The long list of video games adapted into feature films is an extreme antithesis of an honor roll. If I showed you a list of all the video game movies ever produced you could just as easily exchange the title “Video Game Movies” for “Some of the Worst Films Ever Made” and you’d never know the difference.

Without exception, all video game movies have been “bad”. Oh perhaps 1 or 2 of them climb as high as “not completely sucking” (like perhaps the first “Tomb Raider” or the first “Mortal Kombat”) but to date no video game movie could be called “good” without cracking a smile. Just to name a few:

Wing Commander
Street Fighter
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Alone In The Dark
Bloodrayne
Hitman
Silent Hill
In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time
Max Pane
Doom
Resident Evil: Any of them
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Super Mario Brothers
DOA: Dead or Alive

The list goes on, but I think you get the point.

And while it goes without saying that there have certainly been a number of horrible comic book movies (Elektra, Spawn, Judge Dredd, Jonah Hex, Catwoman) there have also been a good number of absolutely fantastic ones as well. Just off the top of my head I could list off:

The Dark Knight
Batman Begins
X-Men
X-Men 2
Spider-Man 2
Thor
Captain America
Iron Man
Superman II
Kick Ass
300
Sin City

And I’m not even mentioning the “good” comic book movies like Hellboy, Blade and others.

Needless to say, comic book movies enjoy a much higher success rate (we’re talking about quality here) than their video game counterparts. Whereas comic book movies are batting around .600, video game movies are still sitting at around .000, and I don’t see that number changing anytime soon.

When there have been this many video game movies and this many comic book movies and one of them enjoys pretty consistent success while the other constantly disappoints and fails, you have to start looking for common denominators. What characteristics exist that seem to give one of these genres (and I use that term loosely) a respectable chance of turning out a great movie while the other is doomed to fail before the cameras even roll? The question is, why are comic book movies consistently better than video game movies?

FALSE REASONS COMIC BOOK MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN VIDEO GAME MOVIES

Before we get into why comic book movies are consistently better than video game movies, let’s first address some of the things that are NOT the cause.

1) “They didn’t care about the game or didn’t try”
This is false. Oh sure, just like any other film in any other genre I’m sure there have been a few cases of producers not really caring at all about the original game and were just looking to capitalize on the name recognition of the property to make a quick dirty buck. But the notion that this is widespread just isn’t true. I personally know a few producers (of some of the movies on my video game list above) who poured every ounce of their heart and soul into those movies and tried their damndest to make a quality film. You see, like comic book movies, producers of video game movies want MORE money… and the best way to get more money is to make your video game movie into a franchise of movies… but in order to have a sequel you’ve got to get people to come to and enjoy your first movie. GREED forces most filmmakers and producers to try their best to make something people will like. So yes in general, these producers and filmmaker really do care and really do try to make something we’ll like… because it’s in their best interests to do so.

2) “They should have let the game developers be in charge of the movie”
You’d be stunned how often I’ve heard this absolutely ludicrous piece of reasoning. The thinking here is that if the people at Rockstar Games had overseen the “Max Pane” movie instead of those “idiots over at 20th Century Fox” (don’t laugh, I’ve actually heard this in a conversation) then the film would have turned out much better. This is completely moronic thinking since the people at Rockstar don’t know the first thing about making a feature film or how to effectively tell a compelling narrative in 90 minutes. Yes, Max Pane sucked, but it would have been 10x worse (hard to imagine) had a company that knows nothing about filmmaking oversaw the project.

THE REAL REASONS COMIC BOOK MOVIES ARE ALWAYS BETTER THAN VIDEO GAME MOVIES

So then why do video game movies suck? I would submit that there in an inherent weakness with the genre itself that almost condemns these projects to certain death the moment they’re born in a studio office. An inherent weakness that lays a weak foundation for anything any well meaning producer may want to try to build on top of it. Well…

1) – Video Games are made for gameplay, not narrative story telling
When a game developer is putting their game together, their first priority (or at least it should be) is gameplay. How well does this play, how enjoyable, creative and easy is this game to operate and what will the user experience be like. Their first priority is not to tell a 90 minute narrative story. Yes, story plays a PART of any good game, but it’s only a side element to the over all game experience. And really, when you break it all down there is about 10 minutes of true, real narrative story in any given game. 10 minutes!

By contrast, a comic book movie usually has decades of narrative and character development. They have long lists of characters to draw from and material to develop their film around. Making a video game movie is basically starting from scratch with nothing but an idea for a story rather than a story itself. Which leads us to…

2) Premise is not story
People will often mistake a great “premise” with a great “story”. They’re two different things. The premise of Bioshock is fantastic, but the actual amount of narrative and story in the game is completely minimal. It’s basically the difference between laying out a great idea for a story on one page, and having a completed fully fleshed out quality novel. The two are not the same. Many video games have within them a solid premise… something that you could build a movie around essentially from scratch, but it is from scratch.

By contrast, comic books are loaded with concepts but also with fully fleshed out and developed stories on top of them that have been read, tested and improved upon over time (in come cases decades). X-Men isn’t just an idea of people born with unusual powers who come together to fight for a world that fears and hates them, it’s actually a completed archive of characters, adventure, conflicts and triumphs, trials and tribulations with fully developed themes and story arcs over long periods of time.

3) – Gamers imaginations fill in the gaps
Because video games are so sparse when it comes to narrative (and there’s nothing wrong with that since they’re designed for gameplay in the first place) each fan of the game has a different notion in their minds about what would fill in the narrative gaps. It’s fine to make a Halo game and say Master Chief has a meeting with some Captain who has vital information… but there is no reference for that meeting, what is said in it, how it impacts the rest of the narrative or anything else for that matter. To the game player that’s not an issue and their own imaginations can fill in those gaps… the problem is what a movie actually DOES flesh those elements out, there is a 99% if won’t match what was in the game player’s imagination. Now I’m talking in generalities here, but the principle is that because the game lacks pre-existing narrative, what the fan’s CONCEPT of what the narrative may look like is probably not what is going to manifest, thus leaving the audience wanting.

4) – Everyone has a different idea of what “respect the source material” means
This one is a common lamentation I hear from game fans when their favorite games turn out to be horrible movies. “They didn’t respect the source material”. The problem with that assertion is that… what do they mean by “source material”? This goes back again to the first point about lack of real narrative. Since the game doesn’t have it, each person will have a different idea about which elements constitute “source material” to them. So what do they mean? Do they mean the atmosphere of the game? Do they mean the characters present in the game? Do they mean the premise of the game? Again, each person will have a different idea simply because the game itself doesn’t provide it.

CONCLUSION

Will there eventually be a video game movie that crawls out from under the waste pile of all the awful video game movies to come before it and stand triumphantly as the first true GREAT video game movie? Absolutely. The law of averages says it’s bound to happen. Maybe it will be the Warcraft movie, or Assassin’s Creed or Bioshock or some other game that has a higher degree of narrative in them that will finally tip the scales. The stakes are higher now than ever before as studios desperately hunt for their next great franchise of films that can be cash cows for years and years to come. Eventually… sooner or later… it will happen.

But until that day comes and the great exception to the rule emerges, know this: when you go to see a comic book based movie, you’ve got a better than average chance of walking out happy. When you go to see a video game based film you have a better chance of winning the lottery, being struck by lightning and sleeping with Scarlett Johansson all on the same day than getting your money’s worth.