No Room In Hell

Too often, the most horrifying thing about video game movies is that they’re actually made, and, not to mention, given an astronomical budget to exist and promote awful film making. Why is this always the case? One, no one has stopped Uwe Boll, the genius behind such “masterpieces” as House of the Dead (2003), when on basic principal alone he should have been put on an asteroid with no cameras years ago… Two, often the games chosen are popular but have a weak narrative, and the fact is that video game movies have a build in audience, the most loyal-build in audience, stereotypically – the youth. Why waste time making a good product when a half-assed one is guaranteed to sell?

These days, I do my best to hold my Wii-mote in front of my eyes, secure the wrist strap around my neck, and try to ignore these disappointing money making demons, creatures with the ability to ruin two beloved mediums in one swing. However, there happens to be a trinity of survival horror titles in the works that has me more anxious then usual.

Resident Evil Afterlife (2010) is already filming as we speak, and, at this point, I’m almost too numb from this series to get fired up. The RE movies have all but formed their own mythos, centered around everyone’s favorite T-Virus-infected-chick, Milla’s “Alice.” While Fans tend to be split on whether or not these flicks should even exist, most can agree that each sequel has declined in the decent writing and general relevance department.

Afterlife has raised the stakes, however, by promising to finally introduce Chris Redfield – the character that probably should have controlled the narrative flow of the franchise like three movies ago. Wentworth Miller—of  “isn’t that the guy from Prison Break?” fame—will  be portraying the zombie killing machine while his evil counterpart, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) will hopefully play a more pivotal role than he did in Resident Evil: Extinction (2007).

The direction of Wesker may be the deciding factor on whether this film bites worse than the complication of its walking corpses. Since Extinction offered nothing more than a cameo, Afterlife has the potential to do up his over-the-top-eviler-than-Hitler presence with a hint of British comedian wit and a generally cooler than the other side of the pillow attitude. At very least, Paul, do a better job than you did with Shang Tsung.

My final note on Resident Evil is that it’s the lesser of many evils in a world of terrible video game adaptations. However, it often fails by trying to maintain a strange balance between being its own entity and placating gamers by injecting familiar faces for the sake of it and only offering average zombies at best. The series has a few positives – they all start will with “M” and  end with “-ovich”. It’s no secret that the girl that we’ve all been in love with since Fifth Element (1997) has been carrying this franchise with her unique screen presence, ability to make Alice her own, and her short dresses with thigh-hi boots might weigh slightly on our minds, just perhaps. Either way, I’ll probably be in the seats when this one hits the screen.

Next up, and ironically linked to RE by Wentworth Miller, is Bioshock. Slated for 2010, Bioshock is supposed to bring the 2007 sub-sea utopia gone haywire video game to the silver screen with Miller portraying the mostly faceless and completely voiceless lead while Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is set to direct. They, and everyone else involved with this project, have serious work to do.

Bioshock (2007 VG) set a new standard for what video game storytelling and clever point of view could accomplish; the film should set the bar no lower. Somewhere between Ayn Rand’s philosophies, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Stephen King’s The Shinning, is Rapture looming beneath the sea, its people obsessed with violence, power, and plastic surgery in a shaken snow globe unseen by the world as bloody flakes of torn skin flutter down about the chaos. The setting of a fallen Utopian city rotting in a bubble beneath the sea is going to be an endless challenge to portray, not to mention the millions of ways they could mess up the entire story line.

Fresnadillo, whose most notable work was the not-as-good-as-its-predecessor 28 Weeks Later (2007), has his work cut out for him, but more important than just his direction is that the project has to be taken on by people who care about its art and story. This isn’t the type of movie that anyone has the right to package up into a nice little American-action flick package with a PG-13 rating and a level of intelligence to match. Give us a thoughtful, creepy, darkly funny, and brilliant film that deserves the name Bioshock. Nothing less on this one, please!

The last bit of flesh on the chopping block is EA’s Dead Space (2008 VG).  While this one has only just been announced and projects a sometime in 2011 release date, I already have concerns. The something-has-gone-wrong or the we’ve-lost-contact-with-the-space-station-send-a-team-to-investigate plot has been done in Hollywood many times. Most fans of the series recognize that Dead Space’s environment and moods owe a great deal to the Alien franchise and Event Horizon (1997). To make this game a successful film, the creators need to focus on the original aspects that the Dead Space universe has brought  to the table.

Since this series has already produced an animated film Dead Space: Downfall (2008), writers already have a touch stone, but a good adaptation needs to go beyond Downfall’s bloodbath violence. With psychological horror, government conspiracy, religions fanatics, and reanimated corpses with ridiculously long claws, the creators will have plenty of material to mold. Molding it into a shape that resembles something watchable, deep, scary and not just a laser light show is another story.

Video game movies have consistently been a mess. I’m not even going to get into Super Mario, Double Dragon, or Alone in the Dark, but with the rise of this triad, I’m hoping that at least one of the three pleasantly surprises me. Is that just too much too hope for? -Sigh- Probably.