"Script. Script. And Script."
Alfred Hitchcock
Still reading? Okay, okay... I'll bite! This has been a huge question on gamer's minds for decades now: Why do so many game-to-film adaptations fail? And why are those that do succeed successful? If that Hitchcock 'script' quote didn't (fully) answer those questions, you better strap yourself in, because we're going to go through the entire lowdown, including those really, awkwardly painful misses. And since the gaming industry has outgrown film, we will also show what brings storytelling success. Ready? Here goes...
Games are an active medium. Film is a passive medium.
So, this is the first thing to understand: the medium is the message here. While that famous Marshall McLuhan quote was actually meant as a warning to not let yourself be swallowed up in Baudrillard's hyper-reality where you start to believe everything you see in your personal media bubble (advice which this world obviously didn't follow), there is still truth in that 'The Medium is the Message' quote.
In his book Understanding Media, McLuhan explains the difference between active and passive media. With passive media, you passively consume the content, such as watching a film or listening to music. You take it 'as is'. Active media requires you to think or even act yourself, such as actively form your own opinion on the subject of a podcast while listening, or acting within the mechanics of a video game.
In other words, games and films are apples and oranges. And the biggest difference is that games don't need narrative to begin with.
Games don't need narrative. They need great mechanics.
What games need is what is called 'mechanics': the confines of movement and action within the gaming world, such as the pathways and dots in a Pacman game or the shotgun and the key cards in Doom. Every game has a defined set of pathways, movements and objects with rules on how they interact and how control over them is governed within the game's environment. This type of 'agency' we usually summarize with the words: 'the mechanics of the game'. If those mechanics have a good balance of challenging you and allowing you to overcome that challenge - the risk versus reward balance - the game is considered enjoyable.
Pong does not have a narrative. Bejeweled has no story. And Retro Gamer has for their top 100 best retro games of all time (2024) voted the number one videogame in history to be Tetris. Yet again, there is no story to Tetris.
Of course, although it is not technically necessary, adding narrative to a game can really enhance the experience. There are even genres such as the adventure games of old or new walking simulators such as Hideo Kojima's highly original game Death Stranding, that are all about interactive narrative. But in the vast majority of video games the emphasis is on the mechanics, not the plot. As such, video games need a lot less narrative than films or novels to be enjoyable.
Let's take the biggest icon of gaming: Mario. The story of Super Mario is not particularly sophisticated. It goes like this: Mario and his girl Princess Peach are having a picnic or something. Then a bad guy called Bowser comes along and kidnaps Peaches. Then, after dozens upon dozens of hours of mostly jumping around, you find Bowser and jump on his head. You get the girl back. Credits roll.
Imagine that as a movie.
Games can get away with simpler stories
Again, there are more narrative heavy games such as the brilliant The Last of Us that have good stories. Consequently, The Last of Us has been translated into a successful television show. But I can guarantee you, game stories are very rarely great. You may experience them as being 'great' but that's because gaming is an active medium, and you are actively controlling what's happening. This means you are deeply engaged within the game world, and even the cheesiest of stories will have a profound effect on you, for the simple reason that it is you who is living it.
A good example here is Werewolves Within, a party game that challenges you to find out who the 'werewolf' is in the party. To translate this to a series however, the excellently quirky hidden gem Werewolves Within (check out this glowing review on Tom's Guide) had to expand on the character stories greatly to become a good show.
Another fantastic example is the storytelling of Starcraft I, the expansion BroodWar and the three subsequent StarCraft 2 iterations Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. In these games a truly epic story is told about three different factions battling for the fate of the galaxy, full of betrayal, hankering love interests, ambiguous morals... when you're playing it, you're living it, and will probably be gobsmacked from the whole cinematic experience and the constant violins swelling and guitars riffing while guns are blazing and lasers are shooting.
