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Posted By Shaun K. about 3 months ago
Thumb Wars: Episode 27: Video Game Movies 2: WoW, NFS, & HL/P,
Episode 27: Video Game Movies 2: WoW, NFS, & HL/P
Welcome back to the show where we introduce the debate and you continue it. This week’s topic: Shaun & Oda look at the current state of video game movies through the lens of three key properties.
Thumb Wars is a weekly show hosted/produced by Shaun Kronenfeld dedicated to starting and encouraging dialogue and debate on a wide variety of topics within the video game industry. Look for a new Thumbs Wars every Sunday. Comments, opinions, and thoughts are not only welcome, they are the entire point. Feel free to follow Shaun on Twitter @bigred_13 if you feel so inclined.
I suppose you’re right about a Portal movie. How could you [i]possibly[/i] have a movie focusing on two cute robots that never really talk…
[ding]Wall-E[/ding]
Oh. Yeah.
i think video game movies can work. for example: bioshock. i think you can make that work as an movie or rather make the the back story work as an movie. wouldn’t seeing rapture being built be interesting concept? maybe have Andrew Ryan as the main character and see how his utopia turned into a hellhole but as they said some games like half-life would be extremely hard to pull of. so in my humble opinion i rater they didn’t try to make these games into movies at all because they would probably blow it and make it into a horrid piece of crap but on other hand if they pull it of. it might be some of the best cinema we will ever experience
As an pretty big fan of Warcraft, I’d like to see a WoW movie. The problem comes with me is, I know I’d probably be the guy the bitch about the lore. Or at least make jokes about it. It could be good, but at someone said before it would be predictable. Blizzard would have the Alliance and Horde team up in the end to stop whatever big baddy it was because that’s how the games always go. Even with the panda expansion and the Horde basically being the bad guys of it, we all know the the heroes (players) will help in a rebellion and team up with the Alliance in order to stop Garrosh from doing something moronic and world ending (and then the troll leader kill steals him because the heroes are not allowed killing blows anymore).
And the best place to probably set it would be right as vanilla WoW was starting. Burning Crusade would kind of work, but they’d have to focus on two planets, which just sounds off, or ignore Azeroth completely, which would be a big misstep. Wrath of the Lich King would be great, but once again as said before, we all know how it ends. The Lich King is an amazing villain, but watching his battle would be much less interesting then getting involved in it. Screw Cataclysm and the waste of space Deathwing. It would also be strange to just start off a planet audiences barely know about suddenly getting shattered. And Mists of Pandaria would be interesting but not practical either. The problem doesn’t come from the Pandaren (and I’ll resist the urge to rant about their lore existing before Kung-Fu Panda because that’s not the point here) but from the Alliance and Horde war in general. Was really ended up sparking this all out war was the destruction of Theramore, a city which you would have to introduce and destroy pretty quick to get us to the point.
Half Life and Portal just don’t sound right as a movie. The problem I always run into is the Silent Protagonist thing. Maybe they could make some prequel to Portal or what was happening between Half Life and Half Life 2. I got my rant out though!
I’m not holding my breath for a WoW movie any time soon. Let’s think about how long people have been waiting for a Halo movie, it’s not happening. Neither is a Gears of War movie, no Mass Effect movie (which let’s face it, if there was, there definitely wouldn’t be a FemShep as the protagonist), no BioShock movie, no StarCraft movie, so no I don’t believe there will be a WoW movie.
And let’s face it, if there were, they’d royally screw it up. First, exactly where would they begin? Out of all the races, who would be the one to focus the story around? Would they really include kung-fu pandas in it? Not unless they want to risk it being deemed a “kiddie movie”. Because really, thanks to DreamWorks, people would. Hell, that’s the only logical reason why Blizzard added pandas to Azeroth to begin with! I really don’t care what kind of BS lore they pulled out of their ass for the inclusion of pandas, but some higher up at Blizzard said, “We need more kids to play our game. But what could we use to entice them? I know! Pandas!”
If a WoW movie really does happen, you can expect it to have a predictable story of the Horde and Alliance being enemies but having to ban together to defeat the Lich King (no inclusion of Death Knights), and some small totally unexpected thing (which totally would be expected by audiences that have seen this before in movies) is what will bring down the Lich King. End of story.
