Live Action Adaptations

This came up in an unrelated thread. I recently saw the recent American live action adaptation of Dragon Ball and I wondered why it's so difficult to make a live action adaptation of a video game or anime well. There are classic clunkers like Super Mario Bros, and more recent ones like Street Fighter that are full of what-were-they-thinking moments.

Here my take. First of all, if the source is stylized, then it's jarring to see it rendered live. That one reason I think animations based on video games are generally more sucessful, since they both can render highly stylized characters. For games where the characters are rendered realistically, the transition to live action runs much more smooth. Silent Hill, for its flaws and the beginning and endings, works very well at evoking the eerie atmosphere of the game in the middle sections.

Second has to do with scripting. You have to incorperate details from the original characters that made them appealing. Street Fighter's biggest mistake was making it a vehicle for Jean Claude Van Damme, who was sadly miscast as Guile. Forget that he looked nothing like him, he didn't even evoke the notion of Guile successfully. At least most of the secondary character had the right look, although again many of them didn't evoke the essence of the characters.

I didn't think the Resident Evil series was TOO bad as a movie. Though, they are more just plain entertainment and not to be taken seriously (in my opinion). Also, Tomb Raider could have been a LOT worse. I could simply be biased though because I love Angelina. I have yet to see the Max Payne movie, either, so I cannot give any input on that at all.

EDIT: Oh ya! They are making a Prince of Persia movie as well, which, to be honest, does not look that appealing.

You could argue that both RE and TR have fairly realistically rendered characters in the video game, so the transistion to live action was much more smooth. As for the plotting, the RE movies have pretty laughable plots. TR is goofy but also has a sense of fun.

RE was bad ass. Never played Silent Hill, but the movie just... it's freaking sweet.

They got a the visual look just right and most of the characters are well done especially Dahlia, Cybil, and Dark Alessa. Not to mention good ol' PH. It's just Rose's actions are so illogical and idiotic until they actually get to Silent Hill, then she acts likes a reasonable person. As for the ending, it's too gory for my taste.

But that's what gives it it's scariness.

They could have easily had Sharon run away from home to Silent Hill, and then have Rose follow her. Then the plot could pick up as normal without the audience thinking: No sane, loving mother would take their child to an abandoned polluted mining town for therapy.

I like a good scary movie, but I'm turned off by blood and gore. Hellraiser II is another example of this: I love the plot and the characters, but I found the violence disturbing.

That being said, the middle passages of SH are terrific. The set designer and cinematographer did excellent work in evoking the three worlds. And the monsters were eerily convincing by using actors in suits rather than just CGI.

It's funny how many terds out there confuse actual fear with the startling or jarring shock of bloodlet and quickdeath. Some people mock M. Night Shyamalan's Sixth Sense and Signs, but I was in the audience when people were reacting intently to the scenes as the intensity mounted or as the creepy, eerily spooky situations misted in. I had a girl next to me who literally started digging her fingernails into the back of my hand because I was blocking the armrest she desperately needed to latch onto.

You don't need to pour on blood like a pint of syrup on your pancakes. You don't need to have everyone and their grandmother and (these days even toddlers) die by the end of the movie. You don't need ridiculously gratuitous deaths either. You know what movies like Wrong Turn and House of 1000 Corpses do to me? They buzz my pscyho-solarplexis. They make me almost psychotic. All I want to do is walk into that House of Wax, find the masked murderer and put him on display in my freak museum, alive if possible, but completely devoid of ability to move or experience anything other than pain.
I don't like thrillers. They don't thrill me. They just push me in the wrong direction. As an amateur psychologist, I might say it's an interesting study. "The effect of psycho-thrillers on an unstable mind." The end result being that the viewer is more inclined to these horrendous fantasies in our reality and seek actively to snuff them out through vigilanteism.

Anyway, as for my take on game-to-movie, I agree with Magix and Niti. Res was awesome and has been the only game-to-movie to reach trilogy famedom. It's even got a fourth movie on the way although it's in CG. Was Jill Valentine supposed to be in that movie? Is her voice actor going to be the actress her played her in Apocalypse?

I wonder how Tekken would fair as a movie. The characters are all realistic enough to me and the backstory already seems far more likely than anything else ever presented for a tournament-style fighter. "A corporation run by greedy tyrant experiments on machines and genetics to create the ultimate army. To obtain crucial information, a tournament is held offering prize money and rights to ownership of the corporation." Personally, I'm not a particularly huge fan of every single character and would hope the producers don't try to squeeze every last bit of fanservice out of it like they did with MK.

I didn't say that I love blood and gore. There was just enough violence to give it scariness. I did turn my head when that lady got torn to shreds.