The forthcoming flick BATTLEFIELD is hardly the first movie based on a video game. It joins a pantheon of game-based titles, including Warcraft, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Hit Man, Prince of Persia and (try to forget) Pixels. [Click here for a list.] With the exception of Ms. Jolie-Pitt’s pulchritudinous contribution, it’s a pretty low bar. Speaking of which BATTLEFIELD features some of the lightest weight gold bars seen outside of a cartoon. Is there a game you’d like to see as a full-length feature movie? Silent Scope please. You?

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64 COMMENTS

  1. I can think of some Clive Cussler novels I’d like to see (competently) produced. Vixen 03 for example.

    • Only made it all the way through one Cussler novel, something about Nazi mini-submarines, but at one point the heroes are on an island. They enter a cave from the ocean and take a long and hair-raising ride on a small boat/raft on a raging underground river in order to escape, and come out the other end at sea level.

      Even most video games have a tighter grasp on reality than that.

      • I dunno, I liked Raise the Titanic back in ’76.. I liked the protagonist Dirk Diggler Pitt, and it was a fun read for a 10 year old kid.

        • Yeah, read that one at the same time. Enjoyed it as a lad.

          It wouldn’t work nowadays since most know it’s actually brittle and dissolving rapidly in that few knot current its exposed to…

    • Vixen ’03 was a cool book but I always thought the movie TREASURE OF THE YANKEE ZEPHYR was a pretty close match.

  2. Just for starters, the guy slipping a gold bar into his back pocket? Those things weigh like fifty pounds!

    Oh, that’s what you meant about lightweight gold bars. I thought you were talking about second lieutenants.

    • There’s an even bigger error as far as the movie plot and this website is concerned.

      Check out the female “sniper” scenes. She’s shooting right handed, from the right shoulder, but with an eyepatch over her right eye and she’s shooting left eyed………

      I know there’s a couple different accepted methods if you’re left eyed or left handed, but that’s not one of them taught anywhere.

    • The international standard gold bar is the 400 Troy Oz “Good Delivery” bar (no, I have never looked into why it’s called that). It’s actually only about 27 pounds, but yeah, throwing it in your pocket is likely to be painful for the family jewels, and likely your knee as it rips that pocket out….

  4. Well STALKER is cheating

    There are actually a few I’d love to see (animated) movies based on, but none of those have gunplay (or any serious stuff in the case of Freedom Force vs. the Third Reiche).

  5. I can’t wait for the theatrical release of “Zero Wing.” All your base are belong to us, baby!

    It’s gonna be big in China. And it will be far, far better than “Independence Day: Resurgence.” Guaranteed.

  6. Doom and the first Hitman weren’t bad, and yes, Resident Evils are video game movies.

    Now, what they need is a Pac-Man movie…

  7. I would love to see Boarderland or Fallout made into feature films, but only if they were made with great reverence for the source material.

    • Fallout was based on a movie called “a boy and his dog” cult classic pretty messed up.

      Half life one should be a movie. Best game ever.

    • Neil Blomkamp’s vision for the HALO franchise was dead on, IMO. Pity the suits at Microsoft bollixed things up by overriding Peter Jackson’s decision to have him direct a HALO movie.

    • The Halo Script has been re-written and scrapped quite a few times. Unlike halo, where the premise is to run and shoot; Deus Ex would make for a better movie because the game it’s self is based on a dramatic story.

  10. I think the Half Life series would make an excellent motion picture, though with how Netflix, and other small screen venues have really raised the bar, a VOD series treatment would also work really well.

    Or Mass Effect.

    The common theme is that published writers were brought in at the initial concept phase of said games, so there’s an actual plot to them, so there’s a solid foundation to adapt to a non-interactive medium like TV or cinema.

    • Head crabs could be terrifying if brought to the silver screen correctly.

      Plus who doesn’t want the Zero Point Energy gun?

    • +1 for half life. Some elements have been ripped off and put in other movies. I saw “stranger things” last week and couldn’t help but see half life rips all over that series.

