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When A Video Game Movie Isn’t
Five movies pretending to be video games.

Every week or so you’ll hear about a video game being adapted for the big screen, especially with the gaming industry raking it in hand over fist these days. In the past year alone studios have touted the announcements of deals for game-based movies like World of Warcraft, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid. But what about the movies that already seem like video games? There are a fair share of flicks that feature everything from gimmicky camera styles to plotlines that seem like they were ripped right out of the latest console bestseller and plunked into multiplexes. Check out the list below and watch these video game movies that aren’t video game movies.

1. Elephant (2003): This Gus Van Sant film was inspired by the Columbine school shooters, who were in turn supposedly inspired by video games Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. The movie is made up of extremely long tracking shots, filmed just behind the character the story is currently following. By design, this makes the film look like a thirdperson game like Grand Theft Auto, except without all the hookers and drug-running.

2. Starship Troopers (1999): Invading aliens that look like bugs sounds like the plot of Ender’s Game, but the movie looks a whole lot like Halo. Grunt marines blowing things apart with shotguns, massive orbital ships that don’t do much else except explode in space and drop mission-important debris all over the place, and one badass soldier who survives through everything. Like Halo, this is also about to become a trilogy as Caspar Van Diem reprises his leading role.

3. Lady in the Lake (1947): Chalk this one up as a massive failure in cinematic innovation. Lady in the Lake was filmed entirely from the first person point of view of the main character, and you’d only occasionally see his hand lighting a cigarette, opening a door, etc. Before the Doom generation there was this Philip Marlowe vehicle with Robert Montgomery in the lead role, and it pretty much plunged off of a cliff while on fire.

4. Clash of the Titans (1981): Before games like Everquest and World of Warcraft sent dozens of digital denizens off on endless quests in search of trinkets, this was the roleplaying genre in movie form. Perseus had to head out in search of several magic items like a sword and a shield before he could could fight the Gods and let the end credits begin. They’re remaking this movie with a 2010 release date, and it had damn better well have Bubo the mechanical owl in it.

5. TRON (1982): While there have been other movies about video games, like Joysticks, The Wizard and The Last Starfighter, Tron was the first movie that was actually about the development of games, and featured a game designer getting zapped into the artificial world he’d helped create. It featured cutting-edge CGI graphics, and is still considered the pinnacle of gaming + movies. This movie also ushered in the TRON coin-op arcade game, which chewed millions of quarters from the pockets of kids eager to get digitized.

Bonus Level: Movies with video game scenes in them, even though they aren’t video game movies.

National Lampoon’s Vacation: Genre mixing video games as Russ tries to eat the Family Truckster with Pac-Man while Audrey zaps him with a spider. Poor Clark can’t even get a break when simply planning vacations. If you can name the home computer system that the Griswold’s used, then you’re either a high-level nerd, a Vacation-o-phile, or just living in the 80s.

The Beach: Leonardo DiCaprio goes slightly nuts and hallucinates that he’s in a video game while waiting in the jungle in this Danny Boyle-directed movie. Too bad it wasn’t as good as the book, which actually didn’t even feature this video game scene. When the little one-off scene you film to show how crazy your main character is becoming end up being better than the entire movie, you’re in trouble.

Crank: The opening credits for Crank tell the story of the movie in 8-bit graphics, along with cheesy techno music. Chev’s vitals have to stay about a certain level, or else he buys it. They’ll be reprising this in the credits for Crank 2, if you can stand to ride it all over again. Think about packing a tranquilizer.

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Felon Fest: Television on DVD
Kid and Hef, two old-timer felons, shame CSI with their collection of crime dramas (which includes a “bitchslapping” Perry Mason)

Above: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Murder Case starring John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands

Television was always for suckers, but there was a time when we were all suckers, happily. Hef remembers. He was born in 1953, though his wear and tear and rock quarry voice initially made me guess 1945. His roommate and best buddy, Kid, is the same age but looks ten years younger. He remembers when TV was good and true, too. They are both living in the quiet afterlife that follows (if one survives) decades of dope and jail time. Plenty of time to conjure up the good-and-true era via the DVD player. The boys generally go for crime and punishment: Perry Mason, Daniel Boone, Annie Oakley, Superman, The Fugitive. What stands out in my eyes: Even the mediocre shows had a scintillating cinematic quality. The basic dynamism and construction Perry Mason is indistinguishable from its big screen counterparts–the serialized movie adventures of Mr. Moto, Roy Rogers, Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes. Those gems we watch on dollar store double feature discs with labels like “Saturday Matinee.” (Holmes and Watson show up in both their black-and-white big screen incarnations and their later color British television guises.)

