Social distancing is now the norm and the Cinema is a ‘no go’ zone. To help us come to terms with this, we had a chat over Discord about some of the best times we’ve had at a cinema. You can listen on anywhere that has podcasts, or using the player below.
Here is the Picture of Max and Jordan at Secret Cinema Back to the Future.
Off the back of ‘Sonicmania’ and Jim Carey’s decline into a performance which is almost a parody of himself, I was having a think about some of the other Video Game adaptions we’ve been blessed with in the last few decades.
The below list captures a couple of guilty pleasures of mine, plus some pure hot garbage and shameless cash-grabs. I think the challenge with adapting Video Games into movies is that historically these films have been made for the wrong reasons; be it money, pillaging original ideas from other industries or thinking that your film will have a ready-made fan base from the get go. Despite their issues, I would probably recommend any of the below for a bored weekday evening viewing (except #3).
(If you want to listen to us talking about Sonic for the best part of an hour, feel free to check us out on Spotify etc)
1 – Street Fighter (1994)
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue (yes seriously) headline this surprisingly faithful recreation of what it is to be a ‘Street Fighter’. I used to enjoy this as a teenager whenever it was on late, particularly with how campy the acting was and the over-the-top final fight scene against a powered-up M.Bison.
Some of my favourite plot choices include the fictional nation of “Shadaloo” as a just-generic-enough mixture of foreign elements to not come across as a stereotype and the inclusion of a post-credits scene (way ahead of it’s time?) leaving an opening for the sequel that never happened.
I would really recommend checking out the episode of ‘How Did This Get Made?’ about this film if you want to know the answer to the question “What is a Street Fighter?”.
2 – Warcraft (2016)
This list was going to be purely live-action, but how could I not include this absolute gem? The visuals were state-of-the art, but unfortunately this movie rides the fence somewhere between cgi and live action in an eerie way which never quite sits right. I reckon more practical effects would have helped, by reaching for a Peter Jackson aesthetic instead of a “The Rock at the end of Mummy 2” aesthetic.
Sam Raimi nearly directed (“Oh boy yeah” that would have been good) but in the end it was Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son) who is responsible for bringing us the gripping plot idea of “Humans are good and Orcs are bad right? But what if Orcs were actually kind of OK?”
Still, it’s fairly faithful to the source material and WOW is still popular so I guess nothing was lost. My favourite race in WOW was Dwarves who I think were featured fairly sparingly in the movie so on that basis alone I’ve had little desire to watch again.
3 – House of the Dead (2003)
Everyone knows about House of the Dead. Right? RIGHT? It’s that light-gun game which you used to see in every airport arcade and never got to play because your parents refused to give you £1.
OK so maybe it’s not the most well-known franchise in popular culture or mainstream society but that didn’t stop a bunch of film execs in 2003 saying “Fuck the Zeitgeist we know what mainstream audiences want” and making this ‘3% on Rotten Tomatoes’ howler.
Young people attending a rave at a place literally called “The Isle of the Dead”? Check. Main Characters with no prior-training inexplicably duel-wielding firearms and back flipping through a graveyard? Check. Countless plot holes and loose ends? Check.
I’m no expert on House of the Dead lore but from what I know the links between the game and this movie are tenuous at best with only vague themes and elements linking the two (guns and zombies?). If these are the kind of zombie that coronavirus turns us into then I will be pissed.
4 – Tomb Raider (2001)
I kid you not, when I was a teenager my sister entered a competition and won a life-size cut out of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. For about 10 years this thing took up about half the space on our landing and would watch over me while I used the family PC. You could see it in the window if you walked past our house which suggests the whole street probably thought we were fucking mental.
Because of this, I have a real soft-spot for this film and will describe it as nothing but a masterpiece – an example of video games to movies done right and one of the best performances of our generation.
Angelina Jolie clearly tried hard to understand and get into the character of Lara Croft and her performance here ranges from “self-sufficient – yet saucy” to “worried about her father – yet saucy”.
5 – Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)
In the so-bad-it’s-good category is Silent Hill: Revelation. The story and lore of the Silent Hill games is confusing at best and a messy bowl of sloppy spaghetti at worst which is not exactly prime material for a movie adaption. The events take place in a fictional town which has a population being tormented by spooky and surreal goings-on so it’s not exactly an original concept in itself – but the execution of the setting is done well and this movie doesn’t screw that up.
Sometimes the spooky shenanigans surpass typical tropes and are genuinely quite unnerving. There’s a scene involving some spooky corpse-nurses which freeze in motion, but explode to life if you make a noise. It’s fairly horrific nightmare-fuel and is the kind of thing that you can only get from using Japanese horror games as your source material.
I also enjoy the character of Pyramid Head who at one point rips the skin off a live human in one motion.
Also: Sean Bean is in it and yes he dies.
The acting is pretty wooden and actual plot isn’t the greatest, but where House of the Dead failed, Silent Hill: Revelation succeeded in keeping some of the well done aspects of the setting in tact.
I think we’re going to see more video game/movie smash ups in the future, because Sonic, Detective Pikachu and The Witcher have all proven that live action adaptions of Video Games are viable if done faithfully. So if the movie execs are right and you’re hungry for more, here are some rumoured adaptions in the pipeline for 2020 and beyond.
Crap Movie Club