Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and the Curse of Bad Video Game Movies - Renegade Cut
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
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I think I remember hearing this movie had a really bizarre history. It was REALLY made out of cutscenes originally made for the original Final Fantasy XV before they changed game directors and more or less started the game project over from scratch, transforming the game from being a linear story into a weird open-world roadtrip thing. They took a bunch of the cutscenes from that ill-fated project and filled in the blanks with new scenes until it was a movie. Like trying to recoup the huge losses from having to start the whole thing over, and also using those assets to promote the actual game.
And Nyx's "improbable name" is likely due to him being a replacement for the game's protagonist, whose first name is Noctis.
Kingsglaive is unique among video game movies in that it IS part of the game, rather than being a separate adaptation, and was part of the game's deeply troubled development. It exists only because the invasion of Insomnia could not be implemented in the game in time to meet Square Enix's requirements.
It's interesting to see critique of this film from someone who isn't interested in video games, but I do wonder if a criticism of it can really be complete without viewing it as part of the overall Final Fantasy XV story. But that's just me thinking aloud; no need for Renegade Cut to play something he's not interested in (especially since Kingsglaive's story and visual elements are outright contradicted by the game anyway).
Ah okay, so kingsglaive wasnt made from an earlier version of the game, but was made from a section that was essentially cut out of it instead? So I guess the original plan was something resembling FF7 in its overall structure, with the first part of the story kind of analogous to FF7's first disc in Midgar, which would then lead to a more open-world second part.
Mmm, yes and no. FFXV was "started from scratch", but due to Final Fantasy Versus XIII having already received so many trailers, the development team needed to maintain some visual consistency with it. Thus the main characters still retain their names/designs--and thus the invasion of Insomnia, which was shown in a trailer for Versus XIII, still had to be a thing. Comparing it to FFVII is apt given that Versus XIII was going to be helmed by the same director.
My theory has always been that video game movies try to adapt too much of the source material. Since video game stories usually take way longer than two and a half hours to wrap up (basically the amount of time that a feature film would have to adapt said story), movie adaptations have to cram in as much crap as they can from the games. At that point, the movie becomes more concerned with including as many images and elements from the game and less about actually telling a story. This is the same problem I've found with movie adaptations of cartoons and anime. There's just too much to adapt.
The other big hurdle is that most games with a plot good enough to adapt to film tend to be games borrowing plots/settings/themes from MOVIES! Prince of Persia and Mortal Kombat are probably the least terrible video game movies, but those already borrow heavily from sword and sandal adventure flicks and kung fu tournament movies respectively. It's a weird paradox of sorts. To make a good movie that is based on a good game that is a ripoff of a better movie.
We have a Call of Duty movie coming out soon but I always say "We already HAVE a CoD movie. It's called Black Hawk Down, or any other war movie ever made."
i think that it has more to do with how games tell stories. the 3 act structure doesn't really apply to most of them and thus, the hollywood system to commercial success ends up not working because the story wasn't originaly conceived with such a structure.
i'm not saying video game movies can't work on a 3 act structure, but you need good writters to adapt that material. specially since there is such few dialogue in games. you have to stretch it out, so you better be good or you are going to ruin the characters just by making them talk too much.
to me, it all boils down to the writing.
I would also add that a lot of plots in video games are to justify the actions the player will perform. When the player is removed, there is no reason for the plot elements that make the game unique to be used, and they even become confusing and wierd. The animus from assassin's creed springs to mind, why does the user have to re-enact the ancestral memory, instead of just remembering it? (haven't seen the movie adaptation so they may have changed that, but I assume not?)
But isn't this the mono-myth/heros journey thing? That nothing was created in a vacuum and every story of every kind can be reduced to the same building blocks and have roots in older work.
Like WW2 movies are sometimes called The "Saving Private Ryan" genre.
TheRazmereShow that said, I honestly think it's possible to have a good movie that feels like a video game. Just look at Hardcore Henry: I can't exactly articulate why that movie was good for me, I just know that it was
Moviebob made a good case for CoD. I think he would made a better case for CoD if it was shot and filmed through first person.
To me there are three big reasons why most video game based movies fail:
The transition from an interactive medium to a static medium. Most videogame protagonists almost always have an immediate connection to the audience because they are being played by the audience. Players can directly see their choices and actions impact the story in both small and large ways. I mean just look at silent protagonists, we know almost nothing about these characters but yet we love them because we are the character. However movie characters don't have that luxury, as they are dependent on the actor, writer, director and so many more elements in order for them to build an effective connection with the audience. Not to say that Videogame characters don't have that same level of work put into them, just that it is simply easier to build a connection to them since they are our direct proxy into their story and world. By turning a videogame into a movie, you are purposely removing one of the main and central appeals of Videogames: the interactive and immersive elements.
Most Videogames just don't have enough story material to be adapted. Now this is not much of an issue anymore since storage capacities have massively increased, but back in the day it was just almost impossible to tell a truly compelling and complex narrative given the technological limitations. And yes there are exceptions like early RPGs and PC gaming, but overall most games followed incredibly simplistic stories in order to solely provide a narrative framework in order to provide a justification for the gameplay. That was all the story really did, again you can't do that in film so the crew have to produce additional material just so they have something to adapt.
