12 Video Game Movie Lessons The Last Of Us Adaptation Must Learn To Not Suck

Of all the things Hollywood can't seem to get right, is there anything with more troubled a history than the video game adaptation? Over the last twenty years, enterprising movie studios have tried to get it right in much the same way as they have with comic book adaptations, but to date, not a single one has been embraced by the general movie community as well as by fans of the source material themselves. We've had a few "close, but no cigar" moments, though the majority of the efforts to date have been nothing short of awful. What is it about adapting video games that's so difficult? A few general problems are apparent from the outset: video games borrow many of their story elements from the world of cinema, and so when filmmakers simply attempt to re-adapt that storyline to the big screen, it may come across as hackneyed and cliched. Then there's the fact that screenwriters have to awkwardly fill the gaps in story with their own ideas to pad the thing out to feature length, whereas, of course, the game would have players actually playing for most of that time. Then there's the overwhelming feeling that movie studios don't have a lot of respect for the medium as a whole, nor the audiences who shell out to watch these movies. Granted, most video games adapted to movies so far were never high-art in the first place, but there is room in the world for those games with true artistic merit: the likes of Shadow of the Colossus and, as was announced just last week, The Last of Us, which is to be produced by Sam Raimi himself. We're going to look at 12 major pitfalls that video game movies fall into, and if we've missed any big slip-ups, please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!