Hollywood - the game!

Video games are now an undeniable form of entertainment. Where as in the past it may well have been shunned or disregarded as a serious industry in copmparrison to film and music, this is now not the case. Not only that but the video game industry is now one of the most popular forms of entertainment markets of them all. Video games, thanks to the general casualisation of the industry with the introduction of things like the Wii and Doctor Kawashima's Brain Training are reaching out to audience's that had never been considered before. No longer are games associated to the pale faced, spot ridden shut in teenager, but now all people of all ages from all walks of life.

Considering this, it's no surprise that the money grabbers over in Hollywood want to stick their money grabbing hands into the proverbial pie, usually with disasterous results. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone In The Dark, Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, the list of video to film conversions goes on. The one thing they have in common? They have, for the most part, all been awful. Not one game to film conversion has reveived above 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, with most averaging below 30%.

Many a time have I cringed at the simple idea of some of my favourite games being transitioned to the big screen - most notably Resident Evil, which have without a doubt - been terrible. The first film's relation to the game series was tenuous at best - pretty much the only relation was the fact that there were zombies, the drop of the name Umbrella, T-Virus and..er.. That's about it. Stand alone, this could have been acceptable. However.. They just couldn't help themselves, they felt the need to attempt to reach out to the gaming audience, an exciting concept. They decided to take one of the most menacing, terrifying and relentless enemies from the entire series, the tenacious Nemesis.



The green skinned, purpe tentacled, leather clad behemoth terrified gamers everywhere when he refused to stay down after taking heavy amounts of machine gun fire and shotgun blasts - only to get back up again and attempt to smash the Racoon Police Department Doors. He was made only more horrifying when seemingly out of nowhere he appeared atop building, equipped with rocket launcher. He was an unrelenting force of destruction and death, the true definition of Nemesis.

Now i do applaud Hollywood for their attempts to recreate Nemesis aesthetically, they actually achieved that pretty well - with the exception of a blue eye instead of a deathly white one. Oh, and with the addition of a gattling gun as well as rocket launcher. But that's where my praise ends. Jill Valentine as well as Carlos Oliviera and Nicolai. Carlos portrayed as a short, spiky haired badass, Jill Valentine as a sarky, jealous break the rules police officer. Nicolai, the game's main antagonist, is in the film portayed as a cheeky ladies man who gets killed almost instantly by a cerberus as he is too occupied with flirting with Jill. Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of this film however, is the ending. Nemsis, face to face in a battle to the death with Alice (literally hand to hand punching, no tentacle, body ripping action) which is quite frankly embarassing - get's beaten. When ordered to kill Alice Nemsis refuses and instead, in an ode to his humanity, chooses to save Alice for the greater good. Pathetic.
I could go on and on about how dire they are, the third film involviong the original Resident Evil master monster.. Tyrant. The hulking, seemingly clawed demon was reduced to a mere joke, portrayed as a pretentious TALKING doctor. I've yet to witness the latest film, but as it includes Albert Wesker - i can only imagine they've somehow ruined him.

So why don't the films work? A simple 2 answers - real life has limitations. In a game, anything is possible, monsters and demons can look however the creator wants them to. In real life, in film, people can only do what the human body and the technology available to us allows us to do, which simply does not work as well, the amount of options instantly becomes limited. Secondly - the audience. Film makers are after as much money as possible, so they generalise the film, plot and characters. Giving a character like Nemsis a human nature and 'good' side, appeals to more people than a freak intent on killing. More appeal means more sales - after all they have no reputation to live to, what do they care if it's an awful film and nothing like the game? People will still go and see it just in case it IS like the game, we live in hope right? The only film i can say i remotely liked linking to games was Silent Hill, because it stuck closely to the first game, but still suffered some changes for the public. But, for every 1 good game film there are dozens of terrible ones. Just look at Street Fighter...