Finally, we tend to give videogames a lot more leeway when it comes to being unrealistic. In the world of Super Mario we accept the fact that an Italian plumber is capable of single handily defeating lizard armies and traveling across distant lands despite never showing any kind of fatigue or injury. Why? Because that would get in the way of the gameplay and the enjoyment, how fun would any game be if your character had to account for reality by stopping to catch their breath after running a long distance. To me its kind of similar to animation, where it distorts reality as opposed to actually trying to emulate it. Since videogames do not base themselves in reality, even more realistic games like Uncharted still have their ridiculous moments, we are more willing to suspense our disbelief. However once you put those elements into a live-action film then the whole facade come crashing down and all the bizarre and strange elements that we were willing to ignore suddenly stick out like sore thumbs.
Now I know I am speaking in broad generalizations, these expectations do not apply universally to all videogames and franchises. But it does show the differences between the two mediums and the obstacles that must be overcome if we are ever going to have a good videogame based film.
While I agree with most of your sentiments, I have to say I was somewhat surprised that you were so harsh about the visuals. I thought the animation was the most redeeming quality of the film. The story was confusing and forgettable, the pacing was strange at times, the script very wooden... but I thought it was gorgeous to watch. Perhaps I didn't find it off-putting because I didn't experience the discomfort of the uncanny valley while watching it. Essentially, I knew it wasn't real going into it, in the same way I know that a Disney animated film is not real. I could sit back and enjoy the artistry of the visuals they made rather than discount it for not being something that it wasn't. I was impressed by the level of detail they achieved in their rendering as well as the highly expressive facial animations. As a fan specifically of heavily-narrative video games, the idea of seeing more films done in this style really appeals to me (assuming they can fix the problems with scripting, directing and performance). It gives the full freedom of creating visuals that cannot be achieved without CGI *without* the often jarring attempt to merge real-life imagery with computer generated creations. THAT triggers the uncanny valley effect for me far more than Kingsglaive ever will.
Great point! I was thinking how the one exception I can think of is Silent Hill (solid, atmospheric horror movie with a great cast, gorgeous cinematography, phenomenal sound design, and some gruesome imagery that sticks to the rib)...then you come to your point, and I'm like, "Oh, right. That was directed by the guy who made Brotherhood of the Wolf." Still not enough to set a trend in the right direction, though.
I'm not sure if it's because I've played too many video games (and thus, am used to much worse), but I wouldn't say that the characters in Kingsglaive fall particularly deeply in the uncanny valley, at least not enough for that aspect to detract from the general viewing experience. It definitely feels like one long game cutscene though.
i want to personally thank you for all of the hard work that you do on your shows, you really have added to my life, teaching me to see films in a different way, i am not trying to flatter your ego, im telling you how it is, you are a value to RUclips and an inspiration.....may you receive all the goodness that life has for you......peace and love
As a kid I loved the weirdness of the Mario film, I still think despite it's issues it was an interesting game on the subject.
The only successful video game adaptation was Gungrave. Which was adapted into a 26-episode TV series, rather than a movie. And was based on a really mediocre video game with a broad, detail-free story, so not only did it have nowhere to go but up, but had plenty of potential in its very unspecific narrative. And it was backed by a veteran studio (Madhouse) and given a competent team. Also, it's animated, so it becomes a very different beast.
But hey, that's one!
What about Justin Kurzel? He's a fairly well-respected filmmaker who's had two films play at Cannes, one of which was in competition. I didn't see Assassin's Creed, so I can't comment on its quality, but that seemed to be a case where a good director still failed to make a good video game adaptation
Wade Mccormick Bad writers. Which is really disappointing but most reviews' issues seem to stem mostly from the writing (too much time in present day), and the writers had never really done anything of note.
A bit late but the writers of the screen were 2/3 from exodus: gods and kings. So it's probably those two.
Kingsglaive was also a victim of the Development _Hell_ that was FF15 and that might've been worth a mention.
*Ten years* of work on a single project, changing directors & scrapping most of the work partway through, exhausted & overworked staff members, & needing to throw together a prologue because they had all these assets & dammit they need to recoup something.
To be entirely fair, FF15 sucked too, especially in terms of story. Everything about this project was ill-fated and none of what happens in Kingsglaive aside from Insomnia falling even impacts the game too much, most people just skipped it entirely & I can't blame them.
What makes it even worse is the fact that this film was supposed to provide additional context for the game that released alongside it. I will say as someone who (mostly) enjoyed the game, I was fine with the movie. That does not make it a good film. I would never recommend this to someone uninterested in Final Fantasy XV. And if I think too hard about it, the fact that a game that is supposed to contain a complete experience would rely on supplemental material to fill in missing narrative structure is frustratingly laughable and problematic to say the least. I do hope this Iron Man film for video games comes along. There are some amazing stories that can be spun from the medium.
