Why Don't Video Game Movies Work?

Similar to superhero games, video game movies should have some success but never seem to be that great. Many of the best video games have been brought to life on the big screen (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Max Payne) but they rarely hit the mark and are criticized high and wide for their poor acting, bad story, cheesy effects, or any combination of those things and more. It has been a curiosity of mine why video game movies don’t work and I have put a lot of thought into the topic. I think I may have come up with a solution and I’ll try to piece it together for everyone. I think the main problem can be boiled down to several points, the most crucial being: non-gamers’ involvement, poor writing, expectations, and a passive medium.
The first problem that I believe most video game movies suffer from is the involvement of non-gamers at a high level, like the director for example. These people aren’t bad at what they do but they don’t fully understand video games either. They think that the best way to create a “video-game” atmosphere in a game is to make the movie as much like the game in as many little ways as possible. They abruptly and openly reference the games with shot-for-shot comparisons (look at the end scene of Street Fighter) and other, smaller, details like ridiculous looking costumes and stuff like that.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love that they utilize the source material and try to make it authentic but sometimes it doesn’t work too well, mainly because they choose to focus on the wrong subtleties (like looks) and not the important ones (like characterization). Most video game characters have distinct personalities that are only parodied in video game movies. But this issue is not really the big problem with video game movies; the other problems are much more serious and require more attention.
The second problem that I find with many video game movies is that the writing is not very good. Apparently the writers believe that dialogue for the movie needs to be just as cheesy, if not more so, than the dialogue in the game itself. Video games are a growing entertainment medium and can’t be clumped in the same maturity level as the well refined movie genre. Motion pictures have been around for almost 100 years whereas games haven’t been around half that long. So, when you take the cheesy dialogue of a game and insert it into a film, the medium itself (by its very nature) spits it out. The film medium is not perfect by any means but it does require more maturity than video games. Why do you think cheesy dialogue in a game is accepted but that same dialogue in a movie is hated?
For video game movies to be successful, they need to take the video game dialogue and atmosphere and adapt it for the big screen. Character development is more important in a movie than a game (this is changing but is still by and large true) so this needs to be a priority for the movie. Also, the action needs to be more like action movie action and less like crappy movie action pretending to be video game action. A bigger budget would help with this but there need to be some great video game movies before big budgets are handed out by studios.
The next big problem with video game movies is people’s expectations. Part of the reason people don’t enjoy movies is because they hype it up so much that the finished product could never live up to their hype. Most video game movies are based off of highly popular video games and their fans are very excited to see a big screen adaptation. The problem is, they have these really high expectations because of how great the game was and these expectations can’t be fulfilled most of the time. Add to this the fact that video game plots are usually tailored to an interactive experience not a passive experience and you have my next, and most crucial, point.
Video games are an interactive medium; you step into the shoes of a character (or create your own) and you do the action. How the game unfolds is up to you and when something needs doing that is your problem to deal with. Movies are a passive medium; you sit, you watch, you enjoy. There is no interactivity in a movie and that makes people long for it, they want to be the character so they buy the licensed game even though it is usually bad. This doesn’t work the other way around people don’t want to step out of the game and watch the character. This disconnect is the biggest problem with the transition from video games to movies, people want to control their character in a game and they can’t do that in a movie. This difference is what makes the medium of video games great but it also makes it difficult to transition to other passive media like television or, as we have been talking about, movies.
Does this mean that video game movies can’t work? Of course not, they just need to start doing things differently. They need to start taking themselves as serious, self-contained, movies and not video game movies. Video game movie is almost a paradox because of the differences in the two media. The movie needs to first be a good movie, and then be associated with a good game. This is the same thing that a licensed video game based on a movie needs, it needs to be a good game first and foremost, and then it can be associated with the movie. The medium that is chosen needs to play to its strengths first before invoking another, conflicting, medium of entertainment.