I alone can tell you why videogame movies are always bad
I’m super smart
UPDATE 12/30/21: I’ve decided to make both my books (Ophelia, Alive and Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem) permanently available for free to everyone who signs up for my Substack. Click the link below to start reading both immediately:
There’s a new Mortal Kombat movie in theaters right now — because apparently someone asked for that? — and, from what I understand, it isn’t particularly good. I haven’t seen it, and don’t intend to (I can think of about a thousand better things to do with two hours), but there is a common thread I see in all of the reviews (apparently I can’t think of anything better to do than read reviews — so I’m really in a glass house here), and it’s the the ubiquitous question of Why are videogame movies always so bad?
This is something that comes up in reviews with the release of nearly every videogame movie, and it’s a fair question. Ever since 1993’s notorious disaster of a Blade Runner ripoff Super Mario Bros. (it makes about as much sense as that description implies), the awfulness of videogame movies has become a running gag — to the point that you’re almost not allowed to write a review of one without asking the question (or making a joke about that Super Mario Bros. movie). The answers offered by film critics are, seemingly, always the same: Film execs don’t respect videogames. What makes a game compelling is very different from what makes a film compelling. Both of those are true, as far as they go.
The former is mostly a generational issue: Pre–Gen X generations didn’t grow up with videogames and therefore, with few exceptions, don’t really understand them or what people like about them. On the other hand, the out-of-touch-ness of the older generation is a problem facing any film based on something “young people” like.
The latter, I think, is a bit more insightful—this episode of The A.V. Club’s film podcast, for example, makes the very solid observation that videogames often trade on extremely worn film tropes, with their sole point of interest for the player being that now you’re part of the action. (So Max Payne, for instance, which is essentially just a parody of a 1970s cop movie, gets made into a movie, and it’s…just a bad 1970s-style cop movie.)
Even those two points, though, seem to miss the essential unsolved problem with making a videogame movie, which, fundamentally, is the Why of making them at all.
I’m not being snarky or rhetorical here. I’m not saying no one should make a movie based on a videogame. What I am saying is that no one has answered the fundamental question of why a videogame movie needs to exist.
Now, I obviously understand why videogame movies get made. Videogames are popular and make money; therefore, movies based on them are likely to be popular and make money. I get that. I’m talking about the aesthetic justification for making them. In the same way people look at a sequel or a remake that no one was crying out for and say, Why did this have to happen? I’m just wondering, why do these videogame movies have to happen?
Think about it this way. There are a ton of great movies based on books, and I think no small part of that is that fact that people have figured out the aesthetic justification for making a movie based on a book. A book, after all, is just words on a page; if those words are particularly vivid, they almost cry out to be interpreted on the screen. If the characters are particularly memorable, they almost scream to be interpreted by brilliant actors. None of that is a guarantee that every movie based on a good book will be good, but it at least gives filmmakers a reason to adapt books beyond “This will make money.”
With videogames, that justification just isn’t there.
I guess maybe you could have made a case for videogame movies back in the 1980s, but full-motion video cutscenes have been part of the game maker’s toolset since the mid-1990s (about the time Super Mario Bros. came out, as it happens). This obviously doesn’t mean every game has used them well, or that every game should strive for the “cinematic” approach that was such a holy grail in the mid-’00s, but it does mean that there’s fundamentally nothing a movie can do that a game can’t.
In other words: When you adapt a book into a film, you’re taking words on a page and making them come to life—which in itself is a fundamentally interesting thing to do, at least if you do it well. When you adapt a videogame into a film, all you’re doing is abridging it and stripping out the interactivity. That’s … a considerably less compelling pursuit.
I think this episode of YouTube series Extra Credits (admittedly written by Movie Bob, who I believe has been declared Deeply Problematic™️ for one reason of another) gets it right when it declares the gold standard (so far, at least) for a movie based on a game—though admittedly a board game, not a videogame—to be 1985’s Clue. Clue didn’t win any awards when it came out, but it’s stuck around as something of a minor classic, in part because it knows exactly what it is. The board game Clue, after all, doesn’t tell a particularly compelling narrative, though it does tell a narrative—namely, the plot of a very trite Agatha Christie–style “cozy mystery.” The film, then, succeeds by poking fun at the genre’s tropes a bit more than even the game does—and by using the game’s mechanics to influence the way the film plays out: Clue was released to theaters with three different endings, leading those who had seen different screenings of it to argue about how it ended. A gimmick? Probably, but also a fun one that echoed the mechanics of the game.
A gimmick like that doesn’t scale, obviously. If every game-based movie had three different endings, the idea would get tiresome pretty fast. But it does provide an example of a way for a filmmaker to answer the question of Why does this cheesy mystery movie have to be a ‘Clue’ movie, instead of just a generic ‘mystery’ movie? in a way that’s at least somewhat aesthetically satisfying.
If we want aesthetically satisfying movies based on videogames—which is maybe a dubious thing to chase after in the first place, but assuming this is actually something we want—I think the first thing to figure out is how to make this sort of aesthetic justification scale. If you set out to make a movie based on a videogame, probably the best way to start is to answer two aesthetic questions: (1) Why does this have to be a [game] movie and not just a [generic genre] movie? and (2) Why does this have to be a [media franchise] movie, as opposed to just another [media franchise] game? If you can’t think of a good answer for both questions, it might be time to reconsider your undertaking altogether.
Stuff I’ve been enjoying lately
The most exciting artist that’s come across my radar recently is probably writer Leigh Stein. Her novel Self Care was some of the most devastating satire I’ve read — think of it as Network by way of Instagram — and her upcoming book, What to Miss When might be the first time I’ve been excited about contemporary poetry in years. It’s a collection of “plague poetry” (she wears her Decameron influence on her sleeve) for an ongoing plague (you know the one), and I was honestly surprised at how often I felt myself wanting to come back to it. This is a book that captures how completely drained and helpless a lot of us are feeling these days, without being overwhelming about it — I’m pretty sure I laughed on every page. The “meme energy” of the cover nails the essence of the book.
It’s not out till August — thanks to her publicist for sending me an advance copy — but you can pre-order it now. I’ll also have Stein on my podcast around that time, which I’m super excited about.
Me, elsewhere
Speaking of my podcast — Changed My Mind is dormant, but not for long. We’ll be back in the fall with some guests I’m really excited about, including Stein, but for now you can catch up on the archive. Have you listened to the season finale yet? It’s the one where I talk about what I’ve learned so far. Here it is on Apple Podcasts.
I’ve been writing quite a bit for Grunge lately — they’re a site that features articles on crazy, mind-blowing facts you didn’t even know you didn’t know (or something). There are quite a few of my pieces there, but let me highlight some of my favorites for you: Here’s one on the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, one on Golda Meir, and one on the “Sydney Slaughterhouse” (which was actually just a really terrible hospital).
I’m still writing my column Fads!Crazes!Panics! over at Christ and Pop Culture. Here’s a recent one on the panic over brainwashing.
As always, if you can’t get enough of me, you can buy my books. Here’s the weird, creepy one, and here’s the weird, religious one.