TBH I wouldn't even wholeheartedly recommend Kingsglaive to someone interested in Final Fantasy XV. There's nothing in the movie as it relates to the game that can't be explained, for free, by a friend or someone on a forum.
As for a game not being complete without supplementary material (that you have to pay for): yyyyyeah. XV's development was troubled but it's still irritating that you gotta pay to watch something that's supposedly so integral to the story, particularly when Brotherhood fills the same function and is completely 100% free.
I wonder if the Silent Hill movies had turned out better things would be very different today, aka. if they had adapted Silent Hill 2 and got somebody who knows their way around surreal horror (for example the director of Jacob's Ladder considering the games are heavily influenced by that film, or someone like Clive Barker or Wes Craven) to do it. Or hell, if they had just done 1 and 3 well and actually make sense with each other's continuity, so that the thematic short comings of the story of the first game could then give way for the much deeper story of 3.
Everybody had hopes for World of Warcraft, with Duncan Jones as a director.
If this Final Fantasy XV, how come at no point I am thinking "Is this about a boyband?"
Because its not about the boyband..its about the dad who spawned the boyband kid. :)
The boyband shows up at the end in a very clumsy stinger. With far more anime facial modeling and voice acting, complete with lip movements that don't match any language. The prequel does such a bad job of setting them up, they look like they belong even less in their own world.
So far only two highly acclaim directors did video game films: Justin Kurzel and Duncan Jones but both still ended up as failures. Maybe studio interference which from what I've heard happened with Warcraft as they cut down a lot of runtime to have it be a more "accessible" runtime. With Assassin's Creed it's ether they came with a story that wasn't great or Ubisoft told them to do this story that wasn't up to par with the other stories in the games.
A lot of y'all aren't understanding there's very little source info for final fantasy games and this was released side by side not as a stand alone and gives context to the release.
I think the biggest problem a movie adaptation of a video game has to face, is that it is the one form of movie adaptation, that actually takes a layer away (interactivity) instead of adding one. And most of these movies can't seem to find something to replace that loss with.
I have to disagree with you though in terms of these movies being written and directed by talentless hacks. A lot of them are, but there are also quite a few very talented filmmakers like Justin Kurzel and Duncan Jones who failed to deliver here. The much bigger problem seems to me that studios often lack even a basic understanding of the source material.
I can't say where things went wrong with Assassin's Creed and Warcraft, but just look at what happened to Christophe Gans' Silent Hill movie: The movie nailed the style and atmosphere of the games but failed at story telling because the producers pressured Gans into making this weird mishmash of games 1 and 2, instead of the straight forward adaptation of Silent Hill 2, that Gans wanted to make. Their reasoning was that audiences wouldn't understand the story, if they wouldn't start with part one (Silent Hill is an anthology series, for those who don't know). And they also ordered him to turn Sean Bean into a leading actor, even though he's completely unnecessary to the movie (but we can't have a female lead apparently).
Video game movies are either cynical cash grabs using the IP to sell a generic action flick (Hitman, Resident Evil), or passion projects filled with easter eggs and story elements that can only really be enjoyed by the fans (Warcraft, Kingsglaive). They're two extremes and in both cases, the quality of the movie as an independent artwork is secondary.
As someone who consumes a disproportionately high amount of games compared to movies, I was pretty hesitant to watch this as the topic is not usually handled all that well. After watching though I am glad you looked at it as more of an issue with how the films were being created rather than the source itself being the direct cause of the issue.
I will say though that there has been a pattern in the fact that the games usually being chosen to be made into films aren't picked because they have a good basis to be adapted into another medium, instead they are adapted because they have good brand recognition and will probably sell quite a few tickets because of it. Either that or in this case with Kingsglaive it's because Square has this odd prestige around the Final Fantasy brand and for some reason felt it necessary to make a big movie to advertise the game.
That being said the reason most games are difficult for a film adaptation is because they don't need a strong narrative or good characters to actually be enjoyable. A game with a bad story can work just fine on its own as long as the mechanics are designed well enough to support it. For example, you were saying the fighting in Kingsglaive had no weight and felt just like fluff. The main reason for that is because in a good game the fighting itself would give enough consequence to the player for playing badly that you wouldn't need any narrative context for the fight to be enjoyable. It's what makes games a difficult medium to adapt, it's because the story is typically generated from the person playing, and it's the game designer's job to create interesting systems so a player can generate interesting stories from those systems. Yes, a good narrative certainly makes a game better, but a game is a game first and doesn't need a story. A fantastic game is one that takes that into account when designing its overarching narrative and incorporates the stories and choices the player made into the narrative somehow. If I were to describe it in different terms, a good song doesn't need lyrics, but if you have good lyrics it can make a good song great.
Another reason it may take a little while before games are adapted is because the medium itself is still fairly young and it hasn't even been until recently (past 15-20 years) that games have really started being seen as more than a fun distraction. Even then most games are still being made with that goal in mind. The majority of people making films just haven't actually spent enough time around games to want to feel passionately enough to adapt them yet. Given maybe another 10-15 years I suspect we will see more movies come out that will attempt to represent why certain games hold such a special place to people.
