8 Unforgivable Errors Every Video Game Movie Makes

It’s actually quite worrying that, with an entire game’s worth of lore at their disposal, many of the directors that take on the task of adapting them for the screen don’t have the faintest idea what they’re meant to be doing with it.

If you managed to sit through the entirety of the Street Fighter Movie (or anything by Uwe Boll for that matter) it’s clear that not only do they have no clue about what makes the games worth adapting but that they also have no intention of finding out.

Movies based on fighting games hardly need to be Citizen Kane, but it would be preferable if they were approached with more preparation than a list of character names and the title. This disregard of decent storytelling is even more jarring when games with a strong narrative core are adapted, for example, Spirits Within - the tedious slog that was inexplicably supposed to be a Final Fantasy story.

Solution

This may seem like a very obvious thing to say but it’s probably worth getting someone on board who is familiar with the source material and will do it justice.

Audiences have benefitted from this approach in the form of the new Star Wars movies, which are currently being helmed by self-professed fanboys. Studios looking to create a bankable franchise from a game would be wise to look at the benefits of hiring people who actually know what they’re talking about.