8 Unforgivable Errors Every Video Game Movie Makes

One of the main arguments for video games as a genuine art form is their ability to place you in the position of the game’s protagonist, allowing you project some of your own ideas and feelings onto them. As an interactive medium, games allow you to become fully invested in a narrative and, by extension, the character you play as.

This certainly isn’t the case in any adaptation that’s made it to the big screen. Even as recently as Michael Fassbender’s comatose performance in Assassin’s Creed, it’s hard to empathise or even really care about the heroes these movies present us with.

The issue is that the writers all seem to run with the whole ‘blank vessel’ idea from the game itself when this clearly doesn’t work for a passive viewing experience. Case in point, they could have replaced Alice from the Resident Evil franchise with a floating, quipping gun for The Final Chapter and nobody watching would have noticed.

Solution

Filmmakers shouldn’t focus on making characters exactly as they appear in the source material. Movies are intrinsically different from games and this definitely also applies to the writing process. There will never be an acclaimed adaptation as long as studios continue to neglect characterisation.

Taking some time to flesh the heroes out and give them a semblance of personality seems like a no-brainer, but it’s something that is neglected time and time again.