Filed under, at least it ain't Uwe Boll, /film is reporting that Michael Bay of Transformers, The Island, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon has signed on to direct the movie adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Mega-movie-man Jerry Bruckheimer will produce the film.

"Rumors of The Prince’s casting have already exploded across the internet. Names have ranged from John Abraham, Brendan Fraser and Barry Watson, to David Zandi and Josh Somerhalder. Some people have even thrown Howard Stern’s American Idol Loser turned winner Sanjaya Malakar into the mix."

Has there ever been a good film adaptation of a game? Could this be the first? Even though Transformers isn't even out yet, the consensus is that it will be an awesome movie. Will people really get excited about a game movie?

I predict a lot of shots of the prince running away from explosions in slow motion, an unfunny comedy relief sidekick and chase sequences. Loooooots of chase sequences

Yeah I'm thinking you're right.

It really should be possible to do a good movie from Prince of Persia, maybe even lots of other games. I just really don't see much of anything good coming from Michael Bay though.

Well, the chase sequences would fit well if they put the Dahaka in the movie :P






This just in: They would be casting cats to play the part of the prince's pet:

The first "Tomb Raider" movie was no work of art, but it had a decent cast and was rather entertaining. And, um...I can't think of anything else!

Dude! Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill!!!

you think silent hill was good?

that's a conspicuous ignoring of the Mortal Kombat movie's goodness or lack thereof 8)

I thought it was really good, but i'm not a SH fanboi, so I didn't mind the differences from the source material. Doom was rather on the "ok" side of things, could have been a lot worse.

I agree exactly with Zovni. Im not a SH fanoby either so I dont mind the differences. And I absolutely love the MK games for their cheesy B-movie awesomeness.

Doom was Ok. I think the big problem with videogame/movie adaptations is studios still treat video games like kids stuff and won't greenlight a script that doesn't reflect that.

Indeed, just imagine the kind of idiot studio execs that decided Doom would be a better movie if they axed all the satanic imagery in favor of more grandmas taking their gandchildren to the theather to see that new "Nintendo" movie.

Did anyone here see the "Aliens Vs. Predator" movie? Did that one suck?

Yes. And yes it did.

Not really but it was a comic book before it was a game. Several comic book series from Dark Horse Comics.

Resident Evil wasn't bad, either. The sequel was only fair, to me.
I think we can agree that while there are a few movies made from games that are at least watchable, they are FAR too few and far between. Too many stinkers. I have not seen it but I was warned to never watch Alone in the Dark. Even if somebody GAVE me the DVD, throw it away as you can never get that hour-and-a-half of your life back.

I'm a little surprised nobody has brought up the Final Fantasy movies...

(Fell asleep during Advent Children.)

I only watched half of "Advent Children", and I thought it was very boring. I was so enraged that they turned one of my favorite games (FF7) into this.

Yes. It was pretty to look at at first, but not worth the trouble of deciphering (me not knowing anything about Final Fantasy to begin with). Too bad.

I know FF7 inside out, yet I was unable to enjoy the movie. It's so ridiculous that while the game was full of emotions, touching moments, and psychological depth, the movie was basically a series of flashy fights. Shouldn't it be the other way round?..

Lots of people would argue that was precisely what FF7 was all about in the first place.

Then they based the movie on the game's weaker parts, instead of concentrating on the strong ones. They only touched the surface, instead of developing the content. This amazes me even more when I think how much they could have done using the movie medium, which is much more appropriate to telling good stories than a game.

I actually played the game for the sole reason to understand wtf went on in the movie. I still like the movie more.

You can't be serious...

I am. Well, almost serious anyway. I think that the game and the movie complete each other quite nicely.

WARNING! The following is written according to the rules of Mobygames cynicism. If you are a happy cheerful person with a lot to live for then stay away so that you would not become a bitter lonely person with suicidal tendencies.

Pros and Cons of the movie and the game:

1) Worst writing

Game - had strange old guys telling you how much monsters you killed and thus pretending non-linear gameplay; had "......"; had characters speaking out their bodily sounds ("Blurp. Prrruuuhhh. We must save the planet! Oy-oy-oy!"); silly humor that makes me want to hide my head in shame.

Movie - had "Dilly-Dally Shilly-Shally"; had "Hmpf" instead of "......" (Hmpf is deeper); the use of voice acting also avoided the use of bodily sounds; the movie avoided crappy dialogue by having almost none and it also had silly humor that made me want to hide my head in shame.

