ArsGeek

Last week we saw what I can only consider to be a travesty against the forces of the universe. I’m not talking about the near hit we could have taken from an asteroid, but the release of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li. In fact, I’d almost rather take the asteroid than to see this movie. I haven’t seen it yet, but judging by the trailer which showed Balrog (a boxing character) fire a rocket launcher pretty much assured me I would never pay money to view it. And Hollywood wonders why people pirate their content.

The release of the movie has led to me thinking about the history of video-movie transitions, and how rocky the road has been. We’re talking ‘Colorado’ rocky (sorry, couldn’t resist). In a homage to Clint Eastwood’s classic western, I figured we’d look at today’s list with a little The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good

Mortal Kombat

Unfortunately, the ‘Good’ list is going to be quite short today. Which is sad considering to make a good video game movie, all that is required is you stay true to the source material, and make it entertaining. Hell, you don’t even have to try to make it a “good” movie. Mortal Kombat is the greatest example of this.

If there had never been a Mortal Kombat game, and this movie came out then I’d say never give it the time of day. But as a representation of the game Mortal Kombat, the Paul W.S. Anderson flick is still what I consider what other filmmakers should look up to when making a video game based movie.

Why could a movie with such awful acting, and cheesy dialogue make for a good video game movie? Because Anderson knew to please the people who saw the movie, all he had to do was make the fan’s much beloved game come to life. Which means they wanted source material intact, and to watch some badass fight scenes. Which Anderson brought in spades.

Mortal Kombat did the greatest job of taking the virtual characters, and have them translated to film. When you watch the movie, all the characters are represented by closely resembled real life counterparts. Also, no one was left out from the original so no upset fanboys.

Something I believe that is overlooked in Mortal Kombat was the quality of its special effects. This movie came out in 1995; I watched it a couple of weeks ago and the effects still hold up well. They aren’t going to blow you away, but Anderson did a masterful job of taking elements of the game and putting them on screen. Also, the fight scenes in the movie are nothing to laugh at either. They are well choreographed, and are some of the best done fights you’ll see in a game based release.

Until something better comes out, I still say that Mortal Kombat is the greatest video game based movie to be released. The movie that follows second is….

Street Fighter: The Movie

Ok, it’s kind of a stretch to put Street Fighter: The Movie in the good section of this article. By god though, Street Fighter does deserve some accolades. For the time that this movie was released, along with how many characters that the film tries to demonstrate, it honestly couldn’t have gotten any better than what we got from the 1994 hokey cult classic (live action anyway).

Street Fighter is definitely a flawed movie. There’s enough things wrong with it, that it even makes Mortal Kombat look Academy Award winning. However, I truly believe that the filmmaker had his heart in the right place and in many ways did do the Street Fighter series (at the time) justice.

I’ve been playing Street Fighter games since 1992, when Street Fighter II was released in the US. After all this time, I believe it’s impossible to make a SF movie and not have it goofy. Have you seen the roster of characters in the game? You have a Japanese, and American who wear near matching gi outfits (one white, and one red) throwing fireballs from their hand. You have a green beast, with long spiky orange hair, and chest hair. And a hulk boxer, who never takes his boxing gloves off. Who in their right mind could believe that a good Street Fighter movie could ever be made?

Although you’ll be laughing through most of Street Fighter: The Movie, I think it actually stayed pretty close to the source material. The storyline was pretty close to the game, mostly because during the early days Street Fighter never had much of a narrative. It was pretty much M. Bison and his crew (Shadaloo) versus the stable of characters. The writer, Steven de Souza, didn’t stray too far from the path.

I think in terms of visuals, the film was well casted as well. None of the characters look a whole lot different than their game avatars. Again I digress, there’s no way you can style Street Fighter in real life. Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile is one of the funniest casting choices ever in the history of movies. Someone with a foreign accent playing an over the top patriotic American is quite hilarious. Raul Julia, looks like M. Bison but the character like Guile is taken so over the top it’s funny to watch.

