There've been a LOT of bad videogame-based movies. In fact, one can make the argument that they've all been pretty bad. I mean, even the one's I've enjoyed (the Resident Evil films, for instance) aren't exactly what one would call high art.
But lately, one guy seems to have cornered the market on bad when it comes to the videogame movie.
I first stumbled across Uwe Boll's name in conjunction with the movie House of the Dead, when I found a trailer to the film on the latest release (at the time) of the videogame franchise. The trailer included there was so spectacularly bad that I immediately rejected any chance that I'd see the movie. Judging from what I heard at the time of it's release (and from its spectacular 4% ranking at Rotten Tomatoes), I think I made the right choice in avoiding this one.
This year we got "treated" to Alone in the Dark, yet another videogame dragged kicking & screaming to the nearest multiplex. This one didn't look quite as bad in the trailers… but definitely still screamed "stay far away, it's only gonna hurt!". Turns out, once again, good choice. This movie manages a stunning 1% score at Rotten Tomatoes. Just a sampling of the reviews on this movie tell it all: "Terrible beyond belief…", "Quite possibly one of the worst movies of the decade…", "On the short list of Worst Movies Ever Made…"
My favorite may be the Entertainment Weekly review: "When the giant, intelligent bees of the future sift through the ashes of our civilization, they will find Alone in the Dark, and they will understand. It's so bad it's postmodern." I was laughing so hard by the end of this review, I was in tears. This is, apparently, a spectacularly bad film.
But the best/worst part of this, as you can see from his IMDB info above, is all the OTHER videogame properties he's working on. I don't know who's backing this guy, but it seems he's gone on a spending spree and somehow has the rights to movie versions of Bloodrayne (a mildly entertaining game about a Nazi-killing she-vampire—and a movie I might, sadly, have been interested in seeing), Hunter: The Reckoning (about a group of humans teamed up to fight the supernatural) and Far Cry, one of this year's best reviewed FPS games (and the collective shudder in the videogame community when this piece of news was announced nearly tipped the Richter scale).
It's almost too bad that videogame publisher's MUST have figured out that this is NOT the guy they want to trust with their games. Who knows what he could come up with next! (Rumors that he'd nabbed the precious Halo movie license have proved unfounded, as Microsoft is being very careful with this potentially lucrative license. The videogame community issues a collective sigh of relief.) But hey, we've still got his upcoming films to look forward to, right? I can hardly wait for the reviews.
(I just stumbled across this synopsis of the Bloodrayne film, and it looks like we can throw out that whole "Nazi-killing" angle… Seems Uwe's come up with his own original take on the Bloodrayne "mythos". God, I can hardly wait.)
(AND, since I apparently can't resist, there's this article from SomethingAwful.com, by a guy that actually worked with Boll—for a short time—on a screenplay for Alone in the Dark.)
But lately, one guy seems to have cornered the market on bad when it comes to the videogame movie.
I first stumbled across Uwe Boll's name in conjunction with the movie House of the Dead, when I found a trailer to the film on the latest release (at the time) of the videogame franchise. The trailer included there was so spectacularly bad that I immediately rejected any chance that I'd see the movie. Judging from what I heard at the time of it's release (and from its spectacular 4% ranking at Rotten Tomatoes), I think I made the right choice in avoiding this one.
This year we got "treated" to Alone in the Dark, yet another videogame dragged kicking & screaming to the nearest multiplex. This one didn't look quite as bad in the trailers… but definitely still screamed "stay far away, it's only gonna hurt!". Turns out, once again, good choice. This movie manages a stunning 1% score at Rotten Tomatoes. Just a sampling of the reviews on this movie tell it all: "Terrible beyond belief…", "Quite possibly one of the worst movies of the decade…", "On the short list of Worst Movies Ever Made…"
My favorite may be the Entertainment Weekly review: "When the giant, intelligent bees of the future sift through the ashes of our civilization, they will find Alone in the Dark, and they will understand. It's so bad it's postmodern." I was laughing so hard by the end of this review, I was in tears. This is, apparently, a spectacularly bad film.
But the best/worst part of this, as you can see from his IMDB info above, is all the OTHER videogame properties he's working on. I don't know who's backing this guy, but it seems he's gone on a spending spree and somehow has the rights to movie versions of Bloodrayne (a mildly entertaining game about a Nazi-killing she-vampire—and a movie I might, sadly, have been interested in seeing), Hunter: The Reckoning (about a group of humans teamed up to fight the supernatural) and Far Cry, one of this year's best reviewed FPS games (and the collective shudder in the videogame community when this piece of news was announced nearly tipped the Richter scale).
It's almost too bad that videogame publisher's MUST have figured out that this is NOT the guy they want to trust with their games. Who knows what he could come up with next! (Rumors that he'd nabbed the precious Halo movie license have proved unfounded, as Microsoft is being very careful with this potentially lucrative license. The videogame community issues a collective sigh of relief.) But hey, we've still got his upcoming films to look forward to, right? I can hardly wait for the reviews.
(I just stumbled across this synopsis of the Bloodrayne film, and it looks like we can throw out that whole "Nazi-killing" angle… Seems Uwe's come up with his own original take on the Bloodrayne "mythos". God, I can hardly wait.)
(AND, since I apparently can't resist, there's this article from SomethingAwful.com, by a guy that actually worked with Boll—for a short time—on a screenplay for Alone in the Dark.)
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