Their almost equal, but the movie loses the worst writing award by having less cringeworthy moments. 2) Memorable scenes

Game - homoerotic date with Barret, Cloud`s retelling of his past, Sephiroth`s manipulation with Cloud and the famous tragical OMIGOSH SPOILER scene.

Movie - Marlene`s retelling of past events, killing Bahamut, orphans going home to mama and the baptism of children by Cloud.

They both have beautiful memorable scenes once you get past the crap surrounding them. No winners here.

3) Worst pacing

Game - "Oh noes, another empty corridor with random combat after every three steps... please God just kill me... I just wanna see that bitch dead already."; "We with the guys were thinking that since FF-s are only played for their stories that we should just make the game full of places that you have to go where you always get imprisoned and then we will force you to fight with some weird-looking boss (with lots of random combat in between), whom we will make extra-hard to beat.... just for the sake of torturing the player... and wait, it get`s even better, and then we will let the player discover with an especially cool plot twist that all that forced waste-of-time nonsense had nothing to do with the story anyway... ain`t we brilliant?"

Movie - "OMIGOSH!!! I just blinked and missed half the movie!!!"

Personal preference: I can stop myself from blinking but I can never get back those wasted hours of random combat.

4) Best villains

Game - Shinra President: "I love money! I love power! I hate nature!" - deep character isn`t he?; Hojo - cute little mad scientist guy; Sephiroth - meh, that was it? After all those years of people telling me that I should pray for forgiveness from Sephiroth and worship him and love him for all eternity and this was all I got? A guy in a cocoon?

Movie - Three poor little sexually-molested orphans looking for their mama; Sephiroth - still meh.

The orphans win... at least I could understand their motives. Sephiroth will always remain a mere meh to me.

5) Worst story

Game - save the planet.

Movie - kill the orphans cause they want to revive Sephiroth.

Can`t decide.

Other minor pros and cons:

Game - horrible music with a few great stay-forever-in-your-mind tunes; character development; flashy combat that hurts your eyes; to play is lot more fun than to watch and the plot is interesting when you first play through it.

Movie - only uses the best tunes from the original soundtrack and cleverly remixes them to make them sound even more better, no character development (oh wait... Cloud smiles in the end... I guess you can call that character development), flashy combat that looks just like OMG Matrix, to watch takes much less time than to play and the plot gets interesting after eleventh watching when you notice all those small important scenes that you missed earlier (like what move did Cloud make with his sword).

Okay, okay. Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion. Sorry to hear you hated the game so much. I never thought that someone could hate FF7 so much that he even hates its music...

Umm... I never said that I hate the game... I was trying to prove that the movie ain`t that far away from the game. I actually liked the game and I consider it to be great entertainment... but in the end it just was not that good as FF6 was for me. I guess the first FF game will always haunt you and the rest are either meh or just fun. You can only bear save-the-planet plots and over-the-top characters for a while before it gets tedious and disgusting.

And last but not least, not everything that Nobuo creates is gold. FF7 was full of annyoing tracks.... battle music, town music, whatever-you-call-it music, etc. It was actually JRPG`s that restored my love for Jeremy Soule and his ambient background music. Thanks to FF`s I learned to appreciate silence.

Hahaha good one! I just have to add though, the homoerotic date plays with whatever character you spend more time with, seems you didn't favor any girls in the game, thus you got Barret. :) My date was with Aeris.

I actually got Tifa the first time. And then I wanted to find out whether those choices like to whom you give the flower to really matter.... and surprisingly they did matter.... I got Barret the second time.

So you gave flowers to the big bad black man stereotype/ Mr. T impersonator?? Right.... well I guess everyone "experiments" in their own way...

Actually you could only give flowers to either Tifa or Marlene. I wasn`t intentionally trying to hop into sack with Mr.T. It was a surprise to me.

I agree but at least Tifa was hot. :D

Oh yes... When I was playing FF7, I always wanted to know who is the tailor that makes bras for Tifa, because I don't think you can buy one of this size in a store :)

Indeed it did. And it was directed by that same god-forsaken creature that directed Resident Evil: Paul W.S. Anderson.

I would too say the name of Paul W.S. Anderson when I think of a "good film adaptation of a game". I believe that his Mortal Kombat film has opened doors for other game adaptations along with Super Mario Bros. film where both Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper has leading roles. Although they are not really great movies, I really appreciate what they have done with these films and consider them worthy efforts. And indeed, Anderson's Resident Evil films are the best game adaptations we have seen so far, though he only directed the first movie. The upcoming Resident Evil film will be ready this year, and it is directed by Russell Mulcahy (director of the first two Highlander films).

