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Play Mechanics: Adapting Video Games For The Screen

by ScreenCraft - updated on May 31, 2023

Any studio executive or filmmaker gearing up to develop a feature-length adaptation of a video game--including Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski, just-attached to an adaptation of Gran Turismo for Sony--should be forced to watch The Super Mario Brothers every day for a week as a study in how not to do it.

Anyone weaned on video games...and come to think of it, anyone who wasn't... should and would feel insulted by the Mario movie. But what did those (minimum of nine) writers really have to work with? A blocky plumber who can only move forward and who will likely never find the princess? Or perhaps an immigrant story about blue-collar workers in a land they aren’t prepared for, pursuing a dream when the odds are stacked completely against them?

There’s a lot more to Mario, and every other video game story, than a cursory glance of a game’s plot and characters will give you. This is largely due to the most nebulous of all of gaming’s storytelling devices: the mechanics of play. Anyone tasked with adapting a video game will tell you that converting a game mechanic into a non-interactive medium is one of the greatest challenges you will have to face, especially when mechanics are so integral to video game storytelling.

Read More: Antihero with a Heart: Analyzing Joel from 'The Last of Us'

But all that is changing. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) in a 2015 study they released, the average consumers of games are not primarily teenage boys but, rather, men and women in their 30s. Naturally, with this demographic shift, the demand for artful, mature storytelling is increasing. So as those properties get nabbed up by studios, should screenwriters stay true to the source material or craft their own narrative? It’s my hope that future adaptations lean more toward the former than the latter.

Take for example the Resident Evil films. Perfectly fun zombie horror in their own right, but as an adaptation? Most fans of the games agree that, while enjoyable, the films are not strong adaptations of the source material. Outside of the window dressing of set-pieces, game character cameos, Umbrella corporation logos, and lickers, the writers chose to tell a completely different story centered on Alice (Mila Jovovich). Despite her prominence in the films, Alice never once appeared in a series that has existed since the 90s and has over 20 games in its roster. All that said, Capcom, the game’s publisher, has never been known for it’s cohesive narratives or depth of character. So maybe the filmmakers did the IP a favor.

And then you have the Mortal Kombat movie, which despite its low production values and barely there script, is well-loved by fans and still regarded as one of the best adaptations of a video game to date. This is because it stuck close to the internal mythology and the characters were consistent with the combatants' in-game personalities. Also, it’s hard to screw up an adaptation of a game that is ostensibly a demon and magic-filled adaptation of Enter the Dragon.

Again, I’m not talking about games with subpar stories getting the feature film treatment. I’m talking about games with sprawling mythologies and a deep emotional core. Games like Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, the Tomb Raider reboot, and The Last of Us. Games that take us somewhere foreign and strange while also keeping us grounded in character.

Truly memorable story moments often happen outside of pre-rendered cut scenes, the same scenes that we might be most tempted to turn into movies. But because gameplay moments are organic to the individual player’s experience, it becomes a much more daunting task deciding which moments to keep.   You don’t have to talk to Ellie in the record store in The Last of Us. But if you do? You’re treated to one of the best small moments in the game. Ellie, who was born long after the world has fallen into a fungal, zombie-infested waste, laments that all this music is just sitting here wasted. But if you don’t go in there? You’d never know her feelings about it.

(Skip to :50 if you don’t want to watch Joel stripping the shelves clean.)

It’s moments like that, or the conversations overheard on the streets of Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed, or the banter between Nathan Drake and Sully in Uncharted, that might never make it to the screen. Which is a shame, because it’s those small character moments, thrown in while you’re visually and kinetically distracted, that really help create a three-dimensional world and a flesh-and-blood character.

More care must be taken when adapting properties based on games because not only are video games big business, if we can’t do it right then we end up right where we began with Nintendo and Mario Brothers. The film industry didn’t do right by them and they took their toys elsewhere. It’s been more than twenty years since Nintendo has even entertained the idea of another feature based on their properties, and for good reason.

Then again, we’re still making movies based on games with little to no narrative.   Asteroids and Space Invaders are shooting into orbit. Tetris has a whole trilogy brewing in some black cauldron beneath a desperate executive’s desk. And while it has to be a daunting task to create something from almost nothing, it's hard not to be envious of the writers who get to play in and populate an empty sandbox with near limitless potential.

It's heartening that those properties with the most to lose in terms of brand are forcing a heavy hand into the development process. The original writer for Ratchett & Clank is drafting the script for what feels like a long overdue adaptation. Neil Druckmann is deeply involved with the development of The Last of Us movie. Ubisoft formed its own studio to produce the Assassin's Creed movie. But this feels less like what Nintendo did in the '90s and more that creators are recognizing what fans have been scrawling on message boards or just yelling to the ether about for years: you have to respect the story. You have to honor the characters. Otherwise what’s the point of adapting it in the first place?


Guest post by Carlos Cisco

 

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