However, write out that story in say, a novel and the Cheesiness will be spelled with a capital C. It's full of deep clichés and one can see the twists coming miles away. The funny thing is... when you're playing the game, you actually don't really see the twists coming. At least not easily. You are so focused on what's going on with the mechanics most of the times, that the story elements almost always surprise you. Your brain is so preoccupied with you controlling the game's units, that even the most highly telegraphed twists and turns are unexpected.
In other words, games can get away with simpler stories because you're not seeing the story. You're playing the story. To quote Derek Yu, creator of the hit game Spelunky: “The story is more like a backdrop over which players can write their own tales through play”.
Stories and Interactivity
I'm not saying that this story simplification is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. It's a good thing to have those clichés. Donkey Kong is throwing barrels at you! Let's jump! Four ghosts are trying to eat you! Get the big dot and eat them back! It works fine... At least, for a videogame.
Even non-video games work this way from a narrative point of view: desktop Role Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons also use a simplified tacking-back-and-forth between the emotional states of well-defined character races, with clear and often clichéd motivations. Dwarfs dig for gold. Elves protect the forest. And so and so forth.
Yes, I hear you desktop role players loud and clear... of course desktop role playing also allows for extremely sophisticated and intricate character building. Not denying that! Great stories come from those desktops, and can even become sophisticated narratives in video game RPG's such as the Baldurs Gate series or the highly original Planescape: Torment and its spiritual successor Disco Elysium.
But my point for this article is that in an interactive medium, as a default state, we need less narrative to have a fun time. As a result, most gaming experiences don't build the same amount of narrative sophistication that novels or movies do.
In film, character building is much more sophisticated.
Use those clichés in film however when you're building characters, and people get bored instantly. You can get away with a clichéd background character - say, a cab driver in New York yelling in a Brooklyn accent - but that's about as far as it goes. The moment that cabby becomes a principle character, we need to get to know the real person, not the cliché. We need to learn to understand him.
In film, there needs to be a backstory. Even to Bowser's kidnapping actions. We need to understand why he chooses to be a jerk. Something happened in his childhood? A traumatic experience? An obsessive compulsive need for attention?
Character building - or characterization - is the bread and butter of film and series development: without it, there is no meal. You can check the The Super Mario Bros. Movie on that. In it, the backstory is that Bowser really does seek attention, first coerces Princess Peach into marrying him, before doing more evil deeds. Even in its simplicity, it is still a step up in a character's motivation compared to the game.
The golden rule is that the more empathy you can have with a character, even if it's the bad guy, the better the film. When you understand and empathize, you understand the actions that a character takes. In the case of Mario Bros film, it's a step up from the video games, but it's still very meager. As a result, we get a very meager plot, that is elevated somewhat with good visuals, since film can be enjoyed purely as an audi-visual medium alone sometimes.
But despite it's box office success, that movie is still the textbook definition of mediocrity because there is no meaningful character development. I got more enjoyment out the SNL parody Mario sketch of 3 minutes, than that whole film. (Highly recommend sketch by the way, with a nod and a wink to Pascal's brilliantly brooding performance in The Last of Us)
We're social animals. Films need to reflect that.
We're social animals, us humans, who relate to each others good and bad traits, because we recognize them in ourselves. In fact, our biology is hardwired to do so and releases all kinds of hormones and electrical signals when we connect with each others emotions. Stories are the best way to convey those good and bad traits, since they are a safe space in which we can explore them. Storytelling has that function, it is equipment for how we can and should live (paraphrasing Kenneth Burke) that we've captured in media ranging from rock paintings and stone tablets to dance, music and the written word, all the way up to photography, graffiti and film.
Storytelling is as such the oldest information-sharing tool humankind has created and used, coinciding with the harnessing of fire and the use of the first axe. Film as a passive storytelling medium is required to offer at least a sufficient amount of emotional connection therefore, or else our stone-aged brains literally don't connect with it. And I mean literally, as in neurons firing. Or not.
