Paige FTW: Why Do Video Game Movies Suck?
Why does every video game movie ever made just … suck?
It is the question at the heart of Lights, Camera, Game Over! How Video Game Movies Get Made, a new book which looks behind the scenes at a number of famously flawed gaming movies and breaks down what happened.
Truthfully, the premise didn’t sound too promising to me (what was this going to be, a full-length Cracked article?), but the publisher was kind enough to send me a review copy of the book, and I am pleased to be thoroughly wrong.
This is not a fan’s rambles on the merits (or lack thereof) of these films. This is a methodical, journalistic expose with extensive interviews with directors, actors, producers and writers on how and why these films failed (or, in a few rare cases, how come they didn’t).
Movies covered include Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, Hitman, Mortal Kombat, Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Max Payne, Resident Evil, Tekken and Pixels, as well as investigations as to why Sonic, Gears of War, Metroid, Halo and Pac-Man films never took off.
The overarching lessons are sound — like that maybe Super Mario Bros. sucked because the script was being rewritten piecemeal by people less and less invested in the franchise, as the movie was being filmed — but the little details are what makes the book.
The Tekken movie was prohibited from sexualizing the normally very sexy Williams sisters. Street Fighter had to hack its PG-13 fight scenes down after a real-life school shooting made the MPAA jittery, but getting a G rating was also unacceptable, so director Steven de Souza added a single cussword to bump it back up.
It’s great stuff! You can find the book on Amazon for $16.99.
