Tag: Max Payne

TOP TEN TUESDAY: BEST VIDEO GAME MOVIES

We all love video games. It only makes sense to take some of our favorite digital characters and/or stories, and put them on the big screen. With the release of RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE in 3D, we here at WAMG are celebrating with our favorite movies based off of video games. They might not all be Oscar Winners, but they have certainly entertained us at one time or another… plus, who doesn’t like ass-kickin chicks! (Relax… This is a girl writing this! I can say chick!)

We are going to start this off a little differently. There are a ton of really bad video game based movies, so instead of an HONORABLE MENTION, we are going to dive into our list with a…

DISHONORABLE MENTION: MAX PAYNE

Oh… Mark Wahlberg, as much as I like you, this movie was a big bust! This film had the potential to be awesome, but instead it was tedious and boring. Their first mistake was rating a violent video game based movie PG-13 rather than spicing it up and going for an R rating. Plus, they didn’t even follow basic plot lines from the games. They basically borrowed scenery and a title. BARF!

10. SUPER MARIO BROS.

Is it award winning? No. Is it entertaining, fun and incredibly cheesy? Hell-to-the-YES! Bob Hoskins John Leguizamo play the classic NES Kings Mario and Luigi who are on a mission to save the Princess from King Koopa. Sure, it’s not the most believable movie ever made, but neither is the video game. Two plumbers fighting mushroom looking guys and killer turtles to save a princess??? Don’t think I’ve heard this on the local news in a while! Take it for what it’s worth… a comical flick made about a nostalgic game.

09. POKEMON THE FIRST MOVIE

Aka MewTwo’s Counterattack, POKEMON THE FIRST MOVIE was the first theatrical release in the POKEMON franchise. Pokemon was unbelievably popular when the film was released in 1999 and it was a box office hit worldwide. Any parent of a kid at the time can attest to this phenomenon seeing as we had Pokemon trading cards, games, and anime videos all over the place. Pikachu along with the Pokémon – Bulbasaur, Charizard, Squirtle, Pidgeotto, Geodude, Onix, Vulpix, Zubat, Staryu, Goldeen, Psyduck, and Togepi – and their human trainers, Ash Ketchum, Misty and Brock brave a storm while enroute to an island to battle for the title of “World’s Greatest Pokémon Master.” First released in 1996 in Japan for the Game Boy, kids and adults alike were enamoured by the magical powers of the Poke-balls and battles of the Pokemon vs the villains.

08. LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE

Angelina Jolie is back as the vixen of video games in the second installment of the Tomb Raider franchise. I cannot think of a single actress that could have fulfilled the idolized role of Lara Croft better. Let’s face it, Lara Croft is a gamers wet dream! In the search for Pandora’s Box, which is found to really exist in this installment, Croft is on a mission to keep a billionaire villain from obtaining the container, which could wipe out civilization as we know it. That’s a big job… which means a ton of action and adventure!

07. DOOM

Dwayne Johnson is just plain likeable. Although this film has been dubbed by gamers as “Resident Evil in space”, this film has plenty of action and adventure to go around. They could have taken a little more of a horror angle rather than just action, but the film still lives up to the shooting game. Plus, they included the zombies. I like zombies.

06. RESIDENT EVIL

Alice is the reason that we are all here, on this fun filled Top Ten journey. The first of four films, Milla Jovovich dives in as the heroine Alice, who is turned into an experiment after “the virus” takes over. Jovovich is mesmerizing in this film, and certainly takes charge with her action scenes.I really enjoyed watching her fight off the evil dogs… and man, does red dress sees some serious bloodshed!

05. MORTAL KOMBAT

I was actually quite shocked to hear that they were making a Mortal Kombat movie back in the day, but I think they did a pretty good job of taking a standard fighting game with no real story line and turning it into a movie. It’s not a fantastic movie, but we are comparing it strictly against other video game movies, and this one does a decent job. For an arcade game turned movie, they made an entertaining adaptation.

04. RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION

Alice is back, in my favorite to date installment of the Resident Evil franchise. She is on her own, but joins other survivors in the Nevada desert to takt down the Umbrella Corporation. The scenery and colors in this film are stunning. Although I think I would cry if Las Vegas was actually destroyed, it was a cool backdrop for the action. Alice kicks some serious “undead” ass!

03. FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRIT WITHIN

This is the only one on our list that is not live-action. Although this movie failed at the box office, the film itself is a futuristic adventure. This was not exactly what die-hard FF fans were looking for, but it did well with sci-fi fans. Plus, the animation is stunning.

02. SILENT HILL

If you like crazy creatures, than this is the film for you. Silent Hill is jam packed with gore and some pretty impressive animation. Sure, some parts are a little drawn out, but the scenes and creatures were almost identical to the ones in the game. This is probably the closest movie made in comparison to the video game that is is based on. They even get the weird camera angles right!

01. LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER

And WAMG crowns as their #1 Best Video Game Movie none other than Angelina Jolie’s high-flying LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER. From 2001, video game adventurer Lara Croft comes to life in the movie where she races against time to recover powerful ancient artifacts before the bad guys can. With Jolie as the mythic Croft, this hardcore fighter literally comes alive on the screen and this exciting adaptation is definitely aligned to the Tomb Raider video game series. While some critics thought it silly goofiness, we gamers didn’t think so and TOMB RAIDER became a huge box office success.

So readers, what film did we leave off the list? Any beefs on who we included? We can take it, so have at it and please leave your pithy quips below.

Discuss: What is 20th Century Fox Doing Wrong?

20th-century-fox-log

Just to start off this article, I’m going to reiterate my opening comments in my  review for ‘Max Payne’.

‘Aliens’, ‘Predator’, ‘Die Hard’, ‘Die Hard 2†², ‘Point Break’, ‘Speed’, ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’.   What do all of these films have in common?   They are all action films released by 20th Century Fox between the mid-80s and the mid-90s.

‘Daredevil’, ‘I, Robot’, ‘Alien Vs. Predator’, ‘Transporter 2†², ‘Live Free or Die Hard’, ‘Hitman’, ‘Babylon A.D.’.   What do all of these films have in common?   They are all action films released by 20th Century Fox in the past five years.

See a drop-off there somewhere?

And that’s just in the action department.   This idea that every action film has to be a PG-13-rated, accessible motion picture is wrong, wrong, wrong.   But that has been Fox’s moniker when it comes to action for the better part of a decade. Continue reading Discuss: What is 20th Century Fox Doing Wrong?

Review: ‘Max Payne’

Jeremy:

‘Aliens’, ‘Predator’, ‘Die Hard’, ‘Die Hard 2’, ‘Point Break’, ‘Speed’, ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’.   What do all of these films have in common?   They are all action films released by 20th Century Fox between the mid-80s and the mid-90s.

‘Daredevil’, ‘I, Robot’, ‘Alien Vs. Predator’, ‘Transporter 2’, ‘Live Free or Die Hard’, ‘Hitman’, ‘Babylon A.D.’.   What do all of these films have in common?   They are all action films released by 20th Century Fox in the past five years.

See a dropoff there somewhere?

The first set of films holds some classics.   Some of them are routinely in top ten lists of the best action films of all time.   Something else they all have in common.   They are all rated R.   All the films in the second set, save one, are rated PG-13, and ‘Hitman’, the lone R-rated film there, was still edited all to hell to cut back on the action.

Now, I know this is supposed to be a review of ‘Max Payne’ and not an editorial on the state of action films, but everything that is wrong with the films in that second set ‘Max Payne’ is guilty of, as well.   Yes, it, too, is a film released by 20th Century Fox.

Directed by John Moore, ‘Max Payne’ is a shining example of style over substance.   I don’t understand what is so difficult with transferring a storyline from a video game to a movie.   No one seems to know how to build a decent story out of a video game, and it shouldn’t be that difficult.   Storylines in games have become so complex in recent years that they shouldn’t have to be that much thought put into it.   Nonetheless, most movies based on video games seem to be missing something that makes them appealing.

What ‘Max Payne’ is clearly missing is a coherence that would have done wonders for the story.   We are thrown into the middle of the story from frame one.   There really isn’t much time to figure out who is who before we really have to start paying attention to what what is happening to them.   Apparently, the screenwriters were writing this for people who had already played the game.   And, at a brisk 100 minutes, we really don’t get much time to sit back and calculate what is going on at any given moment.   The few times it does slow down just proves all over again how incoherent and silly the storyline is.

