From Consoles To Hollywood - The Journey Begins
June 27th 2008 13:01
Category: C
With these three bad boys of the video game world producing awesome games, which ones are going to fall to Hollywood's trap?
Since the dawn of man there have been many forms of entertainment. It began back in the prehistoric times where cavemen would pass time by having mammoth races or chasing stone wheels down a hill. As humans evolved we found new ways to keep ourselves entertained. The people watched gladiators fight to the death in Ancient Rome, the people in England sat through the wonderful plays produced by William Shakespeare, and the people of Salam enjoyed burning those damn nasty witches.
Yes those were the good ol’ days but unfortunately all good things must come to an end. New technology was developed and new ways of keeping humans entertained came to life. Some of the old things still exist today, such as plays and shows and witch hunting, but they have been pushed out of the spotlight by the recent newcomers. These new forms of fun have last for many years and they appear to grow stronger as the years move on. Two of these forms of entertainment are movies and video games.
When movies came out it was an amazing thing. People couldn’t believe that there were images moving around. One of the first footages captured by motion picture was of two people sitting down eating. Everyone was amazed and flocked to cinemas just to see this. As the years went on actual movies with storylines and actors began popping up rapidly all over the world and today the movie business is one of the largest, most popular, and ever expanding industries in the world.
Now video games… THAT is another story in itself. Who would have thought that a game like Pong would have set off a massive chain reaction around the world? Actually it didn’t start off with Pong. Did you know the first video game was created by a man named Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. back in 1947? It was inspired by the missiles of World War 2 and a player would control a dot on the screen. Yup, that was a video game back then. From there they started developing more games, like Noughts and Crosses and tennis, until in 1972 when the first ever console was released known as the Odyssey.
To think, without Pong there wouldn't be games like Super Mario Brothers, World of Warcraft or Grand Thief Auto. Who would have thought a simple tennis game would pave the way to video game violence?
Who would have thought that video games, as simple and as so basic as they used to be, would become a massive franchise? Pong, Space Invaders, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and other arcade games started up the ever growing snowball of consoles. We had Ataris, Commadore 64s, Nintendos, Sega Master Systems, Super Nintendos, Sega Genesis (or Megadrive for some of you) and a lot more. Want to play a video game while on a long car trip or sitting on the toilet? Not a problem! Just get yourself a Game Boy or a Game Gear – or get this generation’s new hand held consoles the Sony PSP and the Nintendo Gameboy DS! Video games kept on evolving producing Playstations and Nintendo 64s – which were both replaced by Playstation 2s and Gamecubes. Soon Microsoft joined the battle with X-Box and today, we known someone with an X-Box 360, a Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3s.
Video games have become so popular these days they have been threatening movie releases. Did you know Paramount Pictures was scared Iron Man was going to bomb at the box office because Grand Thief Auto 4 was a massive hit? It’s true. They (Paramount) thought people were going to get hooked up on the GTA4 craze so much they wouldn’t want to come out of their houses. It’s scary isn’t it? Movie giants are becoming afraid that humans are going to get hooked on video games. Well as the saying goes: if you can’t beat them, join them.
With the massive success of video games, particularly from the early Nintendo games of the late 1980s / early 1990s, video games were slowly creeping up onto the big silver screen. It could be said that one movie that could have started off this whole video-game movie craze was a movie that came out in 1982 called Tron. It was about a man who ventured (literally) into the world of video games and at the time the graphics and computer effects were awesome. It was a popular movie and did very well upon its release.
Don't get excited about Tron, be mad that he might be to blame for Uwe Boll making terrible movies based on video games.
Several years later another movie was released, again based on video games. This time people, mainly the youth of humanity, were fascinated by a movie called The Wizard. This was a film about a young kid who runs away from home so that he can compete in a huge video game competition. Yeah it sounds like something destined for this website, and when I find it I’ll be sure to give it a watch, but that and Tron were probably the causes for a large chain reaction for things to come. The film industry started going from making movies involving video games to movies based on actual video games themselves.
Over the next week or so I am going to be taking a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of movies based on video games. Some of them were really good, some of them were bad but still followed elements of the video games and some well… so bad many people wished that they never played the game to begin with. It’s going to be fun and I’m going to have a lot of fun. This is something different so I’m looking forward to it. Of course some of the movies that I will talk I have already reviewed – so it’s going to be a nice trip down memory lane.
The first part of this series is going to feature those movies that I think stayed true to the video game. I’m not really concerned about how well they did at the box office; I’m talking about how close directors and writers stayed true to the real game. Unfortunately for us video game fans and movie buffs there aren’t many of these around. As you all will see in the coming days, the transition from the video game world to movie land is a very rough and difficult journey…
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Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
I found it hard to watch and harder to get into.
I think it was the silly suits and the ultimate conflict that made no sense to me.
However a movie based on Pong would be nice.
Comment by Wayne F
Bucket Movies
I liked Tron when I was a kid but watching it now I can't really enjoy it as much. Not too sure what it is but the times are a changing. A movie about Pong would be interesting... how the hell would they do it?