Bottom Line Over Content

First of all when a film is being made with the profit margin being considered above all else it is probably going to be terrible, whatever the subject matter is.  That's why we still see piss-poor comic book based films being made.  For every Batman Begins or Spider-man there is an Aeon Flux (okay, not really based on a comic book but an incomprehensible but undeniably cool series of animated shorts which aired on MTV) or Captain America.  Too many film producers, studio execs, and directors approach their video game acquired rights with little to no respect for the franchise.  They churn out scripts in no time at all and hope that the franchise itself will attract game fans to the theaters.  This is how we get dreck like BloodRayne and Doom.

Studios Don't Trust Game Writers

Remember when you first played Resident Evil?  The voice acting was awful and a lot of the dialogue was corny, but the storyline was immersive.  Clearly drawing inspiration from George Romero's "_____ of the dead" films and other sci-fi/horror ditties like Re-animator, we really identified with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine as they explored that creepy mansion and eventually the labs of the evil mega-corporation Umbrella.  The story worked and worked well, so why was it altered so much when made into a film?  Because the studios just don't trust game writers.  If the story was created for a game it couldn't possibly work for a movie, right?

This line of thinking added the entire Red Queen subplot to Resident Evil, kept Jill Valentine out of the series until the second installment and Chris Redfield out altogether, created a long lost father for Lara Croft, named both Mario Brothers Mario (Mario Mario and Luigi Mario - silly), and changed the parent searching for a missing child in Silent Hill from a father to a mother.  Other changes were made as well.  In fact, to date there has not been a single game-based film to carry over an intact (or even somewhat intact) storyline from its source material.

Lack of Respect for the Audience

Movie studios are still laboring under the mistaken notion that video games are for kids.  Despite the fact that most research shows the average gamer to be thirty some years old, the filmmakers largely make their movies to appeal to the lowest common denominator.  While this could work for a film like Doom (what real story is there in Doom anyway?  It's all about the BFG), losing the intense character traits of, say, Solid Snake in favor of explosions and gunfights would seriously harm any film based on the Metal Gear franchise.  Why did Mortal Kombat release with a PG rating and almost no blood?   Studio execs feared that is the film was too violent the core audience would be unable to watch.  The game was rated M but the movie was benign enough to air on network TV almost uncut.

Improvements on the Horizon

Just as things improved for movies based on comics, we're seeing the beginning of the beginning of improvements for movies based on games.  Silent Hill, despite how convoluted the story was, carried several sequences directly from the games into the film.  While non-gamers viewed the film as a nearly unwatchable mess, fans of the game series reveled in seeing so many similarities between the movie and the games on which it was based.  This is a good sign for future film versions of games, especially considering that a Metal Gear film and a Gears of War film are both currently in development.  Both franchises have a devoted fan base that will want to see good celluloid treatments of their favorite games and Hollywood should take great steps to ensure their happiness.  We're not out of the woods yet and both titles have a high percentage of possible suckage, but both also have the rich storylines and deep characters that can easily pave the way for a good movie.