I have two ways that I prefer to spend my time: movies and video games. Both are fantastic, but put together they tend to have negative results. Video game movies seem to always flop, no matter what. I see this issue revealing the two art forms just aren’t meant to be together. I like peanut butter and I like cheddar cheese, but if I put them together, I’d vomit. They are two delicious foods not compatible with one other. But saying video game movies can’t work together is a very broad answer to this question and can be broken down further.

The main issue is what they offer in terms of entertainment value. Video games lose their main draw when they are turned into a movie. In a video game you are in control but when that game is turned into a movie you lose that control. Now the story takes full control and the subject of the movie loses some of its luster. Another big issue is story line. Very few games offer a story line worthy of a movie. Most games follow a very generic get from point A to point B story, which is perfectly fine until you try to make a 90 minute film on that plot. Some games would seem to make good movies, like Max Payne, but their execution is so poor that the quality that made the game’s story so intriguing is lost. The people making these movies are also looking at the sales for the actual games. They are making movies based off what games sell the most copies and the most popular franchises. I can understand this move as this method allows them theoretically to attract the highest amount of people to see the movie and turn the biggest profit they can.  The problem with this is that most of the top selling games are military shooters, which would make some of the worst movies of all time. Can you imagine a Call of Duty movie? *shudders*.

Its not like I don’t want good game movies, I do! There are so many games I’d like to see on the big screen like Uncharted, The Last of Us, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture but I just can’t see it happening anytime soon. Until film producers can make original stories based on the games or give a fleshed out and high quality telling of the games original plots we will never have a good video game movie. Until then I have to keep my cheese and my peanut butter separate.