|
Post by Devo DrakeFox on Nov 9, 2009 15:32:18 GMT
Well it wasn't very funny, it just made the director look incompetent.
|
|
|
Post by Warped‽‽‽ on Nov 9, 2009 21:03:29 GMT
I'm sorry but your arguments to me look just as fanboyish at NiGHTs predicted.
I mean, the majority are things average joe wouldn't notice (ie, the blood, the bodies, etc) but someone who watches over and over again would. ie fanboyishness. Or you read the inconsistencies online for amusement, which only lends itself further to the fanboy argument.
The second half of your points, while I wouldn't call them particularly fanboyish per se are still things average joe still doesn't care too much about. It's geek argument material. Which arguably, this site is full of. So I'll let it go.
|
|
JJ
Script Hume
Bit of a hack, really.
Posts: 4,902
|
Post by JJ on Nov 10, 2009 0:02:24 GMT
Sorry, but I'm with Devo on this one, the movies are dreadful. I kinda like the CG Lickers in the second film, and the famous laser room bit from the first (that was referenced so knowingly in Resi 4), but the rest is absolute pap. It's only enjoyable if you have absolutely no standards whatsoever for what you're about to see, but even then I feel that even as B-movies, they fail.
My biggest problem with them is probably knowing what a good Resident Evil could've been. Playing the games, and reading the novels, and reading George Romero's original Resident Evil movie script hint at what a fantastic series this could've been. Resi has great characters, unforgettable monsters and a sense of franchise identity that the movies pitifully fall short of. Characters we don't care about fight generic creatures that aren't scary, whilst making one-liners that aren't funny, to music that doesn't rock, in the name of a videogame adaptation that isn't accurate. It falls short in every possible way. Milla Jovovitch's baffling cult appeal carries the entire franchise (and as a non-fan I can't even enjoy her kicking ass). It's a movie series for easily-pleased teenage boys, and even as an eternally teenage boy, I am bored to tears by them.
The whole series can be summarised by Milla kicking a zombie dog in the face in slow-motion, from the first movie. Dumb, unexciting, unfaithful, juvenile, and pointless. Resident Evil didn't have to be this way. It could've been so much better.
|
|
|
Post by Pombar on Nov 10, 2009 9:32:01 GMT
Nah, the first and second movie contain some fairly decent zombie movie fare when removed from Anderson's "My wife does cool things look how cool she is!" bits. And yes, neither one is a particularly good adaptation, but what video game movie really is? They're enjoyable if your stop your mental whining that it's not as accurate to the games as you'd like, and you forgive the stupid main character's antics.
This is why the third film is just awful, by the by. Impossible to ignore Alice, the worst part of the movies by far.
|
|
|
Post by Arch_one_zero_one on Nov 10, 2009 13:56:33 GMT
I just bought RE5, having only played the first one. Is there anything from the ones I've missed that I need to know storywise?
|
|
JJ
Script Hume
Bit of a hack, really.
Posts: 4,902
|
Post by JJ on Nov 10, 2009 14:16:27 GMT
In defence of videogame movies, I really liked the Silent Hill film. I know it gets quite a bit of hate on the internets, but I thought it was really, really good save for one thing: The studio forced Roger Avary to squeeze a male character into the film, causing Sean Bean's incredibly unecessary and poorly-accented scenes to get in there. The first 45mins of the film was supposed to be just the woman character walking around Silent Hill. So the forced male character is the only thing I didn't like (I liked the ending too, despite the hate it gets).
|
|
|
Post by Devo DrakeFox on Nov 10, 2009 14:59:30 GMT
Mortal Kombat (the first one) was a nigh perfect adaptation! I say nigh because in terms of the story, it was exactly the same as the game, but as a movie it wasn't the greatest. Though still damn good, IMO.