Street Fighter: The Movie is a film that if you put it in your DVD player, is like watching old episodes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. When you were younger the movie was absolute fun to watch, and is still fun but for a whole different sort of reason.

The Bad

Super Mario Bros.: The Movie

I know the light that shines from dollar signs can be very alluring. Just like the sun though, if you look too closely it blinds you. I’m pretty sure that whoever read the script, watched the first cut of Super Mario Bros.: The Movie, and still decided it should be released had to be blind. There’s no other logical explanation.

What really sucks about the movie is that it has a lot of people I like in it. Bob Hoskins has been in some movies I really liked (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Unleashed). Then of course there’s the timeless wonder, Dennis Hopper who has been in too many of my loved movies to even name here. So, why in all that is holy on the planet Earth did they decide to appear in this movie? The dollar signs shine brightly for everyone, not just Hollywood big wigs.

I’m not even sure where to start when talking about all the things that are wrong with this movie. There’s only one shining light in the picture, and it’s that the bomb-ombs look like their game counterpart. That only lasts for like 15 seconds of the movie, so that’s how much enjoyment you can expect to have if you watch it. Every other character that is portrayed in this movie is so far from the source material that they shouldn’t have even bothered. I really don’t want to get into all the descriptions, but all you need know is that Bowser is played by Dennis Hopper, who is human like with some scaly hair.

Here’s what Bowser looks like in-game:

I wish it ended with the characters, but unfortunately their designs make even more sense than the plot. To be fair, there’s never really a plot in Mario games. The princess is kidnapped, and it’s up to Mario to rescue her. Instead of keeping something simple like that, the writers went in a different direction. Here’s a description from IMDB; I really couldn’t explain it better myself:

“This is the story of two hard working Italian plumber brothers named Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, who befriends a young paleontologist named Daisy. She uncovers a massive find of mysterious new dinosaur bones. While exploring the tunnels where dinosaur fossils lay, saboteurs hired by the Mario Bros. rival businessman, Anthony Scapelli, to break some underground pipes. Meanwhile, in a hidden world called Dino-world, King Koopa’s land is running out of water and going through problems so he sends Spike and Iggy to kidnap Daisy! Now the Super Mario Bros. find themselves the only hope to save the Earth from invasion then challenge a diabolical lizard king and they must battle giant reptilian goombas, outwit misfit thugs and undermine sinister scheme by taking over the world!”

Alone in the Dark/Bloodrayne/Postal/In The Name Of The King/House of the Dead (a.ka - any Uwe Boll movie ever made)

Unlike the Super Mario Bros. movie, I can talk about the long list of Uwe Boll movies and still put a smile on my face. The reason being, is the man behind the movies himself; who is pictured above flicking you off. Uwe Boll is one of my personal heroes for the sheer fact that he really doesn’t care, he’s an enigma. I honestly don’t think he cares about the movies he has released. Yet he keeps doing it. Why? That right there is one complicated cat, and anyone that’s wrapped in mystery, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a vest like Uwe Boll deserves some some form of applause.

It’s really hard to single out one of his movies out, but my personal favorite to watch is Alone in the Dark. It really is the most ridiculous sci-fi movie ever created. It makes Sci-Fi Channel presentations look like something created by Ridley Scott. I would go into a long discussion about how it doesn’t follow source material, but I think there’s not such thing as source material in Uwe Boll’s world.

Tara Reid plays an anthropologist, who stars opposite of Christian Slater as a paranormal detective. They are both studying the Abkani, an ancient dead civilization. All of this takes place on, wait for it…Shadow Island…..ohhh spooky!

What you see in Alone in the Dark, is basically what you get with an Uwe Boll movie. The characters don’t make sense, the plot doesn’t make sense, and it generally has nothing to do with the game it’s based on. But Uwe Boll is still hilarious.

The Ugly

Resident Evil Series

The ugly category is a bit different than the bad. The reason being, is that these movies are watchable. But, in terms of being a video game movie, and doing the games justice they come up short. Resident Evil is a perfect example of ‘the ugly’.

