It’s never easy to adapt stories across different media. Something will always be lost in the translation, even between similar ones. Of course, something will also be gained, but it’s a complicated balance to maintain, especially when the source material’s creators aren’t available for guidance.
It’s especially rough when you’re adapting between an interactive and non-interactive medium, which is why for many years movies and video games seemed like natural enemies, hardly ever able to come to terms with each other’s quirks and features.
Thankfully, in the recent years the situation has started to get better, with several well-received game-to-film adaptations and people finally learning that film-to-game adaptations are best left in the past.
Of course, it’s not all peachy, so let’s take a look at the recent game-to-film adaptations, both good and bad, in honor of the release of the latest one: Borderlands.
Questionable quality
Before we move on to the success stories of good adaptations, let’s talk about some elephants in the editing room.
Let’s start with the latest flop, by many counts: the Halo TV show. One might have thought it was an easy thing – just take the games’ cutscenes (or extensive book lore) and turn them into scripts, but apparently that assumption’s inaccurate… just like so many things about the show’s lore compared to the source.
Most egregious of all, the famously helmeted Master Chief could be seen with his noggin bobbing around out in the open. Hard to trust a show after doing that… and so it isn’t going to return for season 3. It’s a shame, but thankfully the games are still great fun. It’s going to be a recurring theme in this section.
Another case of a big budget adaptation that failed to hit the mark was 2016’s Assassin’s Creed, which failed even to get over the 50% mark with audiences according to Rotten Tomatoes and is struggling to get a 6/10 on Metacritic, even without checking the critic reviews. Not even Michael Fassbender managed to save the movie from failing to capture the appeal of the series, and it’s not a difficult appeal to capture! It’s all about going on a fun bit of historical sightseeing while pursuing ancient alien conspiracies and occasionally assassinating more or less historical figures.
The movie unsurprisingly bombed at box office, but it’s not going to be much of a consolation to unwitting people who decide to put it on during a movie night.
The final example of film adaptation failures of the last decade is Need for Speed, a movie which many people might not have realized existed in the first place. The “pretty cars going very fast” genre is occupied by the Fast & Furious franchise, which has perfected the theme of street racing, car stunts, and vehicular crime. There wasn’t much space left for NFS to breathe, even if the game series has been popular for literal decades, and its street racing entries such as NFS Underground 1 & 2 are fondly remembered even many years after they disappeared from sale.
But nobody wanted diet F&F, so the movie bombed and lingers in oblivion.
Admirable achievements
Enough of the failures, though! There are enough positive examples to make this article twice as long as it’s going to be, but we’ve settled on a few true highlights.
First of all, the Amazon-made Fallout TV show was a massive hit, adapting the world and lore of the all-time RPG classic series of the same title. It enjoys a great cast carrying the engaging story, and an outstanding production design, bringing the post-apocalyptic wasteland to life with a familiar dose of excessive violence and darkly comedic quirkiness.
The next season has already been confirmed, and if it keeps the quality of the first one, we’re in for a powerful contender to the title of the best video game adaptation.
It has a strong competition in the serialized storytelling department, however. The animated show Arcane, based on the famous League of Legends franchise, has been widely called the best thing LoL has ever produced, and one of the best animated shows in general. The story about two deeply conflicted cities, and heroes of troubled loyalties and ambitions is incredible, and every frame of its blend of 2D and 3D animation looks like extremely polished, gorgeous concept art. With a new season coming this year, we should probably get ready for the story to deliver new heartbreaks and pyrrhic victories.
It’s incredible what depth and artistry emerged from a very narratively light MOBA.
The third spot in the “good adaptations” section will be taken by a little bit of hope and optimism regarding Borderlands. The movie premiered on August 8 (varies by country), but the staggeringly good cast including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and even jack Black is very promising in its own right.
If the trailers are to be trusted, at the very least the tone and appearance is going to be spot on, with lots of… unsophisticated jokes, over-the-top action, and a mix of post-apocalyptic and science fiction aesthetics, since the planet Pandora is a sunburned, rocky backwater.
It remains to be seen, how the beloved series of first-person shooters with a silly number of weird guns and eccentric characters works in its big screen debut, but with a cast like that, it might be worth seeing even if it’s middling. And there are always the games you could (and should!) check out!
End credits
Much like Pandora, the realm of movie and show adaptations of video games is a rocky terrain, and it’s never clear whether you’re going to see a masterpiece, a dud, or something that simply “mid”. There is, however, a way out of this conundrum: the source material.
There are good reasons why people tried to make the adaptations: these games are a ton of fun and have many fans. If you’d like a quick primer on Borderlands’ vibe, you could (and should!) head over here to get one or a few of them.
Indeed, with G2A.COM you’ll be able to gain access to more than just the source material games mentioned through the article. Thanks to handy digital vouchers, you’ll even get to access streaming services, where you might find their adaptations! All in one place, for maximum convenience!
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