5 Video Games That Need To Be Movies
Today, once and for all, here on WhatCulture! I am going to give you a definitive list of the Top 5 games that NEED to be made into movies and, you never know, if we get enough support they may just happen.
In recent years the world of Video Games and Film have collided more frequently and more contentiously than ever before. As time passes more and more video games are being converted for the big screen, resulting in few success stories and a more regular burden of failure. The problem seems to be a lot of the games that are being selected shouldnt and the ones that should are being neglected for possible franchise starters, Resident Evil Im looking at you. So today, once and for all, here on WhatCulture! I am going to give you a definitive list of the Top 5 games that NEED to be made into movies and, you never know, if we get enough support it may just happen. Now before I start I am just going to say that there isnt going to be any of the following games in this list: Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, Halo, COD Modern Warfare. Yes they would all make some pretty sweet film but these have all been suggested before and would conform to my franchise point that I made earlier were they ever to be made. And someone out in Hollywood, screenwriters are trying desperately to crack a workable story out of each of those insanely popular properties. So relax, sit back and enjoy The Top 5 Video Games that NEED to be movies. 5. American McGees Alice / Alice Madness Returns
Alice in Wonderland got brought back to the minds of the public recently thanks to Tim Burton and his quite tame but billion-dollar adaptation of the books. Yeah it was good but it has been done before... Quite a lot in fact. So much so that even without reading the books (they are in my collection, I will get to them soon) I know everything that occurs within the mystical Lewis Carroll written pages. Well, that was until I played the HD restoration of American McGees Alice and its recent sequel. In these games Alice is confined to a mental institution after surviving a fire which killed her parents, she retreats to Wonderland for protection only to find that her fractured state of mind in the real world has seriously screwed up Wonderland. All of our favourite characters have been changed for the worse as you must fight against The Red Queen, The Tweedles and even The Mad Hatter. Your only solace comes in the creepy form of The Cheshire Cat who helps you along the way. My mind became warped by this game, the way Wonderland should have done it in the first place. The next time I watched the Disney cartoon version of Alice I kept expecting the murderous Mad Hatter and the malnourished Cheshire Cat but they never came. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG_-3T1Tljw These games represent the Wonderland that would exist thanks to todays society. A murderous vile place where you need to battle to survive. The games have a brilliant sense of the cinematic already that would just be heightened to the realms of awesome if they had a film makeover. The idea behind Wonderland is essentially a blank canvas for a film maker. There is so much going on within the place that the crazier the idea the more it would probably fit within the film. There is a downside though. Although we have this perverted view of Alice in Wonderland, with some great violence and a creepy outlook on everything, it is still tied very closely to the original premise of the book. Alice must travel through Wonderland, be it creepy and destroyed or Disney-fied and colourful, and defeat The Red Queen in order to return Wonderland to peace. Although the visuals will be stunning it is just the same story again, a story which we have heard and seen a hundred times. Now who could possibly direct something like this were it ever to exist? We would need someone who has a skill at portraying violence, that mixed with some stunning visuals and the odd flash of wit here and there. Zack Snyder is a possibility as he ticks all of the boxes but after the disappointment of Sucker Punch, which he said was Alice in Wonderland with machine guns, I am not too sure. I should give him the benefit of the doubt seeing that all of his previous films, even the remake of Dawn of the Dead, were actually pretty awesome. 4. Alan Wake
Now this game didnt do very well from the critics point of view but after an extraordinary amount of the delays, when it was finally released the gamers went wild. Because of this great reception by the players themselves a lot of the original reviews by the critics had to be scrapped and re-written as to not feel out of touch! In the a plot that Stephen King writes about in every third novel, you play as Alan Wake, a struggling writer who escapes to a little town in the middle of nowhere in order to work through some writers block. It is in the quite little town that things start going strange and you find yourself battling against possessed members of the town. Along the way you find pages from a manuscript that you wrote but have no recollection of writing, each page hints at events yet to come and only drags Alan deeper into the darkness that has surrounded the quiet town. The game takes many cues from classic American dramas, think Twin Peaks crossed with The Twilight Zone, as Alans journey is split into episodic chunks each with a pretty decent cliff hanger at its climax. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auw3_z9EyRg The main reason this needs to be made a film is the writing. It is brilliant. The secrets behind what is actually happening is well hidden and keeps you guessing up to the final level. Each cliffhanger beforehand makes you want to continue playing even though you may have been sitting their for several hours already. It has been a long time since a film has kept the audience guessing the entire way through, not since before M. Night Shyamalan lost his touch, which would excuse the fact that it does have a somewhat supernatural premise. The only problem is, even though it is written very well, it is in the episodic format, which is obviously made more for television that film. There is no real point to have several cliffhangers within a single film so if it were to be put on the big screen the number of questions would have to be reduced, which in turn reduces the whole reason it should be made into a film. Now who could direct this twisty horror film? I have already talked about M. Night Shyamalan, who did wonders for the dramatic horror genre with The Sixth Sense but who has now gone downhill so dramatically that his films are no longer taken seriously. I mean The Happening and The Last Airbender are just awful. But as this is a sort of wish list I can do what I like so I would like M. Night Shyamalan but from about 10 years ago. Simple. 3. Dead Space / Dead Space 2