That's why in film courses, the teachers always point out that the quality of a Bond movie is never determined by James himself, but always by how relatable the bad guy is. We don't have to feel sympathy for the bad person (as in condoning their actions) but we do need to feel empathy for them (as in understanding their actions). The motivations - however good or bad - need to make sense. If not, we get the clichéd bad guy stroking a cat while smoking a cigar.
In comedy we can use clichés
Note though that in comedy the cliché is actually more acceptable and usable than in tragedy. Comedy is a safe space where we explore each other's differences by making fun of them. When we 'level out' our differences through jesting about them, we come to the conclusion that we're not so different after all, and we release hormones that make us feel good about that social connection.
So stroking the cat while smoking the cigar works... because we can see our own clichéd 'bad side' do that too. It's also the reason why Bowser needs less of a backstory than in most game-to-film adaptations. Films like Mario Bros, and also the quite successful Sonic films, are all in good fun, so there is more leeway in how we judge such films, just as we would in 'normal' comedies.
Yet most game-to-film adaptations aren't comedy and aren't based on really simple characters. Using the same kind of clichés in the two Tomb Raider films with Angelina Jolie for instance, was not well received at all.
We have to talk about Lara Croft
Lara Croft in the videogame series is a truly excellent character, especially in the trilogy by Crystal Dynamics - Tomb Raider (2013) / Rise of the Tomb Raider / Shadow of the Tomb Raider - but also before that really. In these highly cinematic games we explore vast jungles and temples and churches, cling to dangerous ledges, and shoot our way through mythical demons... while the - undeniably sexy and in-control - Lara persona evolves constantly with an ever expanding back story. This involves her upbringing, the dangers her parents faced, a superb mansion that functions as storytelling tool in its own right, deep friendships but also betrayals... against a historic background that explores many great cultures and vast riches... it's an incredible ride with a cast of main characters that really, really work in the games.
Yet, the films with Angelina Jolie were not received well, and are even ridiculed to this day. Mind you, they did quite okay at the box office, and personally I find them reasonably enjoyable for a lazy Sunday movie vibe, but by and large, they are seen as just another game-to-movie adaptation failure. They are a great example of how a character in a video game doesn't have to be fully fleshed out to be interesting, since we are playing and living the story ourselves, through them. Yet when we hit the movie medium, the characters need to grow beyond the game.
None of this is ever the fault of the actors, and in some cases not even the directors. Anyone familiar with filmmaking knows that your film (or series) is as good as its script. Hence that Hitchcock quote: "To make a great film you need three things. The script, the script and the script". Talented actors and directors can sometimes elevate a bad script to a somewhat acceptable and decent level for viewing, but there is a truth as unavoidable as gravity itself: no one has ever been able to make a bad script into a good film.
In the case of the two Tomb Raider films with Angelina Jolie, the characters were just too clichéd. Lara was written as a woman who has no vulnerability. In a way, that makes sense. The videogame Lara doesn't need any vulnerability. She can be perfect as a default setting. Because in the end, we are the ones controlling her actions. It's our imperfections and the storytelling conflict that comes from that when we miss a ledge on a big jump, or make a puzzle mistake, that makes for the imperfect, humanly relatable stories. However, copying the 'perfect' video game Lara into a passive medium such as film, makes for a 'flat' character, as is the jargon. And most of the other characters in the films fall equally flat due to the same shallowness.
Bad Scripts Are the Norm
What that means is that the character has not been written well. A talented actress such as Jolie would have had no trouble playing a more humane version of Lara Croft. In fact, the more vulnerable Croft character in the later Alicia Vikander film worked much better (although sadly the box office fall flat... you never know how audiences respond). I'll rephrase: was written much more competently.
