Jonathan "Tempest" Phillips

I’ve been meaning to talk about Video game movies for a while, But i’ve got so much to say that I don’t think 1 post can contain it all. So welcome to the first a series of tempest ramblings about why video game movies are always on my mind. Seriously. They need to get out, They are taking up valuable creativity space.

In the movie industry, video game movies are seen as second class citizens. Nobody is really willing to put big name talent or even a regular budget into them. Every now and again they try and make a big film to kick start the video game movie trend…..but each time they keep the big guns back……just in case. This means the genre…if you want to call it that, is never going to progress. For the longest time, George Romero, The creator of every good Zombie film you’ve ever seen, was wanting and trying to make resident evil. In fact it was due to his persistence that the film got made. Now I’m not saying that the final film wasn’t good. it certainly was a lot better than the throw away sequels. But can you imagine what it would have been like if he had made it. Similar Plot, but with mountains of fear, Moralistic choices and a lot less show boating. For a start, I’m guessing it would not have taken half of the film to get to see a damn zombie.

That really is another of my issues with the way these films are produced. After watching them you feel they were designed to be made a cheaply as possible while giving the impression they pored time and money into it. SO many of these throw away films talk half of the damn screen time before the action starts. Not a bad thing. Gives you half of the film to learn and love the characters, right? Nope. Its far to time consuming a difficult to make the characters likeable, so they simply don’t. Even with characters that people know and love, hollywood, somehow makes you hate them.

They are seen as a bit of quick money. Not easy money….quick money. As such they will never put in any major time or effort into creating them right. We are not asking for our films to be 100% locked into the source material, Just an entertaining stand along film. I genuinely can’t understand how after finishing the Far Cry movie, Uwe Boll Looked at the final cut and said “Yep, thats it, Thats is the perfect Far Cry movie. there is nothing I can do to make this a better film” Thats because he didn’t. He said “Wow that was quick. This is going to make me a lot of money”.

Please hollywood, If your listening (which your not) Don’t treat Video games like this. At least put some effort into it. just a little.