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Posted on November 12, 2010, Phil Owen 10 Games That Should Not Be Adapted Into Movies

As game worlds come to look more and more like reality, it’s become very common for random assholes to want their favorite titles to be adapted into movies. This is pretty dumb, because there are a lot of things that would have to fall into place in order for any game movie to turn out to be good, and it’s rare that [game you like] would have a chance at said things falling into place. Also, many games just should stay in an interactive medium. And many games just aren’t movie material. Here are ten games that absolutely should not ever be adapted into motion pictures.

NOTE: In theory, a good filmmaking team can make a good picture out of any source material, but good filmmaking teams generally don’t make video game movies, and even when they do (see: Prince of Persia), it doesn’t always work out. Actually, it has never worked out.

1. Mass Effect

Some people really want this to be made into a movie, and I cannot fathom why. By its nature, Mass Effect is important because of the player’s influence; remove that aspect of it, and you just have a random RPG shooter nobody would give a damn about. Make it into a movie, and you lose a very significant part of what makes Mass Effect so special. The same reasoning applies to why Deus Ex should not be adapted.

2. Any Grand Theft Auto game

Rockstar has never been down for selling the movie rights for their baby, and rightly so; the current-generation GTAs are horrible movie material, because the scope of the franchise is much too large to be fully realized in a single film. To tell a story like those of the GTA games, you’d need an epic, ten-hour trilogy not unlike that of The Lord of the Rings, which no one would ever greenlight from the start. If a studio ever did manage to get a GTA film off the ground, it would probably be two hours long and would feel like a shell of what it’s adapting. Best case is that it would be a good crime film using the GTA name for marketing purposes.

3. BioShock

BioShock, being a linear shooter featuring some very topical political themes, seems like it’d be super ripe for a film adaptation, and that almost happened a few years ago with Gore Verbinski at the helm. But when considering how a film would tell the story of Jack, you cannot forget that the game is also a commentary on the nature of games, and that commentary would be completely lost when the story is transferred to a non-interactive medium. Jack meeting Andrew Ryan is one of the most memorable moments in the history of gaming, and it’s doubtful the filmmakers could create a moment of equivalent power in the film.

4. World of Warcraft

I’m not even going to criticize the material, because there are a bunch of novels they could adapt, and I’m sure they would make perfectly good whatever-movies. But here’s the biggest reason nobody should make a World of Warcraft movie: nobody would go see it. There are, what, 12 million WoW subscribers? OK, so nobody but WoW subscribers would see the movie, which means your entire audience is that small group of people. And since no studio is going to throw big money at a project with a name that freaking nerdy, you’ll end up with something reminiscent of In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale except with a lot more bad creature fx. Also, that movie made $12 million worldwide.

5. Shadow of the Colossus

This one might actually happen, and it’s a baaaaaaaaad idea. Shadow of the Colossus is, mostly, about a guy riding a horse around the world and killing giant monsters every once in a while.

Do I really need to explain why that’s a bad idea for a movie?

6. Any Call of Duty game

The WWII CoD titles shouldn’t be adapted because we have enough material for WWII movies thank you very much. And the narrative-based, non-WWII titles shouldn’t be adapted because they’re already movies. Like everyone else in the world, I’ve spent my evenings this week playing Black Ops, and aside from being full of sequences that are basically the first-person scene from Doom, it also features Sam Worthington speaking with a terrible American accent and Gary Oldman and Ed Harris yelling things constantly, which is exactly what I would expect from a Call of Duty movie. The CoD formula, too, at this point is little more than “walk forward and shoot people and then [SCRIPTED SEQUENCE],” so why the hell would you need a movie version when you already have an interactive version of a movie?

7. The Legend of Zelda

It has a name everyone knows and a fanbase that spans a very large age range, so why not? Because have you ever seen those Final Fantasy movies? They are baaaaaaaaaaad. Even though a Zelda movie has more, eh, restrained source material, because it would be a fantasy video game-based movie, it’s unlikely anyone would give it enough backing to make something good out of it. And if they did make a legit picture out of it, you, the fans, would probably hate it because it would feature a brand new story that could never fit into the continuity. Yuck, amirite? The best option here is to take inspiration from the above photo and make Zelda porn.

8. Super Mario Bros.

Oh, wait….

9. Bayonetta

We really, really, really, really do not need this nonsense cluttering up pop culture any more than it already does. Unless Takashi Miike is down for it. Seriously, though, every aspect of Bayonetta is atrocious aside from the gameplay (which is merely boring), and I just want to forget about this crap forever. Which won’t happen since it’s one of the best reviewed games of the year somehow. Which is one of the more baffling things that has ever happened in the history of humanity.

10. Metal Gear Solid

Look, I know you all love your MGS, and I know you all want it to be a movie because it would, like, be the most profound thing evarr. Unfortunately, a movie version of the epic stream of bulls**t moral posturing known as Metal Gear Solid would probably end up like the Matrix sequels, had Paul Haggis and M.Night Shyamalan teamed up to write the final drafts of the screenplays, and there is not one intelligent person on the face of the Earth who would ever think that combination could conceivably turn out well.

If Metal Gear Solid were a movie, you’d have a bunch of stupid nerds proclaiming it the best movie since The Boondock Saints, and life would generally be terrible for everyone else. And the movie would be three f**king hours long, and I would make it through an entire fifth of whiskey during the runtime and still be too miserable to make jokes. A Metal Gear Solid movie would be a huge blight on the history of humanity, and we have to make sure it never happens.