|
|
|
Post by Samface on Nov 10, 2009 15:27:36 GMT
I just bought RE5, having only played the first one. Is there anything from the ones I've missed that I need to know storywise? Umm...*thinks* Wesker's not dead (which you'd know if by "the first one" you mean the Gamecube version rather than the PS1/Saturn one, although I'd guess you've probably found that out at some point or another by now anyway). He survived getting gutted by the Tyrant because he'd injected himself with some stuff or other that also gives him super strength, yellow eyes an' [censored]. Raccoon City got nuked. Again, you probably knew that. Umbrella was shut down by the government shortly after for being crazy-ass guys who tried to kill everyone. RE4 details an outbreak of thought-extinct parasites in rural Spain that cause all sorts of wacky antics to happen to the host's brain (making them a) homicidal and b) easily controlled) and can also cause mutations. Umbrella was founded in the 1950s (or possibly even 40s, I forget) by Ozwell Spencer, James Marcus and Forgothisfirstname Ashford. Ashford's backstory was detailed in Code Veronica, and Marcus's in Zero. They aren't really important as far as 5's plot goes. I think that's about all you need - there's some little references in 5 that you'll miss if you haven't played the others, but nothing major as far as I can recall.
|
|
|
Post by Ringo (2015 Edition) on Nov 10, 2009 15:33:08 GMT
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles for Wii looks cool. It is released on 27th November and comes with the Wii Zapper. An on-rails shooter that focuses on the personal stories and tragedies in the series looks like what I could do with this Xmas, plus it will give me a good reason to play my Wii again.
|
|
|
Post by Arch_one_zero_one on Nov 10, 2009 15:39:59 GMT
Cheers Samface.
|
|
|
Post by Pombar on Nov 10, 2009 17:04:25 GMT
Ozwell E. Spencer, I'll have you know (this is so important).
|
|
|
Post by Samface on Nov 10, 2009 19:49:35 GMT
The E is for Evil!
|
|
|
Post by Balls on Nov 11, 2009 14:12:58 GMT
Mortal Kombat (the first one) was a nigh perfect adaptation! I say nigh because in terms of the story, it was exactly the same as the game, but as a movie it wasn't the greatest. Though still damn good, IMO. And this makes the rest of your arguments look considerably worse. You rate how close it is to the games, yet admit it wasn't that great a film.
This is the thing about adaptions. If you stick too close and stay too faithful, things [censored] up because movies, books and games are all different media.
Personally, yes, I believe the Resident Evil movies could have been better in a lot of ways, but they are still fairly entertaining zombie B-movies.
Let's think of what an entirely faithful adaption of Resident Evil 1 would be.
Few people walk into a house. They fight about ten zombies over the course of four hours, when most of the time is spent watching Chris and Jill fiddle with God damn clocks to find keys to rooms to find more keys and read [censored]ing books.
Resident Evil 0 through 2 just weren't that cinematically brilliant. Their storylines were just entertaining enough to keep you playing along and they worked in game form. By the fifth game, there's a lot of Hollywood [censored] going on and I'm sure they could have made a very faithful adaption for that, but for the first game it can't be done.
Hell, the unfaithful stuff barely even applies to the second film. It was almost copy-pasted directly from the third game.
People in the movie industry know how to do this better than you do. You clearly don't understand the difference in media enough to know what you're talking about.
Incidentally, since it was mentioned, Silent Hill is in a league of its own in good game adaptions. For a Hell of a load of reasons. It was faithful enough to not piss off fans (although it did because people are stupid and don't understand anything), different enough to be something new and was luckily enough to have great source material- one of the only games without an embarassingly badly written or told storyline.
|
|
JJ
Script Hume
Bit of a hack, really.
Posts: 4,902
|
Post by JJ on Nov 11, 2009 15:44:25 GMT
Let's think of what an entirely faithful adaption of Resident Evil 1 would be.
Few people walk into a house. They fight about ten zombies over the course of four hours, when most of the time is spent watching Chris and Jill fiddle with God damn clocks to find keys to rooms to find more keys and read [censored]ing books.
