Video Game Movies and House of the Dead (2003)

One of the biggest news-makers of 2013 was video games.  There were big games released such as The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, and Call of Duty: Ghosts.  There were new consoles released: Xbox One and PlayStation 4.  We were getting over the 2012 movie releases of Resident Evil: Afterlife and Silent Hill: Revelations, and we saw a trailer for a Need for Speed movie.  Video games are everywhere.

Hollywood likes to use a lot of sources when it comes to inspiration for movies.  Video games are one of these sources, but the results are rarely good.  When we look back at the various adaptations of video games to the theaters, we get movies like Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, and this week’s movie House of the Dead.  That’s not to say that there aren’t some fun movies in the bunch, but they have never done too well critically.  Is it a result of a lack of effort put into the movies?  Is it due to the talent of the people behind the camera?  Could there simply be no way to properly get a video game adapted to the big screen?  I don’t know the answer to these questions, and I won’t tell you that I do.  But I can write about how House of the Dead can both show the good and the bad of video game adaptations.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, House of the Dead is a 2003 adaptation of the 1996 videogame by Sega.  It was directed by Uwe Boll, one of the most hated directors in the entire world.  He is so hated, in fact, that there was once a petition to stop him from ever directing again.  The movie stars Jonathan Cherry, a guy you might recognize as being in movies for a couple of years then disappearing off the face of the planet.  House of the Dead is about a bunch of people going to an island, finding zombies, and hiding out in a house.  Or trying to hide out in the house.  That might be a better way to describe the movie.

The good things about the movie are what I am going to start with.  It all basically comes down to how fun the movie is.  The point of most video games are to have fun.  In many cases, the story behind the game is very secondary to how much fun a person can have playing it.  That is why online gaming has become so much more popular than playing through the story modes of games.  Let’s look at the Call of Duty games as an example.  How many people do you know that have played through the story mode on the games?  Now compare that to the number of people that you know have played it online.  As the Call of Duty games have continued onward, the story has become less and less relevant, while the online has become more relevant.  The games are about fun rather than a meaty story.  Most of the film adaptations of video games focus on the fun instead of the story as well.

House of the Dead can exemplify this focus upon the fun.  The story of the movie is very basic.  A group of 20-somethings are put on an island and get attacked by zombies.  Add some guns, boobs, and explosions, and you get an action movie.  Add some ridiculousness, an extended gunfight of every character attempting to get into the house while the camera spins around them, a final climactic swordfight, a rave, and Clint Howard, you get a lot of fun.  The movie is upping the fun in an attempt to cover the lack of story, and though the overall quality might be bad, the movie is still a fun movie.  It’s enjoyable from beginning to end.

Before I get into what House of the Dead doesn’t do well as an adaptation, let me say that I’ve never played the game.  I will be talking about the negative aspects of the adaptation in generalizations.  I’m not going to get into the parts that were directly adapted from game to screen because I don’t know them.  With that out of the way, I shall begin.

One of the biggest issues with adapting video games to film comes from the story.  I’ve already discussed how the point of video games comes down to fun, but movies are supposed to give some sort of story to go along with the fun.  It is hard to adapt a video game into a good story when the source material does not have a solid story.  From the little that I know of the House of the Dead video game, it is about two people going to a mansion to stop an evil scientist that created zombies.  None of that is in the movie.  Instead, the movie is about young adults at a rave being attacked by zombies.  The story in the movie is even more simplistic than that of the video game which is a major flaw in the adaptation.  The game might not have had the most thought provoking, character growing plot to it, but it seems to have had more than the movie.

The other issue I would like to bring up is the fact that the House of the Dead game was a first-person shooter.  The thing about games of this type are that they put the player into the shoes of the protagonist.  As a player, you are more immersed in the game since all of the action is from your point of view.  Anything that happens is from your line of sight.  You can’t rotate around the character and see from all angles at once.  You can’t zoom in or zoom out from the character for a wider view.  You have one point of view, which is the same as the character’s point of view.  You are essentially the main character in the game.  This is extremely difficult to translate into film.  Yes, found footage films are a big sort of subgenre of movies in the present day, but that’s slightly different.  How often do you see people brandishing weapons in found footage films and acting as if the camera is their eyesight and not a camera that they are holding?  That is very rare.  I’m not sure if I have ever seen that myself in a found footage movie.  It’s very difficult to make work.  The first person style is one that I’ve only seen in a video game sense once on film.  Doom had one scene in which all of the action was seen from the main character’s point of view and the screen was set up to resemble that of the game.  There is no real consensus on whether it worked or not.  I think it did, but it has not been done since, from my knowledge.  It’s a difficult concept to pull off.

The reason I bring up the difficulty of that is the immersion factor.  I said that the first person point of view of video game shooters can really help to immerse the player into the world of the game.  Movies tend not to do that.  House of the Dead is no different.  The first person point of view is replaced with the less immersive third person point of view.  For people who had played the game, there will be a sense of disconnect when watching the movie because they are no longer a part of the action.  Instead, the viewers of House of the Dead are witnessing what is going on.  It isn’t as satisfying or fulfilling.  And that’s where the problem lies.

When you look at all of the video game adaptations that have hit theaters over the years, you can see that many of the problems come in the form of story, or the fact that the video game was first person, and the movie cannot translate that.  There are certain aspects, like the first person point of view, that don’t translate well to movies.  There is more of a focus on atmosphere and fun in video games that leaves the story behind.  Will these problems ever be overcome?  Will there ever be a critically successful movie based on a video game?  I cannot answer these questions outside of saying that only time will tell.

There are a few notes that I’m going to leave you with:

• Michael Eklund was in House of the Dead.  You might remember him from The Marine 3:Homefront, if you watched that movie.
• If you watched Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, you might have recognized David Palffy in House of the Dead.
• House of the Dead was suggested by @jaimeburchardt.
• Do you have a movie that you’d like to suggest for the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  Leave a comment, or tell me on Twitter.