I enjoyed the movie. Though i am admittedly a mark for final fantasy and i while this movie isn't great, I liked it more than the other final fantasy movies.
I definitely agreed with your statements on the voice actors. Dialog was a little ... eeeh... for me. I did enjoy the spectacle of the fights and so forth, though.
I think an adaptation of Killer 7 could work. It's weird and obscure enough that it doesn't have the "nerd" baggage so many video games do.
At this point we really just need all the right factors to come together to produce a surprise hit. Even if a film comes along that's actually quite good, though, marketing it will definitely be an uphill battle given the stigma associated with the "genre" Technically, though, video game movies are even less of a genre than comic book/superhero movies. it would be almost like calling book adaptations a "genre". Sure, comic book movies do in fact include elements from a great number of other genres but there are still many shared tropes and thematic elements at play. This is largely a consequence of the popularity of super heroes within the comic book market, Video game stories are a bit more diverse, though they often revolve around heroic characters, aside from the occasional indie game like Gone Home or Beyond Eyes that tries to tell a more mundane story in an interactive fashion.
I think this is a good point. And another issue with making a game story into a movie is that games are basically made for you to either create your own story or to get tricked into feeling like you've played a part in creating the story. It's not simply told to you like a book or movie. So even if the story is kind of bland it feels way more epic bc YOU made it happen. (Even though there are good game stories ofc, but that just adds to the love of the experience. )
I agree about the point that no established directors/anyone worth a damn wants to make a videogame movie, but after Duncan Jones and Justin Kurzel both making videogame movies last year, I think this trend might be changing. I know they aren't as established as a Jon Favreau or James Gunn, but they're certainly held in higher regard than Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson. I'm also curious if this trend would have changed sooner had Gore Verbinski made his Bioshock film.
wouldn't exactly say this is a movie. while yes they did indeed turn this into a movie the reason it is the way it is is for anyone who plays the game. it helps fill in some plot holes and answers a few things. keep in mind that the game itself isn't even finished. they are still working on its story and testing new tech everyday.
I generally agree with what you're saying, but Duncan Jones, the director of the recent Warcraft movie, also directed Moon and Source Code. Admittedly, I didn't particularly like either of those films, but they were both extremely well received critically (89% and 92% on Rotten Tomatoes respectively). Moon made $9.8 million on a $5 million budget, and Source Code made $147.3 million on a $32 million budget. I don't know where Warcraft fucked up, but I just wanted to say that is a situation where you had a critically and commercially successful director at the helm of a video game movie, and it still went wrong.
That said, he's the only one I can think of, so maybe there need to be more auteur-ish directors that give it a shot.
the CGI Resident Evil movies also fall in the same category as Kingslaive,since they are not adaptations,but stories that take place in the games' canon.Also,while not masterpieces(I'm sure Leon would hate them considering his tastes.),they are MUCH better than the live-action ones(which doesn't say much...)
I can't speak for a movie I haven't seen, and I'm certainly not a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, but I have to say this movie looks alright from a gamer's outside perspective. If I was a fan of the series, especially of 15, this is probably exactly the sort of film I would want to see to complementing it. Going in, you know it's only just going to avoid being cliche, corny and pulpy, and most people won't forgive that, but for those that could it looks like it could be charming and exciting. Judging from how Advent Children was received by fans, I think that's how the intended audience feels too.
That said, I doubt any movie could survive on just the fans seeing it.
It's interesting that so many people are providing examples of good movies that capture the spirit of videogames well, but which aren't actually adaptations of particular games. I think that's a symptom of the functional problems of adapting videogame material to cinema; very little in a good game story or plot or character that translates directly to film and remains good. So what you need, ultimately, is the kind of very good creative team who can figure out that sort of challenging adaptation process. (It took Lord and Miller to make a Lego movie, and Steve Jackson to make Lord of the Rings.) So, as you say, studios need to bring their "A" game.
I was kind of optimistic about Vogt-Roberts' "Metal Gear Solid" after I saw King Kong until I remembered that he's not confirmed for the director's chair and there's no way in hell that project is ever going to happen anyway.
Out of the 15 (numbered) Final Fantasy games I've liked about 5 of them. I consider myself a moderate fan of the series and a fan of video games in general. However I couldn't stay awake for Kingsglaive. I missed probably the last hour of the movie because I fell asleep. I "watched" it before I played XV, one of my least favorite Final Fantasy games of all time and I can say without a doubt I just didn't like the movie because to me the entire XV set up sucks.
I will say I liked one video game movie though. I don't know why exactly but I loved the first Silent Hill video game. I felt like it stayed close enough to the source material and deviated enough so that it felt fresh. It really did feel like a spin on a brought to life Silent Hill game which I apperciated. Then again I'm bias on Silent Hill (not bias enough to say I liked the second movie though)
As someone who probably has more time playing video games than watching movies and TV, I think the answer is... Well, as well as yours, its the fact that most video game plots are... Bad, or have too much detail crammed into them. For detail take a game that's generally said to have a engaging, 'Good' plot such as BioShock. A lot of the story is shown via audio tapes that the player picks up and listens to while they explore the game world, or told to them by characters, which has become something a common trope in modern video games. BioShock tells its story visually as well as you walk through the ruins of a this destroyed Ayn Randian culture, but a lot of the detail to understand what really went on is told to you.
