Scott Morris Presentation

Film Research Project Script.

Projector:  image of a split screen of a Call of Duty Black ops box art and Poster for Act of Valor.

Presenter: I have been researching for some time now into a specfic part of film which has always been and intrest to me and wanted to know more about, why does films based on video games tend not to do well and how I think this will soon change.

Projector: Poster for Super Mario Bro’s (1993)

Presenter: I will start by looking at one of the early films based on the very popular video game franchise Super Mario. The video game franchise was massive so many expected the film to do very well due to its massive fan base but instead it has gone down as one of the worst movies of all time.

Video clip: Super Mario Brothers trailer (1:37)

Presenter: From imdb (Internet Movie Database) i found that the budget for this film was $42 million. This film went on to only gross $21 million and ended up having a 50% loss. Many film critics lashed out at this film. Frank Ochleng : "Super Mario Bro's is about as playful and challenging as an unplugged pinball machine" and Stephen Garret: "it will baffle kids, bore adolescents and depress adults". 

Presenter: The reason why i think this film failed is that it did not capture the satisfaction or entertainment of the video game. From innocently jumping on mushroom headed foes and facing a spiky shelled turtle to flame-throwers, dark settings, guns, explosions and creepy looking monsters. This turned the game from an innocent but amusing plot to a action driven narrative which many fans did not like and with good reason. It took all the conventions of the video game and scrapped them to bring in a new narrative to aim it at an older audience that were driven by action thriller films but by doing so, they lost the main point of the video game and went off track to something that just wasn't Mario anymore.

This shows how it is not so easy for a film to just simply adapt from the video game franchise. This is due to the interactivity of a video game not being easily translatable on a cinema screen. The director is not able to directly copy everything from a video game but then cannot stray too far from the narrative. Laura Hutcheon focuses on the nature of peoples engagement in different kids of adaptations. 

She believes there are the three modes of involvement: The telling mode (e.g. literature), the showing mode (e.g. film or theatre) and the interactive mode (e.g video games or theme park rides) "While the first two modes immerse the audience in the activity of reading, watching and listening by appealing mostly to their imagination, the interactive mode of engagement allows them to participate physically in the adapted texts , to enter the story and act as one of those characters".  This is basically saying that being able to bring over that interactivty is almost impossible due to the way we think and see things. Not having full interactivity over a character is a bit put off for this film. 

Projector: Image of Halo Forward Unto Dawn trailer. 

Presenter: I believe that in the near future there will be some very revolutionary movements within the Gaming side of film. For example 343 studios (Gaming company and new owners of the Halo franchise) announced the release of a web series that would run along side the story of Halo 4. The videos that have been released of this so far look very filmic. They have taken the realism factor and placed it in with the video game genre with live action filming. If you compared this to a modern day sci fi film you would not be able to even tell that it was out of its place in the film industry. Here is a look at it. 

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