I have very mixed feelings about the Resident Evil series. I won’t deny that they’re fun, action packed, and full of zombies. Yet, it feels like they could have been so much more. The Resident Evil series are games that have a movie like presentation. There’s wonderful cut scenes, scary settings, with a character roster that is beloved by fans. The original Resident Evil especially, is scary because of its setting and sense of dread.

The Resident Evil movie however plays out more of an action flick than a horror movie. The simple nature of being secluded in a mansion is turned into a guns blazing, ass kicking Milla Jovovich filled romp. While a movie like this would have been sweet if it were something else, it just isn’t ‘Resident Evil’.

The character representation is a mixed bag for the most part. The main character in the movies, Alice, isn’t even in the games. But mainstays like, Chris Redfield, Wesker, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield all show up in some form during the movies. Just don’t expect them to be much like their video game characters. Paul W.S Anderson, the same guy from Mortal Kombat really dropped the ball here. He did such a good job keeping the spirit of the Mortal Kombat characters, he could have done the same for Resident Evil.

The plot loosely follows the game. The setting takes place in a mansion, like the game but it’s mostly set in ‘The Hive’, a secret facility underneath the mansion. The whole story behind Umbrella, and the T-Virus, are all shown, which I give Anderson credit for.

If only Anderson realized he could have done so much more with what he had. You can’t forgive the fact that the entire tone of the movie is almost polar opposite from the game. Which is why the Resident Evil series is ‘ugly’, not ‘good’.

Silent Hill

Silent Hill, like Resident Evil isn’t a bad movie. In fact I think Silent Hill was a good half a movie. The first half of Silent is actually the best video game based movie I’ve ever seen. The only problem is that there’s a second half. An evil side, and not the good kind of evil. I’m talking, rushed, we need some action kind of evil.

It’s kind of funny that Silent Hill is in the ugly category along side Resident Evil. They’re both survival horror classics, which have dedicated fan bases. Silent Hill is probably the most disappointing movie on this list. Just for the fact the beginning of the movie teases you into thinking that a filmmaker finally got it right.

The plot of the movie, vaguely follows the storyline of the game. Silent Hill takes places in a coal town, there’s an evil girl at the center of the story, and there’s a loving parent trying to save the day. Although most of the huge plot developments are right, some of the details are different. First, the hero in the game is Harry Mason, while in the movie there is a heroine, Rose Da Silva. The movie’s true beginning also starts a bit different, but after about ten minutes or so it catches up to the game. So, barring the gender swapping nothing too horrendous to point out.

The movie starts out very dreadful, and does a masterful job of displaying that sense of seclusion. Radha Mitchell does a great job as she tries to make her way through Silent Hill in search of her daughter. There’s some very gruesome moments, that capture the spirit of the game. Unfortunately there’s a point in the movie when things start to go downhill very quick.

*SPOILER*

When Rose ends up finding out what’s going on in Silent Hill, the movie changes its pace. The eerie dread of Silent Hill is traded in for crazy CGI effects, and melodramatic Silent Hill citizens. The climax of the movie is so over the top, that it really comes off cheesy when the rest of the movie felt so right. The ending is hokey, and really doesn’t do much in terms of wrapping things up. It’s just there.

Again, Silent Hill isn’t a bad movie, it’s just a film that had so much wasted potential. Why couldn’t the filmmaker extend the first half, and make the second like it? Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

—————-

As video game fans, it’s crazy to assume that most of the franchises we love could ever make it to film. Video games just have a certain way of being, that for the most part don’t translate to live action. The narrative pieces in games are definitely getting better, so the transition could improve.

Unfortunately, much of Hollywood is driven by money and releasing these movies brings in droves. I just wish that filmmakers would do more to respect the games they’re butchering. There’s so much wasted potential out there. We can only hope that Hollywood stops what it’s doing, or gets their act into shape. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.

I left some movies off the list, so let me hear back from some video game movies you think are good, bad or ugly.