Ever since video games have entered into our culture, movie studios have been trying and failing to adapt them into feature length movies. It’s a history that dates all the way back to 1993’s patently awful Super Mario Bros., and continues on even today through franchises like Resident Evil (going on its sixth and supposedly final installment). On the docket for the next few years are even adaptations for Angry Birds, Warcraft, Metal Gear Solid, and Sonic the Hedgehog, continuing the quest to create even a halfway not bad movie. So why have attempts by Hollywood failed virtually across the board to do this successfully?

It seems like it should be simple enough. For most video games, the story is laid out throughout hours of cut-scenes and gameplay over multiple versions, giving a screenwriter tons of material to work with. Much of the time, the source material is rife with characters and intriguing story arcs practically begging for a full-on screen adaptation.

But more often than not, these movies end up being jumbled, disjointed messes that fall short with both critics and audiences alike. It’s a phenomena that many have failed to explain, yet some still try. In an interview with USA Today, assistant professor Kirk Kjeldsen of Virginia Commonwealth University had a theory of his own.

With video games, the player is really the star of the movie, directing the actors, deciding what plotline to follow — and most importantly for most games, whom to shoot down to get to the next level. When this aspect of the game is missing, viewers no longer feel like part of the action.

Kjeldsen goes on to observe that “translating a non-linear narrative into a linear three-act structure is like making a song out of a painting or a sculpture.” The story structure of many video games follows along with what makes for the best gameplay, rather than the most cohesive story. Things like plot development and characters, while seeing increased focus in recent years, are still complementary elements to playability. Story touch-points for a video game don’t necessarily follow the screenwriting formula, designed to play out over hours and days of gameplay rather than 90 uninterrupted minutes on a screen.

One other factor that likely plays a role is how games are chosen by studios to adapt. Most (if not all) aren’t taken on the strength of their stories as much as the popularity of the game itself. Whether or not it has a cohesive plot is generally irrelevant. As it is and always has been in Hollywood, it’s solely a question of cherry-picking game franchises with large built-in audiences, independent of story. Co-founder of Sekratangent Productions Corey May confirmed as much in an interview with CNN, admitting that “movie studios frequently choose to make films based on the franchises that sell the best, not those with the most cinematic potential.”

Without paying even a little credence to things like “cinematic potential,” we’re left with studios butchering popular game franchises in movie form, more often than not leading to box office flops. Gaming audiences aren’t going to want to see something that doesn’t do justice to their passion, and mainstream moviegoers won’t fork out $15 to see a poorly made flick about characters they’ve never heard of. In the end, everybody ends up losing, and will continue to until Hollywood starts to care less about the dollar and more about telling a story.
-------------------------------------------------------

Here are my thoughts:

1. Hollywoods's relationship with adaptations have been either hit or miss, from where I sit its about 50/50 when it came adapting a movie from a book, play, video game, TV show or (if one is really scrapping the bottom of the barrel for ideas) a board game:

Hit
1. Gone with the Wind (adapted from the book)
2. Wizard of Oz (adapted from the book)
3. The Maltese Falcon (adapted from the book)
4. The Adventures of Robin Hood (adapted from legend)
5. Star Trek (adapted from the TV series)
6. The Man Who Came Dinner (adapted from the play)
7. Peabody and Sherman (adapted from the Rocky and Bullwinkle segment)
8. Most of the recent Marvel Movies
9 The Hobbit and Lord of the Ring trilogies
10. Most of James Bond movies based on Ian Fleming's novels
11 The Universal Studios monster movies of the 30s and 40s
12. The Big Sleep (adapted from the book)
13. Hunt for Red October (adapted from the book)
14. Asterix the Gaul (adapted from the comic book)
15. Asterix and Cleopatra (adapted from the comic book) 

Miss
1. Bloodrayne
2. Alone in the Dark
3. The Flintstones
4. The Brady Bunch 
5. The TNMT movies (maybe with exception of the 1st but the Turtles in Time was garbage)
6. Twilight
7. Super Mario Bros
8. GI Joe
9. Transformers (with exception of the 1986 movie)
10 Batman and Robin
11. Superman IV Quest for Peace
12. Godzilla (1998)
13 Garbage Pail Kids (watch the Nostalgia Critics review)
14. Felix the Cat (watch the fore-mentioned Nostalgia Critic review) 
15. Dragon Ball
16. Street Fighter
17. Mortal Kombat
18. Dead or Alive
19. Resident Evil
20. The Cat in the Hat
21. The Lorax
22. Battleship

But on the same token, video games have had the same trouble adapting a movie into a game *coughs* LJN.

