Video Games & Movies

Dozens of films inspired by video games have come and gone over the years, and they're rarely worth your time. It's for this reason that I was in no hurry to start "blogging" when I heard, a couple of weeks ago, that the (supposedly) upcoming Assassin's Creed movie had become a bit too real with the casting of an actual, famous, relevant actor, Michael Fassbender, for the lead role. Needless to say, I'm a bit late to this party.

So why bring it up now? Well, it seems to me that now is as good a time as any to discuss the making-movies-based-on-video-games trend in general, since we've all had plenty of time to process the latest news of this particular game-to-film adaptation. We've gone through the initial excitement of imagining some of our favorite characters appearing in a big-budget movie, the sobering realization that nearly all game-to-film conversions are mediocre at best and that the best part of the game was actually playing it, and perhaps a resurgence of hope that this movie could be the one that makes up for all the bad ones that came before. As for me, that last part might not apply. I'm finding myself increasingly confused by the absurdity of taking a concept designed for an interactive medium and translating it to a medium which involves no interaction whatsoever. It hardly ever works, but they keep doing it.

Might the plot from Assassin's Creed make a good movie? Sure. Will it add anything of value to the franchise? Only if it's more fun than watching someone play the game, and one could argue that a lot of video-game-inspired cash-grab movies fail this test.

Part of me wants to believe that an Assassin's Creed movie could work, but the rest of me knows how unlikely this is. It's not my intention to hate on any particular franchise or developer, but things didn't go so well the last time they tried to make a movie inspired by the story from an Ubisoft video game. Not even Jake Gyllenhaal could save Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which might have been okay for an action movie if only they had dropped the mind-numbingly obvious (and stupid) parallels to the Iraq War... and pretty much everything else in the script.

An uninteresting plot can be ignored amidst the special effects and gratuitous violence and perhaps a smoking-hot (I mean "talented") female actress, but a downright stupid plot is just too distracting and can ruin a movie entirely. Perhaps I was also a bit overly annoyed by the lack of resemblance between this movie and the video game I so enjoyed, but hey, I can't pretend to be unbiased. And why should I? Wasn't I the intended audience?

In all fairness, I suppose we should be glad that the writers of this Prince of Persia film hadn't decided to follow the storyline of its namesake with deadly precision, since that would necessitate killing all but three characters within the first five minutes, one of whom would then be absent for most of the story. In fact, like many video games (though, perhaps, mostly the older ones), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time doesn't have very much "story" at all. What's there is very good, for a video game, but it's not enough (and not appropriate) for a full-length movie.

Sure, the game itself takes many hours to complete — there are tons of monsters to fight, some platforming puzzles to solve, and some character development via dialogue during the completion of those puzzles — but the important parts of the story are told through a few cutscenes which don't add up to a whole lot. Of course, they might have instead used the collective plot from the entire "Sands of Time trilogy" (encompassing the sequels Warrior Within and The Two Thrones) — in fact, the film they released did borrow minor elements from all three games — but the disjointed plot you would get by trying to fully combine these three stories probably wouldn't have made a very good film either.

All of this, however, makes me wonder why they ever decided to make a movie based on this game if the story would have to be changed to the point where the script hardly even resembled the source material. If not for the familiar title, as well as the fact that the time-travel-enabling device happens to be a dagger and the fact that the main character is a Persian prince (albeit an adopted one), I never would have guessed that the film was inspired by one of my favorite video games. Actually, given that the film was published by Disney and that the main character is street-rat-turned-royalty and receives magical powers from an ancient artifact, I might have assumed instead that it was some kind of re-imagining of Aladdin. Not even the character names would have given it away, since none of the names used in the film appeared in any of the Prince of Persia games. It almost seems ridiculous to keep the title.

But of course they're going to keep the title, because a movie based on a video game typically has no attractive qualities other than its association with a popular franchise. The only people who see these movies are fans of the respective video games, parents of those fans, other old people who don't know what they're getting themselves into, and, of course, girls who care more about the lead actor than the subject matter. ("Um, a video game? Whatever, nerd, I just want to see Jake Gyllenhaal's abs.") The first two groups are arguably the most important, so filmmakers continue to draw inspiration from video games even though these movies usually turn out to be garbage and subsequently draw ridicule upon the franchises from which they spawned. The movies don't need to be good; they just need to be good enough that you, the video game fan, purchase a non-refundable ticket. In other words, while the critics might scoff, it's a neat way to make a quick buck... that is, unless your name is Uwe Boll and you just produced and directed a film based on BloodRayne.

