After debating whether to review
Tekken and caving into the idea, I figured I should rant about video games being turned into movies. Now I must admit that not all video game movies are terrible, but majority of them have yet to satisfy gamers when they are brought to the big screen. In this post, I will discuss a few video game movies I have seen and my opinions about them.
As a child gamer, I remember seeing
Mortal Kombat and
Super Mario Bros. on TV. From skimming opinions on YouTube, they range from terrible to entertained. Now I haven't seen either of these movies in years, but I can clearly remembered being entertained by both movies. I've seen
Super Mario Bros. several times on the Disney Channel, I believe, and I remember how ridiculous the movie was. Looking back on it now in my mind and through these opinion videos about it, I honestly don't think the makers of the movie were taking it seriously in the first place and because of me having that mindset reflecting back on it, I still enjoy this movie and would re-watch it in a heartbeat along with
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As for the
Mortal Kombat movies, I really don't remember how those went other than the sequel had more characters in it. But I don't think I had many complaints about it either.
Moving forward to some more recent video game adaptations with the
Resident Evil series. Now I must admit I'm not familiar with the game at all. I've never played a single game from the series...by choice. It just doesn't interest me, so I guess this shall be a bit one sided. I'm sure there might be some inaccuracies in the series, but as a movie lover I thought the movies were pretty enjoyable with my minimal knowledge. Although, I think I could've lived without
Resident Evil: Afterlife. I'm happy I didn't see that in pointless 3D. Even more pointless is their decision to make another movie and possibly reviving some deceased characters. I kinda expected this to happen, but all the ideas I've heard about this new addition doesn't sound good at all. If I see it, I'll just wait until it comes out on DVD and I can check it out at the library.
Silent Hill, on the other hand, I am more familiar with. I love the story between the first and third game, since the movie based itself on those two. My best friend and I were excited when we heard the news that they would be making a movie. We even planned on cosplaying in the theater when it came out. It took a couple years or so, but I was able to see it in the theater twice as well as purchase the DVD upon release. In the beginning, I really loved it, but upon re-watching at home, I realized how many flaws were present. I commend them on doing a way better job with sticking to the story than
Tekken, but they also share a similar problem of mixing games together when it wasn't necessary. Sure, Pyramid Head is a badass character, but he's pretty much irrelevant to the present characters and he's in Silent Hill 2. With all the cramming, I'm curious how the sequel will pan out. But yet again, it's another movie I would
love to remake for the better of the die hard SH fans out there. I wonder if non-fans were confused by the storyline.
Skirting away from the horror genre to another title I was exciting about seeing is
Tomb Raider. In short, this is the first series I obsessed over. I thought Lara Croft was the baddest chick ever and I still do to this day. I still get excited seeing amazing cosplays of her, so clearly I still love the series
and I'm so excited about the makeover for PS3. Anyway, when it was announced that Angelina Jolie was playing the role of Lara, I was pleased with their choice and I was ready to see this epic adventure on the big screen. Since I haven't seen this movie in quite some time (like years), I remember being content, but also frustrated with some the actions portrayed by Ms. Croft. I think it declined even more in the sequel. I vaguely remember there being some backstory errors and the fact she had a love interest bothered me. No, this is no homoerotic attraction toward a 3D character; this is a "why do attractive heroes always have to have a love interest in movies!?". Can't they be badass and independent and just laugh off those who fond over them. I guess James Bond is the closest to that.
After ripping apart live action adaptations in my
Tekken review and be somewhat unhappy with
Silent Hill, one might think that perhaps being animated might be better. Well, from what I've seen from others' comments it might not work out that well. I am not a
Final Fantasy fan at all, but I've seen
Advent Children a billion times...mostly because some of my friends are die-hard FF fanatics. Even though I never want to see this movie for at least another five years, I thought it was pretty decent, but it seems like another animated FF movie wasn't as good. Let me remind you that there is a laughable Tekken movie that is animated. Lastly, I've seen
Galarians: Rion a few times on MTV2 enough to go out and buy the sequel for PlayStation 2 and the DVD. I thought it was a very intriguing movie and seemed to resemble the game pretty close, but I honestly haven't gotten that far in the game.
So, what's my complaint on creating movies based off video games? For one, I think the project's group should consider what gamers think while they're piecing together the movie first, then worry about the movie goers that are unfamiliar with the story. If you cater to the gamers first, then it'll send a positive message for other movie goers to go see it. Obviously, accuracy is important, but, using
Tekken as a reference, you don't have to go into extreme detail with costumes sometimes. Sometimes you have to alter things a little, but the important thing is to keep character traits and backstories on the same page at least. Like the Mortal Kombat re-envisioned trailer I keep praising, they seemingly keep the character traits of the characters, but set them in a totally new environment that makes it intriguing.
Hopefully, one day, there will be more successful transitions from video games to movie theater (and vice versa). Until then, I hope Hollywood deeply considers putting gamers first when they try their hands at recreating popular series, because it would definitely increase sales.