Pardon my french but you are out of your fucking mind.

Well, it would be more polite to say what you have said by telling that I'm simply wrong and by stating your own arguments that support your opinion.

You are probably right, but Super Mario?? You just lost me there. And Anderson is just an Uwe Boll with bigger budgets. If anything he's responsible for the misconception the general public has about videogames being braindead entertainment for retarded idiots that only involve shooting shit up in slow-motion while loud techno music plays in the background.

When you think about it there really isn't much incentive for filmmakers to worry themselves about adapting a game properly. The simple fact that their favorite videogame has been turned into a movie is enough to send scrawny, glaze-eyed geeks packing into the theatres. Studios make money even if it sucks.

Seriously, did anyone watch that Mario movie expecting it to be good?

If I made a Doom movie, here's how it would go. You're a space marine with anger management problems, and you get sent with your squad to investigate mysterious happenings on Phobos like in the game. The entire squad gets slaughtered by demons from hell (that's right, demons from hell, none of this pansy "genetically modified" crap, if people are offended by the implied presence of religion too bad) and the marine ends up on is own. He goes through the spaceport and into hell, collecting weapons as he goes, and endures unbelievable suffering in his quest to defeat the hellspawn. It would be a bloody and brutal film that would get an R for sure. Maybe his arm gets torn off by a demon and he has to use a photo album of his wife and kids as a tourniquet. Maybe he encounters the dying body of his best friend who begs him to kill him, and because he's almost out of ammo he stomps his friend's head in with his boot. And when he finally emerges from the other side and arrives back on earth, he discovers it has all been in vain and the hellspawn are destroying everything. There's a shot of his wife and kids with their heads on poles, and then the credits roll.

It would be the perfect adaptation of the Doom game.

See? right there... you've taken creative license. Everyone who has finished Episode 3 of DOOM, knows that it's supposed to be the head of a small rabbit impaled on a pole, while the city burns in the background.

Ewwwwwwwwwww. Who says violence isn't iconic?

Best videogame movie ever? The Last Starfighter... ok so it's kinda cheating but I think it's the best. Resident Evil lacked the one vital thing it should have had; atmosphere. Super Mario Bros, was strange and over-influenced by Jurassic Park. But I give the makers credit for taking the source material so seriously...well seriously to a fault. Doom was also not at all atmospheric and cheap looking. Not at all scary or creepy. Silent Hill was I think pretty good but lacked decent dialogue. Was a bit too esoteric and self-involved and would have benefited from a tiny bit of exposition. Mortal Kombat was entertaining at least with a wicked soundtrack. Mortal Kombat 2 was boring. Street Fighter is sad to watch since it's pretty much miscast Raoul Julia's last performance on film. Double Dragon was also way too cheap looking and way too late. Haven't seen Tomb Raider. Uwe Boll is not worth mentioning except to say he's not worth mentioning. I think we should just pretend his movies never happened. Michael Bay will make a really good trailer for Prince of Persia but will naturally make a total piece of crap of a movie since he's a great commercial/music video director, but is NOT a story-teller.

The Last Starfighter... ok so it's kinda cheating but I think it's the best.

If you're gonna play that game, Tron was pretty good also 8)

Yay! oh and what about Wargames?

Seems you guys forgot the classic Cloak & Dagger.

Man, it sounds much better than the game itself... seriously. I loved this scenario. I wish the game included scenes that you described.

Oh, you're such a jackass... you spoiled the ending, man!!!! >:(

There’s a new movie site for this film now it seems: Prince of Persia Movie I'm hoping Bay can create something as good as Bad Boys and nothing like his disgusting recent work.

"As good" as bad boys?? Talk about low expectations....

Prince: Farah, I know it's been a short while but I just want you to know that we ride together, we die together, bad couples for life!

Farah: WTF?!

And when he finally emerges from the other side and arrives back on earth, he discovers it has all been in vain and the hellspawn are destroying everything. There's a shot of his wife and kids with their heads on poles, and then the credits roll.

Wasn't this the original ending to Army of Darkness?

Btw, there's an adaption of Forbidden Siren too. I guess it's mostly unknown because minor Japanese movies don't get a lot of talk around here.