When I first heard that Sony was adapting 16🃏8澳洲幸运5开奖网:Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2 in𓆏to movies, as well as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:making a Ghost of Tsushima anime (alongside the already-planned Ghost of Tsushima l♓ive-action movie from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick creator Chad Stahelski), my first instinct was to write about it. That's kind of my thing - I write about video game news, and while these are movies, this is news i𓄧n video game land.
But I'm not really sure what I have to say. Helldivers 🐈2 is clearly riffing on Starship Troopers (specifically the movie rather than the novel), and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima is so inspired by movies it has a 'Kurosawa mode', which is just a black and white filter. Horizon doesn't hem so closely to any specific cinematic reference, but it is part of Sony's post-168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us strategy of storytelling which is highly inspired by film as a general rule. But... is t🗹hat anything?
Gaming Adaptations Are No Longer A Big Deal
I suppose it kind of is. When you make a game that takes a lot of cues from movies and then you turn it into a movie, you somewhat flatten the metatextual references and the story (not the strongest part of any of that trio) is left to stand alone without powerhouse graphics or engaging gameplay to back it up. You end up with an adaptation that is inherently worse than the original. My colleague Tessa Kaur has already broken down wh꧑y this is a particularly odd strategy for Helldivers 2.
But then, wouldn't we say that about most adaptations? Have you ever read a book, seen the movie, and then whined about characters or arcs or events that we🔴re cut, truncated, or misinterpreted? If the answer is 'no', read more books. Yes, these adaptations will cut elements of the games. But as long as they're made by people with respect for the source material (something we are seeing far more with mod💧ern gaming adaptations), there's no reason to be too apprehensive of this new reality.
As I realised I didn't care much about these adaptations on a deeper, 'what does this mean for gaming?' level, I realised that's because they don't really mean anything on a deeper level. This is just the way the wind is blowing. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Game Awards has a Best Adaptation category now, and while there were some 'making up the numbers' nominees this yearꦓ, we're going to see more of them year on year.
Games Are Part Of Pop Culture
Another one of my colleagues has similarly beaten me to the punch here. Last year, another colleague Andrew King wondered aloud (assuming he has a mechanical keyboard or talks to himself while he types) whether, with superhero movies dying out, vid꧑eo game adaptations might replace them. We've seen popcorn♓ trends all throughout cinema's history. There was a time when sword and sandal movies were the fresh young thing on the block.
I don't think it's scary, or even all that interesting, to see Sony making more movies of its games. With the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic trilogy clearing a billion, Mario being one of theꦕ most successful animated movies of all time, Arcane (plus 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher) and Fallout being amongst 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Netflix's and Prime's biggest hits, and the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网🎶:shower of accolades for The Last of Us, gaming adaptations have been dominating pop culture for a while now. That's not to mention middling hits like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Five Nights at Freddy's, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Castlevania.
My question is 'if games are here to stay, what next?'. On top of the three I mentioned (four including the other Tsushima adaptation), we have Tomb Raide🎐r, Mass Effect, God of War, BioShock, Gears of War, Zelda, and Street Fighter in the works, while ꦗ168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Minecraft is expecting⛄ major success this year. Can you name that many games after that? Scratch that, of course you can. Can you name that many games that both translate well to being condensed into a 𝓡two hour movie and with a name-brand that studios would be willing to invest in? These aren♉'t surefire hits, look at Borderlands.
We Need To Widen The Net
If we think of games as books, in that both are now fodder for Hollywood adaptations, there is a major difference we are overlooking. Any book can become a movie. While bestsellers are more likely to be adapted, if a script writer or director or producer thinks a book is killer, they can buy the rights and make a successful filꦬm, because most people who go to see book adaptations haven't read the book. Game movies are still, primarily, relying on existing fans, which means you need the game to already be a hit🙈.
I think 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:A Space for the Unbound w𒁃ould make a great movie. It's short, it's character driven, its narrative would survive without gameplay, it has interesting twists and emotional✱ moments... but even amongst people who willingly read gaming websites, a lot of you won't have heard it. Fewer will have played it, and fewer still will have enjoyed it to the level of wanting to experience the story again minus the fighting cabinet minigames. So no one is going to make that movie.
A lot of books deserve adaptations (if we see being made into a film as the pinnacle of achievement), and a lot of books that don't deserve it get them anyway because they have a famous writer. But it feels as though there's wiggle room for books to get there on merit. So far, I don't see games b𒊎eing given that benefit of the doubt, and the well will run dry sooner rather than later.
The Last of Us may be an exception to this rule, enjoying massive casual success on HBO, but t𝄹hat’s in part because of the HBO branding and the project would never have come to fruition if TLOU was not already incredibly popular.
To return to the superhero replacement idea, game adaptations are still on their 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Mans, their Batmans. We need someone to do an Iron Man, to pave the way for a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guardians of the Galaxy to somehow get a trilogy. Games and movies can have a happy future together, but the net needs to widen a little bit. And please, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:cast someone bes🍸ides Chris🌼 Pratt for a change.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Ghost of Tsushima
- Top Critic Avg: 84/100 Critics Rec: 88%
- Released
- July 17, 2020
- ESRB
- ꧅ M for Mature: Blood and Gore, In🐻tense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity
- Developer(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sucker Punch
- Publisher(s)
- Sony
- Engine
- Proprietary
- Platform(s)
- PC, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation 4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation 5
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