Now this is kind of a cheat as there are already two anime movies out there bridging the gaps between DS1 and DS2 and also revealing what happens after the events of 2. But they are animated and only a smidge over and hour long so Im going to put them down as very long cutscenes (or short cutscenes if you are used to Metal Gear Solid...ooo I went there). As Isaac Clarke, an originally mute character until the events of the second game, you must scour the wreckage of a seemingly abandoned ship that you crash land on, only it isn't as abandoned as you first think. Infested with the mutated versions of the crew thanks to an ancient relic Isaac must sever his way through the reanimated corpses in order to escape the dying ship. Much like Alan Wake this game receives its best commendation through the story. Sure the over the top violence is second to none, as you chop of limbs in order to kill your otherwise unbeatable enemies, but it is really the story that shines through as you try and find out what the hell is going on in, what is essentially, space hell. You could compare this game to the filmic great John Carpenter's The Thing. Both succeed on the count of a character trapped within a place with almost no exit battling against a force in which they have no hope of defeating. However, thanks to an after credit audio snippet in Dead Space 2, their may be more than meets the eye in the Dead Space universe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAiHfqnbGYo&ob=av3e Unfortunately, as this is a horror game and a bloody good one at that, there is a risk of, if there were a film to be made, the filmmakers concentrating more on the horror aspect of the game rather than the writing. Choosing to scare the audience with a cheap thrill rather than entice them to think and have the horror as and added bonus. The only person that I can really think to do this justice would be Danny Boyle. Aside from his more Oscar worthy recent films Danny Boyles CV comprises of a few very good horror films (Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later) and, something that works in his favour for this specific game to film conversion, he did a little film called Sunshine, a horror set in the depths of space. With Sunshine and 28 Days Later we can see that Danny Boyle would be able to give us the horror the the Dead Space franchise has become famous for as-well as include some fantastic writing that would help emphasise the horror and not be hidden because of it. 2. Half Life 2
I believe that this decision may cause the most uproar out of all the choices on my list so far. The main reason being the character of Gordon, a mute that has built up one hell of a cult following. This is perhaps the highest reason against why a film of Half Life 2 should be made. In order for a film to be made then Gordon is going to have to be given a voice. We have all seen how bad this can go. The latest Metroid game and the Legend of Zelda cartoon from the eighties both took mute characters and gave them a voice, which was completely awful and almost ruined both of the franchises for good. However my thinking behind this decision is actually quite simple. So far Valve have not put a step wrong with the creation of their games (except with the extended wait for Episode 3 of Half Life 2) and Half Life 2 can be seen as the cherry on top of the delicious pile of cakes the Valve have already created. Now just think what would happen if Valve decided to make a film. They have already conquered with gaming world, with affordable games and promise of quicker release times, so why shouldnt they try their hand at film making. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV00UE_UaAY The world in which Half Life 2 inhabits is huge, the whole story with Black Mesa and Apature Science is incredibly well told through as little information as possible and this would make for a good film. However by saying this I am not condoning a Portal movie as that would be completely awful, no matter how good the game is. So who could possibly direct Half Life 2: the movie...well Gabe Newell of course, the Founder of Valve. If he could create something as awesome as Valve then directing would be a walk in the park for him. 1. Bioshock
Again I know that a lot of cries of horror just sprouted from the mouths of about half of the people reading this but, as you have stuck with me this far, I know that you will do me the pleasure and allow me to explain. In Bioshock you play a mute character (it seems that mute characters make good films...Not Portal though, leave that well alone) whose plane crash lands next to the entrance for an underwater haven known as Rapture. Escaping inside for survival you find that the haven has not turned out that way its creator imagined. Its community becomes crazed and drug dependent whilst trying to stop the main character from escaping or from helping out citizens that do not deserve the fate that they were given. An argument against this film is the whole morality aspect of the game. Within it you can choose whether to save or kill certain characters which changes the course of the game depending on which choice you make. Rather than worrying over how to utilise this aspect within the film the best possible thing that they could do would be to base the entire script around a single decision. This way the film will be able to show everything that happens due to this single choice. We, as the viewer, would be able to watch as we see the character spiral downwards because of a seemingly unimportant choice made very early on. This tied in with the already award worthy script behind the games would make, I believe, one great film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmw78t8NgIE Now who could possibly direct this film of a game? Well we know Gore Verbinski was attached for a while before Universal pulled out of financing the film... and he seems to be long gone from the adaptation now. Someone who is versed in the realms of horror maybe we can hope for as his replacement. We could go down the classic route with George A. Romero or we could have a more up to date choice with the pairing of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. As I have pretty much said throughout this list as long as nothing essential to the game is removed, as long as no essence which makes the game great is absent, then these games would made fantastic films. So that is it. My top 5 choices for games that NEED to be made into movies. Comment below on whether you think I am right or whether I am wrong. Also do you think that other films should have been placed in the list instead of others.