Why Video Game movies suck...

Anyone who’s not an accountant for any of the major studios (or Uwe Boll) can tell you that the quality of Video Game based films is not something most people look forward to in a film (B-movie or otherwise). While there are several people (like Roger Ebert) who claim that video games are not a part of the art community or art in general, the real reasons for this diminished quality in video game adaptations deals more with the age of the video game medium itself.

Think about it, how long did it take to make a good Batman film that was true to the tone of an actual Batman comic book?

How long did it take to make a film like The Dark Knight that was actually true to the source material? Well, it would be seventy years if you count from the beginning of the Batman comics as a whole, or twenty years starting from The Dark Knight Returns.

The sheer critical failure of video game related films deals more with the esoteric quality of video games in the psyche of older film executives who often are uninformed of the content of the video games they are adapting.

Video games are the modern day equivalent of an old episode of Dragnet attempting to negatively portray drug use by showing a “juvenile delinquent” attempting to climb a wall as a side effect of “the uppers”. The sheer uninformed status of these directors and studio executives is the main cause for the abuse most of these video game franchises receive.

To use comic books as another example, look at the successes of films like 300 and Sin City and how the respected directors felt about the source material. Both Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez really attempted to treat the source material with respect and their films flourished due to that integrity, which is ironic, considering the changes Frank Miller made to his interpretation of The Spirit.

This is not to say that video games as a whole should not be changed for the better. A lot of video games do not really have any character development due to the dependence on the player’s interaction with the game’s characters and a good screenwriter can find a way to develop these characters. But at the same time, if I said I was going to make an adaptation of X-Men that had nothing to do with any of the original comic book characters, and starred Milla Jovovich as a stand alone new main character, I am going to have a film that the respected fanboys and X-men enthusiasts are going to hate (more than Brett Ratner’s film, that’s for sure).

Wow...

Yeah, I've been busy lately, so I just want to say it may take a while before I start churning out the comics.

Sorry about that.

Later.

The Ten Fanboy Commandments

fanboy/ (noun) : a boy who is an enthusiastic devotee (as of comics or movies) (source:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fanboy)

Anyone who's been to Ain't It Cool News (or Rotten Tomatoes or any other special interests site) knows what a fanboy is. They're those extremely devout people who are really into a special interest of entertainment. But, as weird as it seems, you'd think fanboys hate whatever they obsess about based on the amount of criticism and nitpicking these guys bash to their favorite interests.

So, in an attempt to understand my fellow Trekkian militant extremist, I have tried my best to summarize the common philosophies of the fanboy (and fangirl where applicable).

10. The only people allowed to make remakes are John Carpenter and Oliver Stone, and even that is pushing it.

9. Bryan Singer was God, until he fucked up (now he’s Satan).

8. Christopher Nolan is God, until he fucks up (then he’s Satan).

7. Nothing out of Hollywood can ever match my fanfiction, because Hollywood would never spend half a billion dollars to make a science fiction lesbian vampire porno trilogy. Then again…

6.With CGI anything is possible. Yes, CGI can make Star Wars suck and turn a great villain of the Marvel universe into a digital turd.

5. Forget what I said about Bryan Singer, Uwe Boll is Satan and he funds his movies with Nazi gold (legally known as "the German tax shelter").

4. If you watch Cloverfield in 3-D, it’s pretty much a guarantee that your brain will explode.

3. White people who watch Hayao Miyazaki films and eat Sushi are not Japanese, get over it.

2. One awesome practical effects scene can make up for two hours of half-assed CGI. Anything else, and I bitch and scream NUKE THE FRIDGE to all my friends. Then again, the idea of me having friends deserves a NUKE THE FRIDGE on its own.

1. I don’t know if George Lucas raped my childhood, but Star Wars cockblocked my teen years and disrupted my Pu Tang trade routes.

Snowbo the Hobo

Welcome to Magma Blizzard home of Snowbo the Hobo.

Snowbo is a lost Snowman on the search to find meaning in the North Pole.

Tune in weekly and see Snowbo's adventures as he encounters many people on his quest to reach the North Pole.