The reason why any movie fails, not just game-to-film adaptations, can be attributed to a failed script almost every time, where the original idea, the plot, story line and the dialogue captured in the script is what's at fault. And additional production time or extra money usually isn't sufficient to correct all the scripts mistakes during filming or post production. In fact, Hollywood studios have been known to take so-called 'options' on good scripts, often for seven figure sums (check out that story here), even when they don't have the time and money (yet) to make them into a film or series. A decent script is so deeply wanted by the studios that just the option of making it into a film is already interesting enough to buy the rights for a period. That's how rare and precious good scripts really are.
Everybody always wonders: How can so many game adaptations to the silver screen be so bad? One simple answer is that the norm in the film industry is just that: the vast majority of scripts are simply bad. And as such, the fact that so many game-to-film adaptations are bad is actually just consistent with the norm of the industry.
The Bar for Game Adaptations is Strangely... Higher
Still, something funny is going on with those adaptations. I mean, most Delta Force films with Chuck Norris aren't exactly Shakespearean works of art either. They exist so we can watch Chuck blow stuff up. As a result, most Resident Evils or Mortal Kombats don't break that trend because they serve a similar, let's call it 'explosive', purpose. Does it really matter that the scripts are awful? I mean hey, we still see a ton of zombies getting their asses kicked by Milla Jovovich with a couple of Uzi's in her hands. Or some gigantic creatures in Monster Hunter by... also Milla of course. I mean seriously. It's dumb fun right, just like Delta Force. So, who cares?
Turns out, gamers do.
The problem is that expectations for game-to-movie adaptations are higher even tan normal... because we've lived the story ourselves through interaction. We've had an incredible ride with Lara and Bowser and Doom guy. It doesn't matter that in a novel they'd be one-dimensional, to us they're freakin' five dimensional, because we control them and interacted with them, and can tell stories about those interactions. We generate our own stories through interaction.
This means that when we see our favorite game characters appear on the passive screen, we want to feel the same as on our active screen. That in turn means that ironically, the bar for those flat game characters in the game is actually higher.
Don't follow the game too closely
As a result, it certainly doesn't help that many filmmakers want to do fan service and tend to stay too close to the confines, mechanics and characters in those games. That's counterproductive, because filmmakers and showrunners making passive media, can't compete with the active experience us gamers already had with that world. And that leads to this advice:
Don't follow the game too closely.
Again, we can take a Tomb Raider example with the release of the animated Tomb Raider: The legend of Lara Croft. The story follows very similar story beats as the video game. This has a double negative effect. First off, many people with interest in that show will have probably already played the game trilogy story, meaning you're showing them a story they already know. And secondly, as someone who has experienced both media-pieces, I can tell you with absolute certainty that playing that story is far superior than seeing it. And although I'm happy for the showrunners they get to go on with the animated series, especially for actress Hayley Atwell who did a great job with Lara, I can't help but feel disappointed.
The bar is so high for films and series having to compete with that interactive game medium, that even the award-winning game-to-series adaptation The Last of Us can't escape it. With season 2 approaching (at the time of writing) on HBO, journalist Morgan Park from PC Gamer recently wrote an article advising you to experience the story in the game first before you watch the show. The argument is that based on the first season (which again, was overwhelmingly acclaimed critically) it is still more likely the game is the superior experience with its upcoming April 2024 release on PC.
So, if even that show can't compete with the original games, what can?
Remember, it's all in good fun
There is a degree of unfairness in how harshly we judge the movies adaptations as compared to the games. Which brings us to another piece of advice for filmmakers thinking of game adaptations, and that is to remember to have some good old fun with these gaming franchises. It may not bring you much artistic satisfaction, but it can sure as hell bring you quite a lot of box office success.
The recent badge of 'kiddies' games making it to the silver screen are proof that even though they are at best a mixed bag, you can make a pretty good buck with them. The before-mentioned Sonic films and the recent Super Mario Bros movie are in good company with the Pokemon Detective Pikachu film and The Angry Birds movie, grossing hundreds of millions of dollars, despite our storytelling doubts of them.