This is fundamentally something that does not translate well to cinema, just as an example.
In terms of bad plots, well, I could go on, but most games that have 'good stories' could better be described as having good characters, who only really come into their own in the endless amount of side content specifically geared to flesh out that character. See: BioWare games. Dragon Age: Origins' plot is basically your average fantasy plot of "unite the land against the oncoming evil horde army", but it comes in its own in the little side stories and individual characters and their interactions with one another.
An incredibly valid argument. Very well put.
Video game movies have a lot going against them before they even get to actual production. They need to strike a balance between the game world and a movie world akin to translation from comic books, but they also need to lose the gameplay from the experience. The producers try to squeeze in segments of it from time to time, but it is usually poorly thought out, either trying to cram in something that doesn't belong out of trying to be too faithful. The Mario games are about jumping around a fantasy world, but the real life actors can't jump, so the characters were given rocket boots. Doom had a first person action sequence.
After that you need a strike a balance that just hasn't been found yet. A balance between what the gamers remember and what will work for a general audience in a theater. And what gamers remember from the games varies. Some only remember the action and skip the story elements. Others remember the romance while even more people remember the tension with the antagonist. And that doesn't even factor what works or not in a movie.
And this is all before the producers take the scrips from the original writer and give it to someone else for a rewrite to remove things that they don't think the audience will understand, even though it might be an integral part of the story. Hollywood doesn't like taking too many chances. This is one of the reasons why Doom didn't come out right. The game is about Hell taking over Mars through teleportation experiments. The movie is about genetic experiments bringing out the evil in people that are mutating, on Mars as a last minute ADR addition. Resident Evil has strayed so far away from the games that they don't resemble each other at all anymore. Assassins Creed took a game about playing around in the past to accomplish something in the future and made it movie in the future that occasionally steps into the past, and then made all of the actiony parts hard to look at.
Mortal Kombat went the other way and tried to stay a little too faithful to the games. Ratchet And Clank was a glorified cut of cutscenes from the game (from what I have heard, I have no experience with the movie or the games).
And then you add on top of that all of the middle to poor directors, actors, and other people involved with the production that either don't know what to do with it or don't care what they do that just drag it all down.
You are right. Video Game movies need their Iron Man or Dark Knight.
I enjoyed Kingsglaive, but I thought the real problem with the movie is that it's not standalone from the game it's attached to. It's incomplete without the game Final Fantasy XV, and really should've been part of the game itself.
However this got me thinking about whether Star Wars: Rogue One works as a standalone film. I think if someone had never seen a star wars movie before and had seen rogue one first, it would be kinda confusing and lose a lot of it's impact. I think a big problem with Kingsglaive, Warcraft (which I also loved despite its faults), and Assassins Creed is that they kinda require outside fan knowlege and that really cuts off a lot of the potential audience.
Yeah...the only reason I watched this thing is because I was informed that the game's story was rather disjointed. I wound up watching Kingslglaive and the Brotherhood OVAs in preparation for playing FF XV proper-it's also the first game I earned a Platinum trophy on.
The Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva movie was legitimately well done and relatively unique as a mix of Agatha Christie but with magic realism. It has a quaint charm to its characters and aesthetic, with an engaging mystery at it's heart. I suppose seeing characters solve mysteries/resolve puzzles is still enjoyable even when you remove the interactive nature of it.
Although admittedly it didn't transcend much beyond its modest ambitions, certainly not unleashing a fury of excitement for adapting video game properties. You'd need a property on the level of Warcraft to generate that much interest.
'Kingsglaive' works as a companion-piece to Final Fantasy XV, but it's disappointing as a standalone movie. It almost put me off getting the game, until I learned that each title had a different writer and director.
Ultimately, 'Kingsglaive' provides some excellent and much-needed world-building, and insight into characters who shape the game's story but who don't feature prominently or at all. There's not that much point watching it on its own, really. Together with the 'Brotherhood' animated short films, it helps to make the game's world and characters more fleshed-out and relatable - something the game desperately needed, given its fraught history of writing and directorial changes, and the undoubted volumes of material left on the cutting-room floor during nearly a decade of development. It says a lot about FFXV that it effectively needed two separate films to add context and coherence to its sometimes fragmentary story and sketchy storytelling.
Can't say I'm a huge fan of this video though. Leon's indifference, or even contempt, toward video games as storytelling medium is clear - especially when he implies that no-one who works on games is "worth a damn" artistically.
I love the animation.
The analysis is good as per Renegade Cut usual, but this one struck me as odd that you'd do since you care so little about video games and by extension video game movies as you explain in the video and ad nauseum on Word Funk. It's like watching Gordon Ramsey review ballet: not to say that he doesn't like it, I don't know him or his story, but I don't get the impression that he particularly cares about it. So I guess what I'm asking is why (patreon commission not withstanding unless that is literally the only reason) you would willingly sit down and watch a video game movies fully knowing your apathy towards both. And furthermore, why Kingsglaive specifically.
