Put a bag on your head, because I’m about to blow your mind with the following two statements. You may rage. You may think I’m an idiot. But I’m right, and that’s what’s important.
1: Sucker Punch was a nearly perfect video game movie, and the template other video game movies should use.
2: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was the perfect tournament fighter movie, but it wasn’t a general video game movie at all.
You’re not with me on this. That’s fine, because I’m going to explain.
Sucker Punch was a pile of shit. I say this as a fan of Zack Snyder, but the movie was utterly fucking horrible. Under the excellent cinematography and action was a mess of a narrative that bordered on the offensive until you realized how hilariously misguided the intended message was in contrast with the tone and outcome of the story. Any feminist message Snyder wanted to convey, any period atmosphere, and any sense of pathos was destroyed by the Inception-like levels of reality and the creepy undertones of ogling at enslaved supposed-to-be-teenage girls.
That said, it was visually and structurally perfect as a video game movie, outside of the strange layers of the narrative. Sucker Punch had specific levels, mobs, boss fights, and power-ups. It was like watching a video game. It would have been an enjoyable video game movie if it scraped away the layers of “empowerment” and just indulged in being action porn (and if Snyder held onto shots longer, because it suffered from some irritating shakycam).
For a video game movie to really feel like a video game movie, it needs to hit the same notes as video games. It needs to have the same pattern of levels and boss fights, with the stakes ratcheting up every time and the characters having a tangible sense of growth in power up to the climactic battle at the end. Admittedly, Sucker Punch didn’t pay off so much with the last boss, but everything else kept to that pattern. Lots of set pieces, lots of action, and a few satisfying boss fights. The fight with the dragon could even have been a quick time event. You don’t need constant winks and nods that it’s a video game if you keep the same concepts as the game.
That brings us to Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I liked it, but it wasn’t really a video game movie, or at least it wasn’t really a video game movie for the games it was referring to. It was a great tournament fighter movie, and should be the template for all games of that genre, but as a general video game movie it failed. It didn’t really follow the video game concepts you expect from platformers or brawlers, the main games referenced in the movie. Worse yet, it tried too hard. It winked and nodded so much at the viewer and screamed “Hey! You like video games? Me too! Let’s talk about video games! Look, I have a health bar and coin noises!” It was so ridiculously self-aware (to fit the theme of the movie, which itself was rife with ideas of coming of age and moving on with your life) that it didn’t really feel like a video game movie as much as it felt like a movie that really loved talking about video games and referencing the 80′s. It was a video game web site movie.
Scott Pilgrim was a great tournament fighter movie, though, and every future Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Soul Calibur movie should follow its formula because it kept to the pattern perfectly. Scenes of character interaction in between bright, varied battles with colorful, named enemies in big arenas. Every other fighter movie since Mortal Kombat has sucked because it hasn’t followed that formula. It always adds a huge amount of bullshit story that has nothing to do with the game and ignores the fact that the game is several big fights between people in different levels. Movies like Tekken, Dead or Alive, and Street Fighter (both Van Damme and the one nobody saw) ruin themselves from the start by not drawing clear lines between fights. Walk your fighters out, show the arena, make the fight begin, have it end, move on to the next scene. It’s not a hard formula, and every fighting game movie since Mortal Kombat has failed at it.
Mortal Kombat itself is considered a good video game movie because it actually followed that formula. They fought, they talked, they fought, they talked. Each fight was well-defined. Mortal Kombat Annihilation sucked because it let the fights bleed into each other with no sense of flow or pattern. Some fights were ridiculously short, some fights were in bizarre places not explained by the story, and nearly every fight was ridiculously random. Movies about fighting games need to follow the Scott Pilgrim (and Mortal Kombat) pattern of specific encounters in different arenas where the lines between fight and other scenes are clear.
Imagine if a Street Fighter movie followed the Scott Pilgrim pattern. Ryu is introduced as the main character. Some interaction with Shenlong, maybe introduce a romantic interest with Chun-Li if you really need it, then Ken comes along. They fight. It’s a rivalry battle that sets them up as buddies and the group of them go on to fight in the Street Fighter tournament. The rest of the movie is a pattern of interacting with each other and new characters and having clear fights between one of the good guys and a new character, who then goes into the background as a villain or joins them as support. Ryu beats Guile, Guile joins them because he’s made of flags. Ken fights Balrog, Balrog slinks away after losing, maybe showing up in the background during the final battle. Then, at the end, Ryu fights Sagat/M.Bison/Akuma/Seth in the largest, flashiest fight of the movie and the tournament is over. The movie’s entertaining and the game’s ideas are held up.
Adventure and RPG movies are harder because they’re longer, so you have to fit more in. Also, giant dick joke. The average RPG has enough cut scenes for ten movies, and if you want to go old school you could do a solid film before getting off the first disc. If you were going to make a Final Fantasy 7 movie, you could probably hit the two hour mark just by getting them out of Midgard. The structure of adventure and RPG games might be easier to reproduce than action and fighting games, but there’s just so much to cover in a given game that the movie will feel incomplete or extremely rushed.
Super Mario Bros. Street Fighter. Doom. Max Payne. Double Dragon. All of these movies sucked not just because they ignored the stories of the games they’re based on, but because they ignored the structure. No levels. Few power-ups. One boss fight at most. They didn’t feel like video games. Sucker Punch was horrible, but at least it felt like a video game movie because it was paced and shown like a video game. Scott Pilgrim tried too hard, but it felt like a fighting game movie not because of the endless video game jokes, but because it was paced and shown like a fighting game. These are the movies video game movies should be based on.
That said, Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and Double Dragon are all still worth watching because they’re fucking hilarious. Also, I hear if you ask Bob Hoskins about Super Mario Bros. he’ll beat you to death with a brick.