2. A majority of movie goers are not gamers. So there's another problem because you have to adapt the source material 'to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Because if you make just for people who familiar with the game. Then you're going to have a movie that appeals only to a small segment much like art house movies don't get much play at an AMC. But the door swings both ways because the fans of that game are going to feel that they got screwed because the writers deviated from the source material too much. There is real balancing act you have to do.

3. Some times it just the source material. Super Mario Bros is prime because the plot is extremely simple: Rescue Princess from Dragon. Which has been a staple for storytelling for god knows how long. I'm reminded of a TV series based on Dilbert. The problem with Dilbert is all the action and humor takes place in the office, sometimes it will at a different location but mainly the office. There in lies a problem since the humor is mainly based around the foibles and pitfalls of corporate life. So it doesn't translate well to your average blue collar slob and the such. So when the series came out they had to make it more accessible to the average viewer. Sometimes games do not translate well into a three act structure. Then there are games like Dark Souls where you're not given the whole story of what's going on in either Lordran or Drangliec and through NPC dialogue and item descriptions you piece everything together with your own suppositions based on the information provided.

Another example of some hack with a laptop fucking up with source material s the upcoming Fantastic Four movie where Dr. Doom is an anti-social programmer. I shit you not, kids, a GODDAMNED PROGRAMMER! This does push my rage buttons quite a bit since Dr. Doom is one of my favorite Marvel villains. Because Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took the mad scientist archetype made it fresh with the man in the iron mask bit, later on the expanded on Doom going from a kid who's mother killed because she couldn't use her magic to save some royal Latveria nob and having his father die from exposure so his son could live to a genius rival to Reed Richards (for whom he blames for questioning his work, his failed forbidden experiment to contact his dead mother in the afterlife and the scarring of his face all in that order), a expert of the sorcerer arts just below that of Dr. Strange, and Ruler of Latveria. Strip that away Dr. Doom is just a guy pissed off at the world and believes the world would be better with him in charge to bring order to chaos. But some dumb bastard has to ruin one of the greatest and most enduring villains of the Marvel Universe to just a schmucky programmer. Hell, those working on Captain America had enough sense to keep the Red Skull a Nazi.    

4. Writing. The main problem with Hollywood is there very few good writers. Or you have a good writer he might be overridden by a hack director, a Mr. Bay and Herr Boll readily springs to mind, or the screenplay is subjected to marketing meetings and focus groups where the old axiom "too many cooks spoil the soup," applies and the screenplay is radically changed from its original form. Now Lord of the Rings is excellent example of how you adapt a book into a movie because Tolkien said "the Lord of Rings was unsuitable to the process dramatization," an unfilmable book and he let the movie rights go for nothing. But that's if you film it page by page and never deviate when you have to, for example the 17 year period between Bilbo's birthday party and to the discovery that ring in Bilbo's possession was the One Ring. Filmmakers deviate when necessary but they never deviate from the essence of the story unlike a 1960 Hobbit adaptation:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnVL1…

5. Director. Like any movie needs a good writer, an ensemble cast and a good director. I refer to Casablanca as an example. The director needs to have a certain respect for the source material, but know when to deviate and still do it justice. There are very few directors with such sensibility: JJ Abrams, Peter Jackson, Nick Meyers, Mamoru Oshii, Chris Nolan, Tim Burton. One of many failings of Super Mario Bros was the fact it was handle by a husband and wife directing team who were also complete control freaks according to Dennis Hopper; it was unfortunate that they couldn't get the late Harold Ramis to direct as he was fan of Super Mario Bros. To Michael Bay's credit, he is honest about his movies when he receives criticism about his movies "I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime!" Okay he makes movie for his target audience, I can understand that but his movies are not good and he's basically type-casted for it. If you want a good movie that wins Oscars, you get Michael Curtiz; you want a movie where shit just gets blown up and with half baked hacks like Shia LaBouef and Megan Fox and its basically between bad and mediocre, you get Michael Bay

I think the few games that can be translated into a movie are probably:
1. Metal Gear
2. Mass Effect
3. Dragon Age
4. Valkyria Chronicles
5. Legend of Zelda
6. Resident Evil (if done right!)
7. Mega Man (if only one movie was made)
8. Ace Combat 5
9. Metroid
10. Dragon Quest (maybe the Loto Trilogy)