      Personally i want to see a “goat simulator” movie.

    • The Seinfeld episode about George’s Frogger arcade machine is about as close as you will ever get, I suspect.

  12. The No-One-Lives-Forever games would make really good movies.

    Some of the in-game dialog is really funny, such as when Cate Archer has to meet various contacts in Berlin:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267786/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu

    [Cate meets a series of contacts in Berlin, each of whom identifies themselves via a codephrase or phrases before providing information on her objective]

    Berlin Contact #1: Guten Abend Fraulein, do you make love to strangers?

    Cate Archer: Certainly not!

    Berlin Contact #1: Then allow me to introduce myself.

    Cate Archer: Why not just introduce yourself to a police officer and spare me the trouble?

    Berlin Contact #1: Who makes up these ghastly code phrases anyway?

    Cate Archer: Someone in the cryptography department – someone in need of a girlfriend apparently. What do you have for me?

    Berlin Contact #1: Just this: ‘The entrance is hidden’.

    Cate Archer: Thank you.

    Berlin Contact #1: Good luck.

    Berlin Contact #2: Are you free tonight, or will it cost me?

    Cate Archer: More than you can afford.

    Berlin Contact #2: Why must I be made to say such idiotic things?

    Cate Archer: Never mind that, just tell me what you have.

    Berlin Contact #2: I was told to say: ‘In the basement’.

    Cate Archer: Thank you.

    Berlin Contact #2: Tell the person who wrote the code phrase to grow up!

    Berlin Contact #3: Want to come in for a game of twister?

    Cate Archer: I’d rather run over you with my car.

    Berlin Contact #3: These code phrases have a somewhat confessional tone to them, don’t you think?

    Cate Archer: Yeah, now that you mention it…

    Berlin Contact #4: You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. Can you cook and clean too?

    Cate Archer: No, but I can put you in the hospital if you want, maybe you can find someone to take care of you there; maybe…

    Berlin Contact #4: What kind of imbecile says things like this?

    Cate Archer: I’m afraid to find out.

    Berlin Contact #4: By the way, I am supposed to tell you this: ‘Behind the shelf’.

    Cate Archer: Thanks.

    Berlin Contact #4: Please don’t think that I enjoyed saying those things to you. Even though the words were not mine, I am so disgusted with myself that I must return home and wash myself with soap.

    Cate Archer: Don’t worry about it.

    Berlin Contact #4: You are a kind young woman, I wish you luck.

    HARM Henchman #1: This food is terrible!

    HARM Henchman #2: The potato salad isn’t bad.

    HARM Henchman #1: It’s not potato salad, it’s cottage cheese!

    HARM Henchman #2: [Retching sound]

  14. socom 1 or 2
    But please dont say its been done already with the navy seals movie. That came out way before and it was awful

  15. I love watching old Charles Bronson movies late at night. Death Wish and the sequels of course. I know Cali-Zim and Illini-Zim (same person) do the same. Big difference though, I’ve never lived those movie scenes in real life, as has this California/Illinois vigilante.

  16. No one said Red Dead Redemption, yet? The thing’s practically a good movie already if you string the cutscenes together. Combo of Unforgiven, Magnificent Seven, Fistful of Dollars, Dances with Wolves, and Shane, that manages to form a cohesive message of dishonor, sacrifice, and redemption in a time where these things (and those who value them) are losing their importance. The opening train ride scene alone is nearly Oscar worthy.

    Half Life seems like it’d be good because the game pacing, characters, & world building are excellent, but the plot is rather thin if you lay it out, so a lot of work fleshing out for content & theme would be needed (and probably botched).

    Bioshock would also be excellent, though I think the building of Rapture & its cast would be far more interesting than its fall (save that for a second movie to end the franchise)

    • Great call on Red Dead and Bioshock. I don’t know how I missed Castlevania and Manhunt earlier. The grand daddy of them all for guns would be Grand Theft Auto.