Ayabie's Aoi opens the album up with a familiar Gackt classic by the name of "Mizerable". I wasn't sure how well Aoi would do with this song, since I kinda have an attachment to it, but he did a pretty good job with it. The music arrangement accommodated with his voice and he pulled it off without sounding amateurish. Next is Annie's Black cover of SOPHIA's "Gokigen tori ~crawler is crazy~". I'm actually familiar with the band doing the cover's music, but SOPHIA...not so much. For all I know, the song is pretty upbeat and it sounds alright. Nothing extravagant, but good enough for Annie's Black, a band I hardly listen to but enjoy. ADAPTER's cover of CASCADE's "FLOWERS OF ROMANCE" is the next track and it's very electronic based. I'm not sure if this is ADAPTER's original sound or how CASCADE's original sounds like this. It's alright, but I don't like the distorted vocals in it. I was surprised to see another Dir en grey cover included in this second compilation. I was even more surprised that R-shitei (R-15) was covering "Yurameki". Honestly, this was a good choice for the band as MAMO's vocals are very similar to Kyo's vocals during his GAUZE era. They didn't change too much with the music like Merry did in the previous album, which is a little saddening, but nonetheless, this was a very good cover of an old Dir en grey song that I love. I believe I mentioned I'm never very familiar with LUNA SEA songs, but I do enjoy the band. So, it was interesting seeing amber gris covering "SHINE", since I'm somewhat familiar with what both bands sound like and they're a little different. The vocals and music sound pretty much on point and the band preserved the essence of LUNA SEA without losing a little taste of their sound in the cover. -OZ- is next with Rouage's "Shiroi yami". It definitely sounds like a 90's visual kei song and nothing like an rough -OZ- sound, which is interesting to hear that they're capable of such control. I commend them on that. Two bands I'm not familiar with at all, but it's GUILD's cover of SIAM SHADE's "Gureisharu LOVE". It's pretty light-hearted and fun with some great guitar work and strong basslines. I was surprised and pleased that Chemical Pictures had a part in this album, unfortunately I have never heard of THE YELLOW MONKEY's "JAM". Despite that, the music was simplistic and beautiful and TenTen's voice was quite lovely with his own little flair. I could never get into ZUCK, but this is their cover of Kawamura Ryuuichi's "BEAT". It's a slower song than the previous track, but the vocals don't sound too awful which is always a plus. Not a BUCK-TICK fan, but I enjoy a couple songs by them. This time around is 9GOATS BLACK OUT covering "SPEED", which I think suits them in some odd way. Maybe it's the vocals or something, but it's nice to hear them do something more upbeat than their original mellow sound that could either be beautiful or boring. Never could get into T.M. Revolution, but I think I like a couple of his songs. 
Anyway, vNEU covered the fun upbeat "HOT LIMIT". It's very electronic based and simplified which I didn't really like that much, especially compared to the original and HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR's cover of it. I love Pierrot, but I don't particularly like Hanashounen Baddies, but I was willing to listen their cover of "Kumo no ito". They managed not to butcher the song too much either. The vocals were on point, attempting that Kirito flair, and the musical arrangement stayed the same. Next up is HERO's cover of GLAY's "Yuuwaku". Not a fan of either. The vocals are a little annoying and whiny in this upbeat tune, so I'll just move along to the next track. Now for another couple bands I'm not familiar with which is Blu-BiLLioN covering La'cryma Christi's "Mirai Kuro". The music is pretty, but the vocals are just as bad as HERO's which makes it unbearable to listen to in some places. Megamasso's hide cover of "Rocket Dive" was my first taste of this album and I saw the complaints that some hide fans had, but honestly, I thought this was a good fit for them. Inzargi did well with the vocals and the music is still energetic and captured the energy hide had when he performed it. Moran closes out this compilation with one of my favorite Malice Mizer songs, "Illuminati". I like the musical direction they went with this song which was more of a rock sound than their Victorianesque signature that Malice Mizer is known for. I thought it was a very good cover, even though I was a little skeptical how this would turn out. I'm glad I was reminded not to worry about Moran, because they produce good work.
I say, if you want to decrease piracy, then I believe the industry should go back and resume making more quality material that is worth buying. Like Serius said, he's not going to waste his money on an album that only has 2-3 passable tracks that you can hear anytime in a club or on the radio. I'm on the same boat. If I'm not enjoying more than half of the promotional tracks or whatever, then I'll just get the tracks I do like and not bother with the full album. This logic works very well for me as a jrock fan too as they're even more of investment than American CDs, meaning the price is more. At the moment, I'm an unemployed, college student that has student loans to look forward to in the future, so that $40 or whatever better go to the most epic album ever~
As for movies, an industry I'm going to try to get into in the future, I can honestly say that my theater visits have decreased over time. It has nothing to do with the ridiculous ticket prices either. Honestly, I can say that I've been quite lucky in that area. Before I moved to university, tickets where I lived were about $4.50 matinee and $2 extra after 6. If you drive an extra 15 minutes or so, it's $1.75 less. Quite a deal, right? But I know other places are way more, like when I visit my family out of state it's like $7. So, my reason for my declining interest to attend movies in the theater are the movies itself. Everything is a remake of something old or overseas, is a carbon copy of the generic movies that are already out, or terrible horror movies. Even more annoying are those pointless 3D movies that are only created to make extra money.
Ever since the birth of Napster, downloading has been a window to obtain songs without a price. Now in the year 2012, downloading, whether legal or illegal, has increased and thus the music industry has continued to suffer for it. Some companies and artists follow the changing times and go along with the trend of downloads, which saves them a little money from making too many hard copies. So, does that mean that CDs are becoming obsolete to digital downloads? Honestly, I think there's still people like myself that still exist and would rather have a hard copy in their hands.
So, what was the point of that? Well, I just wanted to remind you that musicians still make hard copies. If they truly believed that CDs would be extinct, then they wouldn't put the money to produce them; releases would go straight to digital download. I also must point out that they still sell vinyls too! Anyway, forgive me for bringing up Asian music, but Japan and South Korea put a lot of effort into their packages. Therefore reinforces my point that CDs aren't going any where for a while at least. I know South Korea is a little more successful with their digital downloadables, but they have yet to ditch the CD market. Perhaps this is one reason fans don't pay for downloads for Asian music. The packaging and perks are worth having something tangible. Unfortunately, the U.S. is struggling to figure out what do with the marketing: transition to downloads or stick with hard copies or perhaps figure out a way to balance both mediums.