotic and would not fit the medium), or going a completely different way that will alienate the fans and still not be good enough to stand on its own with the general movie public. The entire Half-Life story is told through the eyes of the protagonist, so aside from fanboy books there is not that rich of a universe to draw on that would be interesting without Freeman. I don't see any way that it can work without being retarded.

And as Polish guy said, the games with good stories that are worth telling have waaay more time and resources to tell the story properly already. Even an Assassin's Creed movie would end up being a shadow of its content, I don't see how you can provide a serviceable plot that will impact you and tie everything together in 2 hours.

 

[Belac]

On the other hand I am not so pessimistic about a Netflix series. That could work I think in a few select cases where there is a need for more elaborate story-telling and it's not too dependent on the gameplay aspect. Assassin's Creed would probably actually work pretty well as a single season series.


TLDR version:

I have been let down by game movies since 1993, and until I see a consistent change in quality (or even one good movie) I will doubt the possibility of good games being translated into good movies.

 

[Aexalven]

Thats why I dont get why are producers pushing for movies. Make a goddamn series, that way people can deal with lower budget and tempo of plot. Next advantage is you can actually tell more story and dont butcher the games. I can imagine Half Life being like 6 episodes series, maybe full season to cover both games. MGS? That would require 3-4 seasons. Portal? I dont think its gonna work as either movie or series. Dont know about AC, played only 2 first games and was bored. But probably would need series anyway.

 

[Belac]

Assassin's Creed is pretty boring yeah, which is why it might have worked better as an intertwining TV series that connects the many timelines and characters in an interesting way. I honestly got so bored of playing AC games that I stopped caring and quit half way through AC 3 even though I was sort of interested in how everything was going to come together.

 

[PowerBlade]

I hear you and agree with you much of the way, but you are both wrong

I still firmly believe that even though there's been a lot of releases since '93, now is very different. Unprecedented budgets, respectable and acclaimed people working on these movies which wasn't the case before. As for speculation about Half-Life and whatnot, who knows! Though I'm sure it'll be at least 7/10 with Abrams at the helm. And also, who says you have to tell a story that already exists? They can write something new about the universe of that game! Isn't that what they've been doing with comic book movies?

So yeah, even though I am shit at making arguments and writing well formulated posts etc., I am 100% sure that you will this year see the change in quality you are hoping for Caleb

 

[Belac]

Well a change of quality from 3/10 - 5/10 isn't going to convince me, that's what Silent Hill tried to pull. But hell, if I am wrong I will welcome the change, it's just too bad it didn't happen when I was a kid and would have killed for a good video game movie.

 

[PowerBlade]

Oh I do not doubt that they will be popular among the audience at least - perhaps not critically acclaimed. I'm an armchair movie expert, and so my prediction is they will go much the same way as Marvel movies. ~65 metascore but raking in serious cash from audience that is entertained. Keep in mind that none of these are going to be even close to artful movies. Most are an equal mix of art and entertainment, but these are going to be pure entertainment - which is fine to just grab popcorn and enjoy 2 hours of shit on a screen. I prefer that over Paul Thomas Anderson movies at least.

And out of curiosity, what movies do you consider 9/10 and 10/10?

 

[Aexalven]

First Silent Hill movie was actually best game adaptation to date. If they used male as main character it would be 2x better(they didnt because "father wouldnt do such things for the daughter like the mother would" bullshit), but the atmosphere was good, monsters were amazing (lying figure, nurses - masterpieces).

I wonder if you could make great movie from SH 2 story. I doubt that but would love to see someones take on it.

SH 3d - revelation though... Jesus, I dont know what were they thinking. Again, replaced costumes with CGI and all we had was a artificial looking disaster with jon snow.

 

[Aexalven]

And out of curiosity, what movies do you consider 9/10 and 10/10?

I know question wasnt for me, but i want to answer too :3

Cool Hand Luke - I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this movie. Great role by Paul Newman

Human Centipede 2 - Because its the first movie when I was like "Okay, its really fucked up". I mean, smashing the newborn baby with gas pedal, shitting to each others mouths, doing surgical stuff by some fat, sick abomination.

VHS 1 and VHS 2 - really good found footage movies. Not masterpieces, but really enjoyable shorts.

Kairo - japanese i dont know, psychological drama horror? Cant even describe this movie, you would have to see it yourself.

There is a lot of asian horrors high on the list but i dont want to create a wall of text.

 

[Belac]

And out of curiosity, what movies do you consider 9/10 and 10/10?

I have difficulty with assigning higher ratings and favourites to be honest. I think my only 10/10 is Shawshank Redemption. When I was a kid I was lucky enough to have a teacher that got lazy and showed us Shawshank and told us to write a report about it. Originally I just liked it, but as I got older I grew to love it and I watch it at least once a year.

After that my taste in movies changes regularly but if I had a list of favourites that spring to mind without too much thought I would say: 12 Angry Men, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Alien, The Thing, Good Will Hunting, Snatch, LA Confidential, Goodfellas, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Terminator 2... I don't know there are so many to think about. .

Not to say those are all 8's or 9's even, they are just movies that I could watch over and over, which is all you need.

Cool Hand Luke - I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this movie. Great role by Paul Newman.

Also a pretty great movie. I was surprised by it a bit.

I used to really be into horror movies (of all budgets) but I got tired of them, especially because I got tired of sorting through 50 terrible movies to find 1 truly great one. Now I end up missing the gems because the genre has become something to avoid.

 

[Aexalven]

Yea, there is shitton of bad and generic horror movies, but those low budget seem to be way better than high budget. Even though this found footage / shaky camera thing is getting old creators still have better ideas than hollywood.

I need to look into modern asian horror movies, I dont believe i saw any after 2008 or so. But im afraid to ruin the charm.

 

[griev0r]

Well a change of quality from 3/10 - 5/10 isn't going to convince me, that's what Silent Hill tried to pull. But hell, if I am wrong I will welcome the change, it's just too bad it didn't happen when I was a kid and would have killed for a good video game movie.

Whhhaat? We had an awesome video game movie when we were kids! Super Mario Brothers!

 

[Aexalven]

r u drunk

 

[Belac]

Clearly

 

[stefan86]

i schert'n

 

[PowerBlade]

Heh, so they're already saying it's a good movie apparently

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