Renegade Cut well sometimes when I see a "can I commission X?" in the comments, I see "No." somewhat often because of whatever reason you have, so I don't know if your apathy towards video games or disdain for vg movies would override a commission like it would for, say, that John Cena / Scooby Doo movie. I just didn't know if you had some other reason to you wanted to (rightfully) dunk on vg movies.
I agree with Leon that is a lot of things that pile on top of each other; tho personally I don't think having an autheur get in video game adaptations would be necessarily the answer. We would probably end up with a Kubrik's "The Shining". Great movie, yet according to many, not faithful to the source material.
The need for a good video game movie would be satisfied, but I kinda by stripping in of most of it's video game trappings. Cause by nature video games are convoluted and scattered as part of an interactive experience, it's altogether a very different way of telling a narrative because the narrative itself is created around the gamplay. Almost invariably, you remove the gameplay aspect and the narrative falls short. There is so much of videogames that's not conductive of a streamlined narrative because it's trying to make you engage with it on other ways
So then how do you replace that? Do you make a thematic adaptation? Just adapt the major narrative? And this is where an autheur could come in, and also were sturgeons law comes in. The closest we have come to an "autheur" approach to a video game movie is Silent Hill. Yeh. And Sturgeons Law is definitely in effect there. (PS at least it has a vision and while I don't like how much it changed, there's a lot to like about that movie)
I think my point is, there has, or should be an attempt to replace the video game aspects with *something*, not something narrative, a stylization, a cinematography that can convey in the film medium what the VG interaction does. And yeah, Silent Hill is the one that has been closer to that.
Also, on the other hand, most video game with richer narratives are just longer experiences; yet another thing to the pile that a movie running time is just not suited for a video game franchise that is narratively rich or prolific. I really wish video game miniseries were a thing.
Comic book movies used to have a bad reputation but they still stink overwhelmingly. Except Dredd of course.
Good analysis as usual Leon. Thanks for another good video, I'll be heading back to my iso-cube now.
I think one of the best takes on video game adaptions was the original Silent Hill, which took a few creative liberties, but was faithful to the source material.
Hey everyone! What's your opinion on the adaptation of Silent Hill? I enjoyed it a lot even if with the major faults. That being that they used tried to copy the look of Silent Hill the game without really undetstanding the meaning behind decisions made in the game. Like how they used Pyramid Head in the movie when he really had nothing to do with the main characters personal struggles.
I think the crappiness of video game movies has its origin in the reasoning for their production in the first place. Video game movies are an extension of a game's aesthetic, it is the main goal of every scene and is a sort of an over-directive. The best of video games contain a game mechanic that is strongly supported by an absorbing and impactful story arc of a wide narrative container, these are the foundations of a good game that needs no additive content. A game's aesthetic on the other hand is the game's signifier and frame (no matter how attractive) and is a thing that can be exploited much further as well as being bent for other mediums. re-creating a video game aesthetic is an argues process that calls for a lot of imagination and creative prowess, but maximizing your attention on a recreation of the signifier will never hold value on its own, and will always exist as a shallow experience on its own or as an unfulfilled and impotent referential experience.
The tragedy of video game movies is that they are sometimes very well crafted but always feel like an exercise in art.
*This* is what you lead with?
You have seen “Spirits Within”, right?
What about the machbeth (2015) director who made the assassin's creed movie? He's good. Macbeth was good, assassin's creed wasnt. And the director of the upcoming metal gear solid movie is also good and metal gear solid is more of a philosophical saga than an action saga. Do you think the metal gear solid movie has any chance of beeing good?
The problem has to do with how story is used in both mediums.
In film and literature, the story and characters take center stage. In a videogame, the story is just meant to provide context for gameplay, and thus doesn't have to be as high quality. I think a videogame's story, being tied to gameplay, means it cannot be as high quality as stories in other mediums.
In other words, most videogame stories are awful because the creator's main focus is gameplay.
For the same reason that movie videos games are always bad...Almost every single licensed games from a movie is awful...None puts any effort and want to use name recognition to make money without any real cost. Then you have a roller coaster as you describe in the game world as well.
It's not just video games that have the curse, all of gaming has it. Anything based on a tabletop game released in theaters is also not taken seriously. When the only known films either are train wrecks like D&D and Battleship, or wailing about how evil the hobby is there is a problem with how the image of what is a good thing to adapt is perceived. I know of several good movies related to both digital and tabletop gaming, but in the former it is mostly using known characters or expies to tell a different story. On the other hand there is independent filmmakers that only those who look will find. Hopefully films like Wreck-It Ralph and The Gamers will get better company, but filmmaking centers the world over might need pay attention to what to adapt.
Mike Sherry what about clue?
I hear it's good, but have never seen it. I was also talking about recent memory, which Hollywood also only pays attention to. If the film older than 20, then remake it culture.
4:03 - Silent Hill also became a franchise, didn't it?