I can't really agree with this. In George Romero's original script, he found a good way to make a properly decent B-movie which was completely faithful to the games, mainly because he created the zombie genre and isn't a complete hack like Anderson. He got everything in there: Jill, Chris, Wesker, Barry, Brad, the Hunters, even Plant 42. And it read like a properly enjoyable flick. If it had actually been made you guys would've creamed over it. I think the makers of these Resi movies acquired a brand name that everyone recognises and constantly use it to just do whatever the hell they want, pausing only occasionally to reference the games (in order to shut up game fans). It didn't feel like an adap to me, it felt like exploitation of a popular brand name, just like Max Payne, Tomb Raider and Hitman. And that is not cool.
|
|
|
Post by Badly-Drawn Manchild on Nov 11, 2009 15:55:23 GMT
To my mind, there has never been a good videogame-based movie. Ever.
People constantly hold up Silent Hill as an example of a good game-to-movie adaptation, but to my mind that's not the case at all. It evokes the games without expressing them, if that makes any sense; that it resembled the games at all was because they got the look right. In all other respects though, they couldn't have missed the point of the series more if they'd fired in the wrong direction and the point was in another country altogether. Frankly I found the movie to be two hours of absolute torture.
Maybe the problem was that the first game just was not the best story to adapt. The second game could have been adapted successfully with relatively little tinkering. Or they could have told a new story set in the Silent Hill universe (though admittedly that's risky, given just how often people have missed the point of the series in other adaptations). Adapting the first game was really just doomed from the off.
Anyway, as far as RE goes, I've got my eye on the Darkside Chronicles. The footage looks promising, but I don't like the idea of your CPU partner being on-screen; it'd be just too easy to shoot them by mistake.
|
|
|
Post by Baron Canier on Nov 11, 2009 18:04:43 GMT
In all other respects though, they couldn't have missed the point of the series more if they'd fired in the wrong direction and the point was in another country altogether. Stop that.
|
|
|
Post by Warped‽‽‽ on Nov 11, 2009 19:17:22 GMT
I found the last RE on-rails shooter (Umbrella Chronicles) a little boring.
Just throwing it in there.
|
|
|
Post by Pombar on Nov 11, 2009 20:18:06 GMT
Did you play it co-op? Those games are only ever fun with a friend. And as a joke. The second game looks similar in this regard.
|
|
|
Post by obsidian on Nov 12, 2009 13:52:23 GMT
RETRO STOP DELETING MY POSTS, YOU PERMAVIRGIN
I'm going to start a storm now and say that after many, many, MANY attempts to, I still can't get into either Resident Evil 4 or 5, and like neither.
|
|
|
Post by Badly-Drawn Manchild on Nov 12, 2009 14:04:37 GMT
I'm going to start a storm now and say that after many, many, MANY attempts to, I still can't get into either Resident Evil 4 or 5, and like neither. Honestly, neither can I. I've never understood the ridiculous amounts of worship that RE4 gets. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's bad, but it's not what I would consider a fantastic game by any stretch of the word.
|
|
|
Post by obsidian on Nov 12, 2009 14:13:52 GMT
I enjoyed EVERYTHING but the gameplay.
|
|
|
Post by Pombar on Nov 12, 2009 14:20:55 GMT
Man, I love the gameplay in those games. But then, so does the rest of the world, I guess.
|
|
|
Post by obsidian on Nov 12, 2009 14:30:53 GMT
The rest of the world likes Sting, Phil Collins and U2, though.
|
|
|
Post by Pombar on Nov 12, 2009 14:37:15 GMT
Not the same rest of the world, I have to assume. But then you like those bands you listed in that 20 Albums thread, so I can sleep easy on my like of the RE4 system.
|
|
|
Post by Baron Canier on Nov 12, 2009 15:25:16 GMT
Honestly, neither can I. I've never understood the ridiculous amounts of worship that RE4 gets. You've said in the past that the reason you dislike Resi 4 is because it deviates too far from the old control scheme/formula. While most folks were getting sick of the old (see: bad) controls and pre-rendered backgrounds and loved the new approach. So there's your answer, really. One thing I would say you're right on is the deviation from "Survival Horror" to "Survival Action" (I think that's what they called it). They really kicked it into overdrive and I could see why that would annoy people fond of older Resi games. Having said that I don't feel such an approach prevented Resi 4 from being a good game.
|
|