The fact that lots of people played a stupid video game with a sexy vampire doesn't mean a movie based on its characters and aesthetic will turn a profit, so it's all kind of risky. Unfortunately, coming up with an original idea is riskier, and more expensive. That's why so many of the movies released so far this millennium are one or more of the following:

1. an adaptation of a novel or short story,
2. an adaptation of a graphic novel or comic book,
3. an adaptation of a TV show or cartoon,
4. an adaptation of a video game,
5. an adaptation of a theatrical play or musical,
6. a sequel or "prequel" to a previous movie,
7. a remake or "reimagining" of a previous movie,
8. borderline plagiarism, or
9. crap.

Video game adaptations are particularly problematic because most would argue that the primary function of a video game, like any game, is to provide entertaining gameplay, rather than to tell a story. As such, most video games don't have awesome storylines, and that's okay if the games are still fun. What's so often substantially less than okay is taking a plot which exists solely for player motivation and using it as the inspiration for something that can't be played.

But we might, someday, see a genuinely good video-game-to-feature-film adaptation. After all, a lot of modern games are practically interactive movies already. Some video game fans will tell you that this is the end of "gaming" as we know it, but let's not get carried away just yet. While it's true that we often get stuck with less challenging, less sophisticated gameplay in exchange for a more "cinematic" experience, the industry has churned out a decent number of story-driven games which miraculously nail the winning combination of worthwhile gameplay and an engaging narrative.

Ironically, it's usually the heavily gameplay-driven titles, fun as hell to play but often lacking in depth, that end up having films named after them (see Doom). As a result, these films are mostly the trashy action/horror sort, which only sometimes do well at the box office and almost never do well with the critics. Why not make a movie out of a strongly story-driven game like Metal Gear Solid or Alan Wake or... Assassin's Creed?

Maybe it's finally happening.

Although it's too early to tell if the film will ever be made — a famous name attached to a project does not necessarily guarantee its completion — it's an interesting possibility. A film based on Assassin's Creed could actually follow the plot of the game rather closely without sucking. Furthermore, a film based on the Assassin's Creed franchise just makes a whole lot of sense. The publisher has already branched out into every medium they can afford to exploit. In addition to the five games that make up the core of the series, and a bunch of handheld/mobile spin-offs, they've released several books, some comics, a Facebook application, and even a few short films.

The irritating part is that some of these tie-ins occupy their own space in the series' alternate history, rather than simply re-telling or expanding the story from an existing game. It gives me the sense that I'm missing part of the expansive story if I don't check out all this peripheral stuff (including the one comic which was only printed in French). The film, if they're serious about making it, could be the same way. Rather than basing it on an existing game, they might instead stick it chronologically between two existing games, or give us a new story with a new protagonist and only subtle ties to the familiar story we've all been following. All we know so far is that Ubisoft wants to retain as much creative control as possible, which means they probably won't screw up their own canon.

In other words, it might be cool. Certainly it can't be worse than the short film Ubisoft made to promote the original game's first sequel.

I'm still not getting my hopes up, however, because the very thing that makes an Assassin's Creed feature film seem so natural is exactly what makes it kind of pointless. The game is "cinematic" enough. Modern video games, for the sake of becoming more mainstream, attempt to emulate movies, so creating a movie based on one accomplishes nothing but an upgrade of visual effects and the complete removal of interactivity. Films based on video games are primarily for the video games' fans, and fans of video games don't often wish they could experience a video game without actually having to play it. Playing it is the whole point. (Perhaps somewhere out there is a screenplay based on a game with an amazing story and horrible gameplay — a film adaptation of a game that should have been a film all along — but no one is going to see a movie based on a game that basically sucked.) The only way to make it worth watching is to make the story new and original, but then the fans will say they liked it better how it was.

When fans of a game care too much about the canon, a movie based on it is almost sure to fail in their eyes. Game-to-film adaptations are often despised by the game's fans for changes to the story and, more generally, for not living up to unrealistic expectations. Meanwhile, those unfamiliar with a game often don't care enough to see the film at all. It's for this reason that I'm always surprised by the few adaptations that actually do well (see, for example, Resident Evil... although I guess you can't go wrong with zombies).

Finally, whether the filmmakers appease the hardcore fans and create a faithful adaptation, or take a risk and try to improve upon the narrative, or do something completely off-the-wall and unrelated to the game (see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), they also have to deal with the fact that the film's association with a video game can easily do more harm than good. It might snag all the fans, but it might also alienate everyone else, namely the older audiences who think they're too grown-up for video games and, by extension, too sophisticated for such a movie. Then there's everyone else who didn't play the game, everyone who hates the game, et cetera.

But I hope for Ubisoft's sake that I'm just being pessimistic. Maybe all they need to make it work are good actors, good writers, and a good director. It's pretty clear that a lot of game-to-film adaptations have none of these things.