I think the time is right to finally make game-to-film conversions viable. The problem with most of these films was that they had the perceived stereotypical gamesplayer for a target audience : the teen male. Therefore, every one of these films was insulting to the viewers' intelligence.

However, lately there has been a shift in the way the media at large see games. Sure, it's still not a viable alternative to true art forms such as films and literature from their point of view, but gamesplayers are taken a lot more seriously now. The same goes for comics, which resulted in the relatively intelligent interpretation of X-men, and more recently, Unbreakable.

And of course, The Spirits Within is the first such project that has the actual director of the games involved... which tells me that it'll at least take the subject matter, and therefore me, seriously.

Sir Farren, leaving his hand-eye coordination at home.

The game to movie/movie to game history is quite disturbing. We all know movies to games have often failed (Blade, Fifth Element, The Grinch, to name a few), and lately, people are trying to take games to the realm of movies. More often than not, this is a mistake.

Games were meant to be games, and movies were meant to be movies. More often than not a game simply does not translate to the big screen due to the basic plot of the game. Most games such as RPGs and adventure games are meant to be beaten in over 20 hours, in most cases. You can take a lot of that time away for experience gathering, NPC interaction, and navigation, but you would still have at least 5 hours in most games where the plot is a big concern. You simply cannot scale down an epic game and translate it on the big screen.

In order to deal with the time factor, most games to movies become and hour and a half. In an epic RPG game, it does not work. Technically, you cannot consider the Final Fantasy Movie a game movie because they created a whole new plot to work with. I plan to see the movie, and I think it might do well, but it is certainly not going to be the video game movie. It is an animated movie (and a damn good one at that) written for the movies, and for that reason alone it may do well. If they were to try and take the plot of Final Fantasy IV and translate it, it would most likely fail.

Most movies listed in yesterday's column were fighting games with little substance, and needed a "plot" created for them. In the case of Mario, that game came way after its time. About the only REALLY successful movie about games I can think of was The Wizard, starring that kid from "The Wonder Years." That movie was a giant preview of Super Mario Bros. 3, and that movie did pretty well.

On the other hand, some games can be done for the big screen quite well. Resident Evil can be beaten in 3 hours...easily adaptable for the big screen.

Only time will tell if games are translated for the big screen. Frankly, the Hollywood producers need to be a little more careful on what they pick and choose.

Charlie

I just read that article about FFX's battle system, and while I was getting all pissy about the character designs before, I'm somehow getting a good (better, anyway) feeling about FFX now. A strategic battle system sch as suggested by the choice for battle director will undoubtedly piss off hordes of self-proclaimed champions of old-school games, but it seems fine to me. I happened to love FM3, and FFT, and wil do so for a long time. I think it suits the new directions we already know the series is taking, and I think we should at least keep a [more] open mind to the foray into double digits now.

Oh, and as for movies, I think they should just be avoided altogether unless:
a) The game (meaning its story, characters, etc.) is stuck to religiously (which would never work, too long, but I stick to that anyway) or
b) They start over (which is what FF is doing) with new stories or possibly characters. I think we'd all like to know what happens after the end of VS, for just one example. Hell, Square's been doing this for 10+ years, why fix what isn't broken?

~TH Cole Just realized how much harder the choice between getting a Dreamcast or a PS2 got. DAMN YOU SQUARE, DAMN YOU!!!

~Fear Factory
"aka Beer Boy"

p.s. I miss the message boards...

first off its final FANTASY. so reallity is out and fighting in obis, with huge long tounges and 20 foot long masemunes are in.

but that is not todays topic, movies made from videogames are. I remeber when i was a young lass living in the moors of scotland, or was the the suburbs of north carolina.... anyhoo, back then we played zelda and mario and because the games did not have a lot of spoken story line, just the crap in the manual <yes the bricks mario breaks are the citizens of mushroom land, its in the manual*> or on the title screen. other than that, they left the rest to the imagination. i used to think that mario and luigi <where did he go anyway?> were pizza makers who found strange mushrooms and a pipe in thier pizza parlor ,<shut up stoners> and was suprized that in the cartoon they were plumbers. so as crappy as they may be, the old games-turned-movies were written because the game isself never expaned on the stories. but now all games have a complex and detailed story. who needs a final fantasy move <still gonna see it anyway> when 4 thru 6 were great stories them selves. mortal kombat was great because they had great writters interpreting the events from the game and with the little information was given with the game <read the original pre movie novel it was better>. but a agrat story movie would not work because we played it already and to shorten it to a movie would be blasphimy. final fantasy: the spirits within <ff:tsw> will undoutedly be the greatest game-to-movie ever, but it won't be as good as final fantasys 4 thru 9. but enevidably, the games-to-movies will die and become a fading memory.

Humbly mumbly,
Machka Drek

See it's a Talking Heads ref.. nevermind. Here's an idea for video game - movie conversions... "Don't make them suck". I really believe that the FF movie will succed because it's the first that doesn't seem to be patronizing and condescending to the gamers, while being designed specifically to irritate anyone over the age of 8 years old (With the exception being the first Mortal Kombat movie, but that doesn't count because it wasn't that great of a game or idea to begin with). The FF movie seems to be the first that's actually a "movie" instead of an piece of merchandising, this is made even more so with its being completely original and not being connected to any specific game in particular. I mean if Square renamed "Cid" to "Dr. Dave" and renamed the movie something totally original they'd still have a movie that could make money. If you took "Super Mario Bros." out of the movie "Super Mario Bros." it'd still suck but nobody would watch it. Hey here's what I'd like to see made into a movie... "Parrapa the Rapper". As animation it'd be awesome with all the original voices and writers and stuff, but I was also thinking about how awesome something like that would be as live action, featuring settings like you'd find in an Outkast video and perhaps Ving Rhames as DJ Berri, now how cool would that be? The movie to game I'd like to see is "Unbreakable" or more specifically, I'd like to see M. Night Shyamalan as a game director, and according to "Vagrant Story" it's actually possible to do something like that with a game.

Gilbert, the man with the golden pipe, he'll smoke anything for a million dollars (See it's a James Bond ref... nevermind).