News came out last week on Roger Avery�s web journal that the draft script for the movie Silent Hill is almost complete, he addresses fans fears almost immediately about the speed of the script production saying�
√جø¬ΩThe reason we wrote this FAST is because it’s a GO MOVIE√جø¬Ω.They need to plan for the massive special effects√جø¬ΩThey need to begin all of the preproduction√جø¬Ω they begin shooting in February, after all√جø¬Ω. It’s quite likely that writing will continue right up into shooting. So everybody relax. We’re making a movie here, not just a script.√جø¬Ω
�There�s interesting reading on his entire site, not just the journal itself, so take a look if you�re even vaguely interested.
For those of you who aren�t aware, the Silent Hill series of games is incredibly tense, atmospheric and downright scary. Each game revolves round a strange occurrence, originally the disappearance of pretty much everyone in the town of Silent Hill and the arrival of strange monsters and ghosts � odd, to say the least. It�s very similar to the style of the Resident Evil game, solve puzzles, get scared by what could be round the corner and kill everything. However, Silent Hill is more cinematic and has a slow, creeping death style. It�s very cleverly done with some shocking scenes and truly leap out of your chair moments.
The Resident Evil movies haven�t really been achieved that well to be honest, although the first was quite good fun. I just hope they can give a decent treatment to this movie, instead of trying to recreate the game rerun in live action, I hope they take the ideas, step back, and try and create a proper movie experience from it.
Games and movies really are close together, games developers have realised that the more involved the gamer is, the more likely they are to play and stay with the game and franchise. In the days when graphics and audio offer so much depth, they can�t afford to produce a simple flat gaming experience.
It’s no small marketplace either, gaming is fast becoming one of the top leisure industries of our time, and the movie adaptations attract a lot of interest, look at the names involved in some of these to date: Angelina Jolie, Christopher Lambert, Milla Jovovich, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Meatloaf, Jean-Claude Van Damme (Oh dear) , Kylie Minogue (okay…stopping now!)…
Tomb Raider was probably the best reproduction of a games title yet, although the franchise has somewhat turned sour as they rely too much on the same stock experience, however the potential remains. Link the two audiences with products crossing both realms, and you can roll it in.
Look at what is being produced right now in the way of movie adaptations and movie-type games from the gaming industry. We have news of the Doom project finally moving forward, and let�s bear in mind why it was delayed, because of Id (the game series developers) understanding the potential and holding onto some very important rights, allowing them to keep hold of the project and make sure it�s produced properly.
Also in production are the movie adaptations of Bloodrayne and news just in of Hunter: The Reckoning under scripting. Bloodrayne is the story of Rayne a half-human half-vampire who joins the fight against vampires (oh my god, that just struck me!), while Hunter is about a group of people who discover humanity is being preyed upon by Supernatural creatures and after being bestowed with special abilities the begin to fight back.
Halo, now there is an entire movie with the sequel already made. Grand Theft Auto, another excellent series, and it really does give the gamer the feel of living a movie. Splinter Cell offers another game series that has developed a number of its own scripts ideal for a movie treatment, and what about Half Life?
So, why has it failed to date? Who knows really, but the attempts of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat suggest that the gaming scenarios were still too flat, too devoid of a plot and storyline to develop anything decent from, and although they contained some form of characterisation, it was still all�well�2D. These came from games that were simply mash all the buttons and kill the opposition, instead of the all immersive, media deep games we see today. When you can play a game like GTA or Halo, you experience the movie around you as you play. Perhaps there�s a concentration on the market of the players of the original game and being careful not to go trampling over what they love, attempting to faithfully recreate the game for them and ensure the following of that audience.
Perhaps it’s also seen as a quick way to bypass the movie making process. When creating a movie you have an idea, develop the structure, the characters the plot and move from there, perhaps in relying too heavily on what has already been produced the Studios are making complete flops because they are missing out the essence of the movie making process, the story.
Let�s see some big budget, and hopefully cleverly written, games transferred to the movies. They can do it for comics, why not for games? Move on from where the first Tomb Raider took us, make Doom an excellent movie, have a look at GTA III\Vice City\San Andreas, Halo and Halo 2, Half Life and Half Life 2, and concentrate on the script and recreating the essence of the game, not recreating the moves and the costumes.
I do think that the gaming world has a lot to offer the movies and vice versa (see the plethora of Star Wars games as point), they just need a decent treatment, and some loving care, as has been done for some of the comic adaptations we�ve seen.