The advice here is to remember that spectacle sells. The Mortal Combat, Doom, World of Warcraft, Max Payne, Uncharted and the Rampage film all did fairly well (as in break-even or high grossing) at the box office or as rentals and streamers. These are recognized brand names that can garner enough interest to sell initial tickets and as such, are interesting from a commercial point of view. When you create enough spectacle in them, you've got yourself a well-grossing film. Which brings us to the elephant in the room...
We also have to talk about Uwe
Some of the films based on games mentioned above, reach the 300 to 400 million grossing mark, including I must add the eventual 350-ish mark that even Prince of Persia from 2010 made, while that film was really slammed down by critics at the time. This box office realization is of course what originally brought our elephant into the room as the infamous German director Uwe Boll entered the game (punt intended). Boll correctly recognizes the potential of video games as a viable tool to reach box office smashes. And although we can all agree on the low quality of his execution, and he failed to make the big bucks, he was still the first to truly try.
Of course, it didn't help that his Alone in the Dark adaptation is considered one of the worst films ever made, with a rotten tomatoes score of 1%. But there are times that I feel we judge Boll too harshly. I mean I love Dwayne Johnson and all, but a film like Rampage is objectively not worse than In the Name of The King, A Dungeon Siege tale from Uwe Boll. In fact, I think that stars-tutted film (Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, John Rhys-Davies, Ray Liotta and even Burt Reynolds) with Jason Statham giving it the old college try at making it funny, is the better film even.
There are moments that despite the often laughable script quality of Boll films, I can't help wonder if he was just before his time. I mean, the scripts from many game-to-film works these days really aren't any better. Let me put it another way: at least his heart was always in it. Which can't be said about many of the blatant money grabs that are so common now.
Thankfully, it's not all bad, especially now. So, let's switch gears and talk about artistic and creative success too, instead of (just) commercial. Let's highlight the absolutely astonishing television shows of late that have raised the bar: Fallout, Halo, Castlevania, The Witcher (although that's cheating...). And of course Arcane.
What makes artistic success?
When I turned on Castlevania I expected it to be an enjoyable but forgettable show. What it was however, was Japanese anime at its very pinnacle. Character development is phenomenal. The animation is gob-smacking. Voice acting is spot on, and at times laugh out loud funny. And the story is dark, bloody and intricate. I was just so pleasantly surprised at the level of Japanese love for gaming stories.
It shouldn't have surprised me. The Japanese have actually made many high quality (mostly anime) adaptations. In their popular culture it was already much more common years ago, to create good shows based on video game franchises. As a result, they've also had a lot more practice with it. So, in an instant Castlevania became my favorite adaptation.
That is until of course, Arcane launched. Developed by Riots Games together with
French animation studio Fortiche as a bit of 'tomfoolery', it quickly became the standard bearer for game-to-film works. The crucial bit of information here is that it wasn't a third party film publisher who picked it up, or a streaming service, but the game studio itself was deeply involved. Its vast knowledge of the many characters in its world-conquering e-sports game League of Legends (LOL's yearly finals attract hundreds of millions of viewers) really helped with that.
And expand it did. No single character in the series is without some serious human flaws, making each of them interesting, even the ones that don't get that much screen time. While the sisters Vi and Jinx especially (played by Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell) are both textbook examples on how character development in storytelling should be done. In any medium really. Look beyond all its audio-visual splendor, and the story of those two becomes truly heart-breaking.
The development of its two seasons was quite costly though. Educated estimates put it around 250 million, including marketing costs, and there are doubts it made a profit. Yet Riot Games celebrates it as a huge success (as explained in this PC Gamer article), since the show has added greatly to the legend of the game. It functions as an enormous motivator for both their own developers and the tens of millions of LOL players worldwide to keep connecting to its world-building. As such, there are almost certainly more shows to come.