    • Red Dead Retarded doesn’t need a movie, because it tried to hard to be a movie. I hate games praised for their story. RDR, the Last of Us, etc., because it feels like there’s a disconnect between story and gameplay (you know, the thing you bought the game to do). I have to play through some uninteresting padding for 15 minutes at a time until the game pauses and makes me watch pixels have a conversation, instead of letting me do something interesting.

      • Personally, I want it to be a movie simply because it was an excellent composite of the entire western genre and an entertaining plot, that managed to not be muddled by mixed & conflicting themes (so a lot better than many of the originals). A lot of westerns are about the ‘dying west’ and encroachment of corrupt civilization on the ‘noble savages’ of the frontier, but I don’t recall ever seeing it laid out as clearly as ruthless bowler-hat federal agents coercing a retired/reformed gunman back into his old way of life so as to destroy it — I’ve never seen the bowler-hats portrayed as so menacing before, either.

        I sure hope you don’t mean you prefer Mass Effect or Fallout, where you have to direct every tedious dialogue so as to ruin the pacing of even the best voice-acting, for the silly and needless illusion of ‘being’ the character or ‘controlling’ the plot, as opposed to watching them as was intended. It sounds like you were too hungry for RDR’s storyline, and tried to outpace the game chasing it impatiently. In reality, the cutscenes are basically limited to the start/end of various missions/story arcs, except in the very beginning where they do a lot of exposition. Not sure how you could expect more plot development during connecting action sequences/missions all that well without turning it into a highly scripted linear FPS like Call of Duty, or expect the plot/characters to have much depth without establishing dialogue.

        Some guy apparently stitched all the pertinent cutscenes into a ‘movie’ on Youtube, if the gameplay was too tedious for you. To be honest, there’s enough ‘meat’ for two solid movies (US/Bandits & Mexico/Revolutionaries arcs) with complete and satisfying plots (I’d ditch the Blackwater/Dutch arc, though, and skip to the homestead/end). I agree it’s a far better movie than a video game, but unlike the Bioshock series for instance, it’s still an excellent video game except for the goddam horse carts, lol.

    • Absolutely concur re Red Dead Redemption, excellent game, excellent story. Only gripe is that they didn’t have the 1911 in it, it would have been appropriate and no less realistic than the other guns like the Carcano.

    • Skyrim maybe; MGS always struck me as a bit ‘soap opera-ey’ though I know there’s been a zillion games, and I assume some of them are less suited to daytime television 😉

  21. I hope they stick to the source material, where every gun fight is drowned out by a storm of 12-year-olds yelling racial slurs and telling me how they f&cked my mom.

  22. Looks like a movie I will skip unless it hits netflix. Even then I will most likely MST3k the entire movie. I wish people would watch Strike Back for their portrayal of small units tactics. For a T.V. show, they got it right in a lot of way. Plus, how do all of these guys carry enough ammo to go full auto in every engagement? Even with 300 rounds, that ammo is going to be gone fairly quick.

    • Hey now! The Pulse shooter had more than 300 rounds and he did okay. Although if he was fully kitted with plate carriers and such he might topple over like Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots Part Deux…

    • For MST3K tips, see comment above about racist/vulgar children screaming in place of the real actors’ lines ;D

  25. I am intrigued… I like me some Battlefield and the plots aren’t bad.
    Although I don’t like 4’s as much as 3, there was a tie in book by Andy McNab for BF3 which was part of the plot. So they have some pedigree for quality add ons to the series.

  29. Ok… they are going to “destroy” a big ass pile of gold? What does that even mean? Do they think placing some amount of explodium nearby will somehow make that gold irretrievable? They need to steal it if they don’t want the cartels to have access to it. Furthermore, if the Blackwater guys happen to be there, they are even more motivated to successfully steal it, and, therefore, are a fantastic asset. So… all of the tension in that trailer makes all of 0 sense. Sure, when it comes time to dump the gold out of the evac helio into the Marianas trench, there might be some words, but, really, who cares if a handful of mercenaries retire rather than having to continue slogging it out in their day job; let them keep it, and I’m sure they won’t get too much of it back to the cartels in the form of added cocaine sales.

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