Most people would agree that movies based on videogames are a lost cause. Almost all turn out horribly, or, at best, mediocre.
I’ve found that it’s usually a mixture of different things: Acting, visuals and filming are usually the main problems. Maybe it’s just to hard for studios to properly translate games to movie, especially when there is a huge following on that game just waiting to either be amazed or find a reason to tear it apart.
Personally, I think it has to do with the visuals. More often than not, live action is the way to go for game movies, and that just irritates me when live action is used for a movie that would do better as, say, animated. The Japanese “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney” movie is one that really is a bother. In the games, every character is cartoon-like, and would look really great animated. But, in the end, live action was the path taken; the movie may be great story and acting wise, but the live action will always be a major turn off.
With talk of a live action “Professor Layton” movie, it only makes me more irate. There was already an amazing animated movie based on the games,”Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva,” and that movie stayed true to the animation from the games, which made the movie all the more potent. That movie also had the original voice actors from the series; there is no way that the live actors will be able to give the feeling of the original, and that itself turns me off as a fan of the games.
The opposite problem is for the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie. The whole movie was animated, which looked really great, but the voice acting left much to be desired. Acting is probably the second biggest problem; while acting in movies like the “Tomb Raider” movies isn’t to bad, there aren’t many movies like them. The acting in the “Super Mario Brothers movie” is only one of the many things wrong with that movie. Horrible story, bad use of source material, and of course, abysmal acting plague a movie that had so much potential.
“Silent Hill” and “Resident Evil” seem to be the only game franchises that still have a movie franchise on the side, and while I don’t know much about those movies, it’s clear to see that studio’s have gotten wary about how to approach game-based movies. A great example would be “Wreck-it-Ralph,” which I really enjoyed; Disney knew exactly how to approach a game movie that would please most every gamer. Hopefully, more studios will learn from this example in the future.
