Every week or so you’ll hear about a video game being adapted for the big screen, especially with the gaming industry raking it in hand over fist these days. In the past year alone studios have touted the announcements of deals for game-based movies like World of Warcraft, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid. But what about the movies that already seem like video games? There are a fair share of flicks that feature everything from gimmicky camera styles to plotlines that seem like they were ripped right out of the latest console bestseller and plunked into multiplexes. Check out the list below and watch these video game movies that aren’t video game movies.
1. Elephant (2003): This Gus Van Sant film was inspired by the Columbine school shooters, who were in turn supposedly inspired by video games Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. The movie is made up of extremely long tracking shots, filmed just behind the character the story is currently following. By design, this makes the film look like a thirdperson game like Grand Theft Auto, except without all the hookers and drug-running.
2. Starship Troopers (1999): Invading aliens that look like bugs sounds like the plot of Ender’s Game, but the movie looks a whole lot like Halo. Grunt marines blowing things apart with shotguns, massive orbital ships that don’t do much else except explode in space and drop mission-important debris all over the place, and one badass soldier who survives through everything. Like Halo, this is also about to become a trilogy as Caspar Van Diem reprises his leading role.
3. Lady in the Lake (1947): Chalk this one up as a massive failure in cinematic innovation. Lady in the Lake was filmed entirely from the first person point of view of the main character, and you’d only occasionally see his hand lighting a cigarette, opening a door, etc. Before the Doom generation there was this Philip Marlowe vehicle with Robert Montgomery in the lead role, and it pretty much plunged off of a cliff while on fire.
4. Clash of the Titans (1981): Before games like Everquest and World of Warcraft sent dozens of digital denizens off on endless quests in search of trinkets, this was the roleplaying genre in movie form. Perseus had to head out in search of several magic items like a sword and a shield before he could could fight the Gods and let the end credits begin. They’re remaking this movie with a 2010 release date, and it had damn better well have Bubo the mechanical owl in it.
5. TRON (1982): While there have been other movies about video games, like Joysticks, The Wizard and The Last Starfighter, Tron was the first movie that was actually about the development of games, and featured a game designer getting zapped into the artificial world he’d helped create. It featured cutting-edge CGI graphics, and is still considered the pinnacle of gaming + movies. This movie also ushered in the TRON coin-op arcade game, which chewed millions of quarters from the pockets of kids eager to get digitized.
Bonus Level: Movies with video game scenes in them, even though they aren’t video game movies.
National Lampoon’s Vacation: Genre mixing video games as Russ tries to eat the Family Truckster with Pac-Man while Audrey zaps him with a spider. Poor Clark can’t even get a break when simply planning vacations. If you can name the home computer system that the Griswold’s used, then you’re either a high-level nerd, a Vacation-o-phile, or just living in the 80s.
The Beach: Leonardo DiCaprio goes slightly nuts and hallucinates that he’s in a video game while waiting in the jungle in this Danny Boyle-directed movie. Too bad it wasn’t as good as the book, which actually didn’t even feature this video game scene. When the little one-off scene you film to show how crazy your main character is becoming end up being better than the entire movie, you’re in trouble.
Crank: The opening credits for Crank tell the story of the movie in 8-bit graphics, along with cheesy techno music. Chev’s vitals have to stay about a certain level, or else he buys it. They’ll be reprising this in the credits for Crank 2, if you can stand to ride it all over again. Think about packing a tranquilizer.
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