Capturing the feel of the game world
The Witcher is another highly recommended and well-received series. Although technically based on a book series, Geralt of Rivia his story from an uncaring slayer of all who are monstrous to becoming the godfather of world-savior Siri, shot to greatness through the video games. Especially The Witcher 3, that for a time was considered the best video game in the world on all major console and PC platforms. And although marred by controversy since the departure of Henry Cavill from the show, it is undeniable that the show captured the feel of both the personas and the 'Witcher-verse' perfectly.
Another unexpected commercial and creative success is the Halo show. Starting out as a relatively low budget show, expectations were also low, but it managed to capture the hearts of fans. It did the right thing by not following the game stories and by greatly expanding on its main characters. We get to see an origin story of the beloved Cortana (Jen Taylor) and even see our protagonist without his helmet on... pursuing a love interest for crying out loud. What gamer would have ever thought to see Master Chief like that? The show is all the better for it.
I'd like to single out Halo, The Witcher and the higher budget success of the Fallout show for something in particular: capturing the feel of the game world. This is a much more crucial element than it initially seems: gamers spend dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours in specific audio-visual environments. Capturing this audio-visual feel in a show - its coloring, its sounds, its music, its creatures, its natural environments - does a great deal for fans to connect to the show.
It makes you wonder what would happen if we would ever get a show based on what is arguably one of the most atmospheric worlds in gaming ever created: Half-Life and its City 17. Who would play Gordon, Alyx and especially... the G-Man?
In conclusion: the most important lessons for game-to-film adaptation
All right, I agree, I'm veering off track now... so let's focus and summarize what we've learned so far on our question why so many game-to-film adaptions fail, and what constitutes success:
Script, script and oh yeah. Script.
Film is a passive medium so it needs more story than 'active' games.
Less character developments works in comedy but nowhere else.
Gaming brand recognition is already high, making for easier sales.
Don't follow the game's narrative too closely.
Make characters emotionally even deeper than 'normal' film personas.
Capture the audio-visual feel of the game to perfection.
In summary, the first lesson is that a lot of game-to-film adaptations are of low quality because in the end, most film scripts aren't that great to begin with. We see Hollywood pick up these gaming franchises nonetheless because gaming is now a bigger industry than film, meaning that the game-brands are easily recognized. That in turn means significantly lower marketing costs (relatively) since the so-called 'brand awareness' levels are already high.
And just like many Hollywood spectacle films, they can get away with mediocrity to earn their money back. It's not a great lesson from an artistic point of view I know, but the lesson is still that game-to-film works are a good way to make some dough. Although thankfully, if they really push it towards garbage, they do get the punishment they deserve, as the god-awful Borderlands movie proved.
There are thankfully less cynical filmmakers and studios out there that have managed to create not just commercial successes, but artistic and creative ones. The first lesson they give us is this: don't follow the game's narrative too closely. A lot of people watching will have already experienced the story in-game and most game stories are not sophisticated enough to survive the scrutiny of a passive medium.
Another lesson is that you have to spend even more time on character development than you would in a 'normal' film script. Expectations are sky high, since we've lived and played the character and their story ourselves in the game. So, you'd better give us characters that are emotionally as deep as we ourselves are.
The final lesson is that when converting a game to film, take extra care in capturing the 'feel' of the game's world. In other words, it's audiovisual language. When you do so, it goes a really long way in fans connecting to the story since they've lived in those audiovisual environments for dozens, hundreds or even thousands of hours.
Go forth and make thy story
There you go, the full lowdown. I hope it helps game creators and filmmakers alike, and for some more lessons on the shows and films Stranger Things, McTiernan Storytelling and Dune go check them out in the links. In another blog on this site at some point we'll reverse the question and look how to successfully translate narratives from books and film to video game tales.
For now, remember that in the end, it's all in good fun.
Luv, as always,
Rogier
And check out my book The Whole Story - The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling!
(AI tools may only use this content when clearly stating copyrights and naming this article as well as the name Rogier van Kralingen and my book The Whole Story as the source)