Anne Onyme the first SH is actually regarded as decent by most people,but I don't like it since all they did was using the first game's story with different.Should have used the actual characters from the game if they were going on that direction...
I think for example that silent hill and prince of persia get more hate that they deserve, especially silent hill
God why do I love listening to him dunk on bad movies so much!
Is it really an improbable name if everyone in-universe has the same kind of name?
Maybe if someone sells a solid screenplay that happens to be set in a gameverse?
Just for reference for non-gamers:
- Gamers by and large have no idea what they want and totally lack the tools to assess the medium. The discourse is trash.
- Almost every single professional writer of games who gets good at assessing the medium eventually switches over to the development side.
- Don't engage with random gamers. It is not worth the loss of time and brain cells.
As an FF fan, I actually wanted to like this movie, but had to give it a 2/10 on IMDb for being an unwatchable jumbled mess full of fantasy tropes, clichés and mindless OTT action. Worst movie I've watched in the last 5 years, save Birdemic. I wonder where all the 10 star reviews come from...
I don't understand this approach to animation. If you're going to use this much mocap with the actual actor's faces, why not just film the actors? At least for the close ups. This just makes everyone look potato-faced.
What are your thoughts on FFXV yourself?
I think it can be done, a good video game movie. Won't be easy, or soon, but one day.
Who doesn't want the Candy Crush Saga movie? 🤢
Sad but true.
Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban dir. by Takashi Miike) is the best videogame movie...
Am I the only one who thinks that Advent Children is the best Final Fantasy movie, because the Characters actually look like the one in the Game and not like American/ European people.
✌ peace, I'm European too no offence ✌
"It looks awful and it's terrible."
>As said while awesome looking scenes play in the background.
Swordfights with teleporting, giant mecha-knight throwing his sword at airships, templars with AKs, robots mortaring castles, and giant burning Kaiju are not awesome?
I understand the point, and to a degree, agree with you.
However, there is a definite cultural aspect to it, where a deficit or excess of weight in movement is a direct expression of power. Just look at any shonen anime. To expect realism is to expect the mundane, who are the weak in fiction. Why do all the canon fodder run around and use guns? It's the exact same reason as why a giant mecha would use a sword; power is expressed directly by how deep they tap into the limits of the fiction.
And I mean... god forbid there be some element of fantasy in something called Final Fantasy.
There is no cultural aspect here. Especially since Final Fantasy has long been trying to be like American movies, specifically Star Wars. Like when it thought quoting Episode I would make a villain more epic, it is just really, really bad at imitation and knowing where to draw the line. Final Fantasy VII's Cloud is largely based on Guts from Berserk (technically seinen), but that's why making him fly around so weightlessly in Advent Children runs into some serious style problems, even by Japan's own standards.
It's why to this day, Final Fantasy is NOT the ur-jRPG in Japan. Even though it technically makes more money than Dragon Quest, it is not an archetype. It's a goofy, pretentious imitation way too concerned with pretty excess that doesn't really know what it's doing, and is made fun of for that. What it is known for is campy flash and fancy fanservice, which is why it goes so well with Gackt. Which can still be fun, but once you take the interactivity out and focus on just the plot, it usually goes to hell pretty fast.
Something like oldschool Gundam, on the other hand, is a solid archetype in Japan despite having the silly trope of giant robots with swords. Because it bothered coming up with New Type abilities, Minovsky particles, radar interference, AI fakeouts, limited ammo, and other things to make that fighting work within the in-universe logic and have some sense of stakes and tension rather than just pulling out the next, flashiest looking attack possible. A series like SEED Destiny did go for pretentious, pretty beam spam flash and nothing else, which is why even if it made a lot of money, it's a shat on dumpster fire on either side of the ocean. Regardless of the different genre and tropes, a bad work that does not establish or skillfully apply its ingredients is just that.
Kingsglaive is movie trying its hardest to look and sound like a Hollywood production, and so should be judged as one. That was the intent of its creators. The closest thing to a relevant cultural aspect here is that Japan has no Rotten Tomatoes to blast it, so it only looks like it's getting good reviews from the hardcore fans. (sorry for the repeat editing)
I'm not here to say wither Final Fantasy does it better or worse than others, or to comment on anyone's preference in fiction- just what it does, why it does it, and why there's an audience for it. If Leon or anyone else doesn't 'like it' or 'get it', more power to them.
I don't see how you could not call it cultural though, when its not something you don't really see coming out of other cultures. If we're talking about Rule of Cool, why is it that one of the major distinctions between JRPG and WRPG is how grounded in reality it is? Every culture expresses absurdist fantasy in its own way. For the West it's a lot of shock and awe, guns, car chases, explosions and hot women. For Russia, it's apathetic nigh-apocalyptic worlds, rampant crime, flagrant debauchery. For the East, it's teleporting sword fights and mecha; a lot of the subtext in weightlessness comes from this exact source. There's a lot of inter-mingling to be sure, but the sources are definitely cultural.
Except this entire debate is on whether "It looks awful and it's terrible" or it is "awesome." Whether Kingsglaive does those tropes or visuals better or worse than average is the entire point. Also everything has an audience regardless of quality. "But America likes Twilight!" doesn't somehow make that mess valid at anything.
