There’s definitely a fair share of bad blood out there with game fans regarding Mr Boll, but the site 1UPEurogamer, has a quite lengthy interview with him. Here are some snippets explaining some of the bad, and good points of his movies from his perspective.
There are a lot of quotes I’ve picked out, mainly because it’s a six page interview and he has a lot to say, but also because I didn’t want to pull short clips out of context, there’s a lot of interesting comeback to his negative press. There’s talk on us movie fans, game fans, Postal, Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and of course, House of the Dead.
Have a read through, check out the original article, and then fashion a response. Remember, he could be reading. I’m hands up saying I’ve not seen any of his movies yet, so if you have we’d be particularly interested to hear your comments after reading this.
On House of the Dead…
…admitting the script…was “complete crap,” but blames many of the film’s fundamental problems on Sega and the film studio preventing him from becoming involved in the film from the ground up. Boll was reportedly brought into production two months before shooting, far too late to make radical script or design changes. He was then forced to make up 50% of the dialogue up on set “and it’s still totally cheesy because there are no characters!” These issues were further hindered by actors who Boll describes as “let’s say maximum – okay.”
On House of the Dead’s videogame clips…
“This was one point of the fans where the fans are totally right. Don’t use video game material in the movie!” he chuckles. “I thought with House of the Dead [and] the way we did it and it was so cheesy in a way it was kind of pop culture doing it…I still say it’s quite cool, but it takes you out of the movie and out of the story.”
On Alone in the Dark…
Alone in the Dark’s flop-like nature he blames partially on Atari and their inability to produce a proper sequel to tie-in with the game and poor marketing from the distributor…
…I think the only weak part in Alone in the Dark is maybe Tara Reid’s acting…
…In the Middle East, we started at the same weekend as War of the Worlds and we were number one and War of the Worlds was two.
On the fans of the games and Internet responses…
“Like, there are some hardcore fans who you never can satisfy because they played that game over and over again and they have their own movie in their head, so no matter what you do, they don’t like it,” he says…
…I know there are like 500 people on the Internet pressing me always about what asshole I am or whatever, but there are also millions of people who sees these movies actually and I get a lot of e-mails and positive response, so I’m not overreacting to critical voices in the Internet about it…
…80% of the people writing what assholes I am never saw Alone in the Dark, they never saw my movies from before like what I did before – I did 8 movies before I did my first video game based movie.
On Bloodrayne…
…it’s a three hour long movie with sensational script with great story points, great character development. Every character in the movie has his own arc, own agenda, and great moments…
…We kill people, Loken is sucking blood out of people, she f—s people and is naked, and the entertainment is very sexy and violent.
On Postal…
Postal could be a movie that’s like Falling Down but more as a satire, more as a thing where you can actually laugh about it also…
…Terms of the license are still being negotiated…Expected to be his film after Dungeon Siege.
On other projects…
Fear Effect…In limbo due to unsatisfying script treatments.
Far Cry…The script is currently being finished and will likely be…after…Postal. Boll hopes to cast a big star like The Rock for the title role.