What I don’t get Shaun, is how you can be all for a WoW movie, but you’re completely against there being a Portal movie for the exact reasons why people believe there shouldn’t be a WoW movie?
WoW the movie will be horrible
Good work guys, you got me to make an account just so I could comment on this one. lol
As much as I’d love to see the visuals of portal on the big screen… I have to say.. it’d never work well. The ONLY way to do something like that would be backstory of GLaDOS/Caroline, or something like that. It SHOULDN’T have Chell in it or any current stuff, would just screw up the story that’s already there IMHO.
A WoW movie? And not even a big enough budget to justify tons of CG? Yeah, screw that, it’ll be worthless no matter WHO directs it because, well.. just look at who owns the IP.. Blizzard.. It’s not like they care about their IP at all anymore, I’m scared enough as it is just about playing Heart of the Swarm with the way they’ve screwed everything else up in justification of just making a quick buck.
Now… a Half-Life movie? Hmm.. that’s doable.. and could be great. And could be done well with or without Gordon honestly (would still need references to things he does though and such, and probably Alex as well) AS LONG AS the writers/producers/director actually care about it and try to make it good.
Which brings me to my last part… HOLY HELL Valve has GOT to get rid of Abrams!!! That idiotic little @#$%^ is WORTHLESS as a director for any established IP. Get him the hell off the project before he absolutely ruins Half-Life. Better yet… go force him onto Blizzard and let HIM ruin the WoW movie, and valve get Duncan Jones themselves, which given his track of actually making intellectual movies instead of OMG-splosion movies, he actually would likely be a PERFECT fit for the story Half-Life. Perhaps even give more information on the G-Man.
Anyhow, random Abrams rant over, take care.
I don’t understand why say a portal movie has to revolve around Chell, in my opinion the key to telling a good story within a game universe is to use the setting as a jumping of point and have the plot be something vaguely hinted at in the main game like for example rat-man or how GLaDos took over the facility.
I have also read that there is plans for a assassin’s creed movie. but along the lines of a portal movie ,no person said that it had to be a direct adaptation, it could possibly be a prelude to the games. like how GlaDos came to be? or ratman’s story? For half life I would have no idea, since I have not played the games.
Give any property to Uwe Boll and magic will happen …
We internet commenters will have something new to bitch about!
How long have these movies been in production? Halo, Gears of War, WOW, etc. have been in production for up to five years it seems. Honestly, I have my doubts a lot of these will ever see the light of day.
WoW has been in production for sometime but much of that time was dedicated to the Sam Raimi version that never happened. So the current version of the film from Duncan Jones, which for all intents and purposes might as well be consider wholly separate from the aforementioned previous version, was only officially announced less than a month ago. It could still all fall apart of course but its too soon to say.
As for the rest… Who knows. I mean I guarantee Microsoft would have a Halo film in theaters tomorrow if possible. Same with Gears. They would kill to grow the franchises like that. On the other hand they seem have enough self control and influence to want more than a Uwe Boll or the like to just crap one out.
My guess? We will eventually see Halo and Gears films, there is just too much money being left on the table, but it could be a while. But I doubt Microsoft will ever completely give up on the idea. I mean its not like either property would be as difficult to turn into a film as a say Journey or Mass Effect would be.
As someone who has never played the game, I’d love to see a World of Warcraft movie, but only if they focused on the writing and character development first, cinematography second, and then pleasing fans as a DISTANT third. There’s just no way you can please all of the fans at once. That’s one of those things a large fan-base entails I can point out from the outside, and the sooner the makers stop trying, the sooner the script writers can write a phenomenal script built around character development.
But a Portal/ Halflife movie? I don’t like this for a very specific reason: Abrams is already involved in Star Trek, Star Wars, and now you want to add Portal? Does Abrams want to get a piece of every major SF movie franchise there is?! Too many movies in one director’s style will burn audiences out, and I’m half afraid that if Abrams keeps going like this it’ll also burn them out of the Sci-Fi genre.
The WOW movie sound like it would be a step up or step down for video game movies, depending on how well they do, but I agree with Oda on the Portal stuff. More for the want of more Glados then anything else, but a half life movie is like asking for the nerd culture as a whole to burn Hollywood to the ground.