The major distinctions between jRPGs and wRPGs is meaningless when being surreal isn't the problem. If your movie is trying to look weighty and realistic, weightless choreography looks clashing and silly regardless of the culture behind it. The West created Roger Rabbit and sees it as a classic... but that doesn't mean the scene in X-men Origins: Wolverine where Hugh Jackman holds up cartoon claws doesn't look like the silliest thing ever. It's a legit problem in visual direction that renders the scene ridiculous. "But adamantium claws are considered classic comic book cool to Americans!" isn't some valid distraction from their laughable depiction. They have fundamentally screwed up at convincing the audience that the claws are cool.
In Square's case, they aren't even aiming for purely Japanese Rule of Cool tropes, but trying to recreate the West's. The problems come in when they constantly bungle every last one of them in every Final Fantasy movie. Spirits Within aimed to make cool, Hollywood sci-fi action characters and they were just derpy, annoying, badly done stereotypes without a single good line. Barret in Advent Children is made mostly of tropes considered cool outside Japan as a giant, stubbly, muscly black man with tattoos and several cyborg arm cannons. But he achieves nothing and is so incompetent, he has to be bailed out by others in what is just padding. That kind of nonsense botches the Rule of Cool tropes involved. People have every right to call out Squenix for investing hundreds of millions of CGI modeling dollars to look cool only to fail so hard. That is what makes Final Fantasy movies look awful and terrible, if expensive.
Yes the movie sucked but Beowulf does not look better, not by a long shot. This movie looks pretty ok imo, nothing to write home about but miles ahead of Beowulf.
I think I fundamentally disagree with every point made in this video.
I got to say, i have hopes with the shadow of the colossus movie.
I feel that Shadow of the collosus would be less effective as movie than a game
That was based off a comic book
The whole trilogy of fumito would give great adaptations, even more the last guardian. but as it has already been confirmed the sotc movie and i really like the director who will direct it, hopes.
Wreck-It-Ralph
Renegade Cut
It originally started off as a Donkey Kong adaptation. Rich Moore ultimately decided he didn't want to be restricted by the history of it but we still know what it is obviously based off of.
I mean, take a look at Sugar Rush and tell me that's not based off of Mario Kart. They even included Call of Duty pretty much even though I don't agree with it.
Wreck-It-Ralph is a celebration of all video games. Rich Moore didn't spend over thirty years of his life on the script alone for nothing. I'm still counting it.
Sad but true...
I thought this movie looked great.
My friend forced me to sit through this movie, and my god was it boring.
I can't actually remember most of what happened in it, and my friend would defend it fiercely whenever I criticised it.
eh... i like your reviews but please.. try to remember.. movies based on games are mainly for those who liked the game.. it cant be seen or graded like typical blockbusters or some drama flick... its story has to be game-esque, thats why most game related movies flop .. directors and screenwriters try to make them into something that they are not.. using known names for characters is absurd, if we liked cgi models or voice actors who never sound like sean bean or arron paul..Kingsglaive was ment as a part of a ..lets say collection, a world.. like the anime and other gimmicks, and as such its good.. not great but a good fun 2 h if you liked the game.. if you dislike FF as a whole you wont like it..and you will look for plot holes ...ehh..
What about the Assassin's Creed movie? Great cast with a good director and it was still trash.
The screenwriters were the weak link. The most noteworthy films they had worked on beforehand were as follows:
-one of the Divergent sequels,
-Tower Heist, a comedy film from 2011 that nobody remembers
-and Macbeth, a story that was mostly written by someone else, about 400 years ago
We have had at least one video game film widely regarded as a masterpiece, Advent Children.
***** Why must a sequel be so easily understood by people who didn't experience the original?
***** It doesn't seem to lack sense at all.
For me, Kingsglaive is superior to Advent's Children. I personally liked Kingsglaive as a video game movie, even though Leon made a lot of valid points. I suppose this is due to coming into the movie with no expectation, unlike Advent's Children where I came in very excited.
Other than that, Advent's Children struck me as a bizarre epilogue that focused on the wrong places. But Kingslaive was much more final fantasy-esque. However it is more for fanservice, people not into the video game franchise would most likely not enjoy it, which is something I admit as a fan.
I can't tell if Square fans are sarcastic any more.
Advent Children is far, far, far from being a masterpiece. It was just an exercise on producing a bunch of flashy action sequences, with the plot being an incoherent afterthought (the making of documentary outright has the director saying "We didn't care whether it made sense or not so long as it looked cool"). It's hard to buy or care about Cloud suffering from a terminal illness whenever he's hopping about, slaying giant dragons and going on motorcycle chases every second he's not being a self-loathing mope. To add insult to injury, the cure to his disease is just conveniently handed to him by a deus ex machina, without any reason as to why it couldn't be given to him sooner other than Aerith secretly getting off at Cloud and everyone's suffering, wishing to savor their torture until the last moment. The director's cut on blu-ray failed to fix a lot of these issues too. It really only made it longer...