Ok, so a while back I watched a CG film called Resident Evil: Degeneration, and some things have just occurred to me about it.
It's a well-known fact that video games make really bad movies.
Some are definitely worse than others, but it's widely acknowledged that every film that uses a game as it's basis is bad.
This doesn't bear much hope for the forthcoming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time but hopefully that film can break the mould.
Resident Evil: Degeneration is, in theory, the first film to do it's video game inspiration any justice at all.
Forget the previous RE trilogy of movies; Degeneration is completely unrelated and fits in with the overall story of the main series of games.
It is set one year after the events of Resident Evil 4, and sees Leon S.
Kennedy teaming up with Claire Redfield for the first time since RE 2 to combat a new threat to civilization.
Of course, most RE fans have slammed the movie, as have fans of general cinema and video game fans who aren't particularly into RE but happened to see the film.
However, I don't understand why.
Ideally, a fan of the RE series should really enjoy this film.
For a start off, the plot makes little to no sense.
It's jumbled, the characters aren't convincing, the voice acting is bad and the script is terrible; just like the games.
It's riddled with cliche, has the most ridiculous action scenes ever and it's defining moment is when a character injects pure G-Virus into himself and becomes a giant tyrant with an eyeball in it's shoulder.
Again, just like the games.
But of course, this isn't what people want from a film.
It's things like this which emphasise the fact that games stimulate people in very different ways to films.
They're both two similar forms of media, but what works well for a game doesn't do so for a film, and vice versa.
People who play games do so (generally) for the stimulation that comes from having an active, visible effect on the game world.
Their personal motivations may be different; they may be in it for the challenge of the hardest difficulty setting or to explore every inch of the game world, but none of these things can happen without that direct and tangible response that the game gives from player input.
Conversely, people who watch a film do so to watch a story unfold.
Again, personal motivations may differ; the intention of the viewer may be to scare themselves, or develop excitement from watching a great action movie, but the narrative makes these things possible.
The key thing to remember here is that watching a movie requires no input from the viewer, whereas playing a game requires input from the player above anything else.
That right there is a clear example of two very different forms of mental stimulus, one from the response to a personal action, and the other from the satisfaction of watching a narrative being played out.
This brings us to the root problem of video game-to-film conversions.
In order for a movie based on a game to please a fan of the game, it must be like the game, and stimulate the player/viewer in the same way, which isn't feasible; and, in order for it to be like the game, it needs to forget the fact that it is in fact a film, a medium which doesn't rely on saving graces such as gameplay to rescue it.
This means that the film doesn't do things a good film should -- it neglects key components of movies such as plot and character development in order to concentrate on 'gameplay', but of course in the uninteractive medium of film, gameplay doesn't exist.
What we are left with is a product which can't quite decide which side it wants to lean to, and ends up displeasing both audiences.
Obviously, this is the reason why films based on games will never work.
Uwe Boll needs to read this, and maybe then he will understand and stop butchering perfectly good video game franchises.
It will probably never happen, but we can hope, right?