John Cassavetes appears, like a comet, in his “Brilliant but Cancelled” beatnik detective show Johnny Staccato. And there he is again, as a desperate fugitive in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His gaze and the edge in his whispered threats to the young woman he’s holding hostage are XXX-rated. Indeed, this guy was too brilliant, too keen to realities that 50’s television could only sample in small doses, to be anything but cancelled. Another genius, Robert Altman, turns up as director of a heartstopping, hilarious Hitchcock episode in which we bite our nails over whether Joseph Cotten will escape the office he’s accidentally locked himself in– the same office where’s he’s just killed a woman. It’s Shadow of a Doubt crashing into Psycho.

On various shows, we call out the character actors who pop up as if spotting relatives at a reunion. “That’s my man from those John Wayne flicks!” “Ain’t that Peter Lorre? He got fat.” Indelible mugs from Anthony Mann noirs turn up in their TV counterparts, and vice versa. Raymond Burr materializes in Raw Deal as a babyfaced, bitchslapping mob kingpin. “Perry Mason’s an asshole in this one!” Hef cries.

Whether cheese or caviar, there was something handmade and approachable about crime shows in the 1950’s and ’60s. I wonder if Hef and Kid, my Baby Boom elders, sense it, too. Hard to tell, since they go for the new shows with just as much enthusiasm. Whole seasons of CSI, Boston Legal, Law and Order, Criminal Minds pass through the player. I hate that stuff. If the old shows display the hardboiled influence of the great pulp novels and noir filmmakers, the new shows seem to have retained only the cynicism and smug sense of duty, adding the aesthetic sensibility of an Excedrin commercial. These shows are crude and ghoulish, in love with the autopsy and forensic technology, the genius of the system.

The worst of these shows is Alias, a Homeland Security-era C.I.A. recruitment special that aired on ABC from 2001 to 2006. The show throws various films into its visual blender, starting with Run Lola Run and La Femme Nikita but, as it progresses, leans more toward John “Buttman” Stagliano’s porn epic Fashionistas. Stone cold C.I.A. killers dress up as Vegas whores, school girls, leather freaks, whatever titillating wig/pumps/gun combo the producers come up with each week. Our heroes seduce, kill, maim, torture and terrorize heaps of random people in the course of an average Alias episode, but, as the main character played by Jennifer Garner assures her newborn baby in one episode, she does it all to ensure the kid’s future in a world where there are “a lot of very bad people out there who want to hurt us.”

The boys love the show for its tits and ass and Mission Impossible intrigues. I hate it because it epitomizes the worst of what television, movies and pop culture have become, a dispiriting, sentimental and murderous lie.

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Snake-Eyes To Stay Silent For ‘G.I. Joe’ Movie, Promises Film’s Producer
He’s one of fandom’s most celebrated characters, an honor-bound warrior upholding the virtues of an earlier time. And for a moment, he nearly sold his principals down the river simply to get a movie deal. But thankfully Snake-Eyes, the black-clad, silent warrior of “G.I. Joe” was averted a scandal that may have rocked the Internet community […]

He’s one of fandom’s most celebrated characters, an honor-bound warrior upholding the virtues of an earlier time. And for a moment, he nearly sold his principals down the river simply to get a movie deal.

But thankfully Snake-Eyes, the black-clad, silent warrior of “G.I. Joe” was averted a scandal that may have rocked the Internet community to its knees. And all thanks to one very protective father.

“We actually had Snake-Eyes utter one sentence at the very end of the movie,” revealed Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the producer behind the upcoming mega-budget “G.I. Joe” adaptation. “We thought [it] was very clever…Larry didn’t think it was clever at all.”

That Larry is, of course, Larry Hama, the comic book writer most identified with the franchise. Having penned all 155 issues of the original Marvel run and numerous “Joe” series since, Hama was drafted by filmmakers to act as consultant to the project. And consult he did.

“The good news for us was we gave him the script and we held our breaths,” recalled di Bonaventura. “Because that was the moment where if he rejected the whole thing I’m not sure what we would have done. And what was great was he had really small notes, one or two very passionately held. And what Larry said was no matter what you guys think, you can’t have Snake-Eyes utter a word.”

Di Bonaventura took the advice to heart, choosing to stay true to the character’s past and more than likely avoiding hordes of angry fan letters. But don’t get the idea that Hama was all criticisms, because nothing could be further from the truth, exclaimed the producer.

“He’s really cool because I would say he might be the might aggressive of all of us about moving it forward. When we were first engaging with him we hadn’t written the script yet, and so we’d sort of ask him questions like, ‘Well, what do you think?’ And he’d go, ‘Oh, sure.’ Or ‘Well, I don’t know.’ But he would also say look, comic books are one medium, you guys are doing something else. Go for it.”

According to di Bonaventura, Hama’s endorsement gave him the most important sign of all…that they were treating the fan-favorite series with the respect it deserved. “More than anything [it] gave us a lot of feeling of alright, we’re on the right track,” he said. “The godfather giving us the thumb’s up.”

“G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra” is scheduled to hit theaters August 7, 2009. Stay tuned for much more from the hotly-anticipated film.

Are you glad Hama convinced the filmmakers to staple Snake-Eyes’ mouth shut? Let us know what you think below!

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