The basic structure is that Payne, played by Mark Wahlberg, is trying to figure out who killed his wife and child.   There’s a cult involved, or it might be a Mafia family, but it’s never really explained.   There’s a pharmaceuticals corporation that had something to do with it, but that is just kind of thrown in halfway through.   There are winged demons flying around, or they may just be hallucinations.   Basically, the investigation is just getting Max Payne from location A to B to C so that he can get into high production shootouts.

That is where ‘Max Payne’ really shines.   John Moore, who previously directed ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ and ‘Flight of the Phoenix’, knows how to blow stuff up real good.   The video game had a John Woo-inspired feel to it, and that carries over here nicely.   Wahlberg jumps and shoots, shoots with two guns, pumps and shoots a shotgun in a matter of nanoseconds.   Basically all the really cool things Danny Butterman wanted to do in ‘Hot Fuzz’.

All this cool action is helped by the great visual style the film takes on.   It’s all just on the reality side of ‘Sin City’, and it works.   This is particularly well done in the scenes involving the winged demons.   They are obviously CG, but it’s not bad CG.   I would probably liken it to the effect in ‘Constantine’.   Not the best, but never so bad it’s distracting.

You would think the storyline would give Wahlberg something heavy to do.   On the contrary, he’s left to just brood through scene after scene.   It’s only the film’s final act that he really takes off.   I won’t give away what happens to Max in the storyline, but that element really triggers something in Wahlberg’s performance that makes it 10 times as good as it had been previously.

There is a lot of wasted opportunity in the cast.   Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges is pretty much wasted as an Internal Affairs investigator.   Mila Kunis is buried under about a ton of makeup and leather.   Beau Bridges is painting by numbers in a part that’s pretty much paint-by-numbers, itself.   Chris O’Donnell…let’s just say that guy’s stock has dropped about as fast as anything on the actual market.

When all is said and done, ‘Max Payne’ is not a bad film.   It delivers some really good action at a very high production level.   It is amazing to see that the film only cose $35 million.   This is as big and as stylish as anything that costs three times that amount.   Unfortunately the story doesn’t provide anything that will make it one to remember.   It is a shame that ‘Max Payne’ couldn’t deliver a story that would justify how good it looks.

[rating: 2.5/5]

‘Max Payne’ Producer Prepping ‘Duke Nukem’ Film

Scott Faye, the producer who put ‘Max Payne’ together, is working next on a big screen adaptation of ‘Duke Nukem’.

“I’m working diligently at making a Duke Nukem movie scenario that will live up to the character and its import in the videogame world,† Faye told Kotaku Monday. “As is the case with all of my game adaptations, I’d rather not make the movie than make a poor adaptation.†

The original ‘Duke Nukem’ game, released in 1991, follows a man hired by the CIA to take down the evil Dr. Proton and his army of Techbots.   ‘Duke Nukem Forever’, the seventh game in the series, is planned to be released sometime this year.

New ‘Max Payne’ picture …

Pretty badass new picture from ‘Max Payne’ featuring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis.

For those of you that don’t know, this is a video game movie, and thankfully is not being helmed by Uwe Boll. I am not quite sure this one will be any better, but I have to assume that since it landed both Wahlberg and Kunis, it will be a little entertaining.

‘Max Payne’ … “Most complex character I’ve ever played”

Mark Wahlberg talked to MTV about the upcoming film adaptation of the hit game ‘Max Payne’.

“Two weeks out I was just dying,† Wahlberg said of his titular role in the upcoming video game adaptation “Max Payne.† “I wanted my life back.†

“I read the script and said either somebody got really creative or it’s actually more like a movie than most games,† Wahlberg enthused.

“Max Payne is not a one-trick pony. It’s probably one of the edgier roles I’ve played but also the most layered. Here’s a very happy guy who worked a dismal job, had a beautiful family. But the beauty in his life was taken away. He just goes on a rampage. It’s all driven by emotion.†

I don’t know about all that..he is just a video game character, even in 3D he cant be that complex. The movie is slated for release October 17th.