[David-kyo]

I find it weird that no one said anything about this movie yet.

Here are my not-entirely-spoiler-free initial thoughts about it.
Although it wasn't Uwe Boll who directed it, that alone does a good movie not make.
I've seen it once so far, and I thought it was a monstrous pile of shit. What a surprise, the movie adaptation of a video game is shit. Perhaps it's just my initial reaction, and maybe I won't find it as bad if I give it another try sometime, but being a fan of the games, the fact that they introduced such dramatic (and I think unnecessary) plot/atmosphere changes really pisses me off. The majority of the film takes place during the day, and there are maybe 20 gunshots in the whole 90 minutes of it. I mean, christ, this franchise is about gunshots and film noir. Here's what we get instead: really boring exposition, which also becomes a bit confusing after a while; the main character fucks around with filing cabinets and talks to snitches throughout the first half of the movie, which I also find boring; there's a strong Silent Hill-ish element introduced by the director's interpretation of the drug V, which I found fucked up; the acting was really stiff in my opinion; huge and innumerable fuckin' plotholes and illogical elements; Payne's character is fucked up in every way imaginable, it's incomparable to the games.

Ok, better stop spewing bile while I can. I'd be interested to hear your opinions about this.

[Gobbler]

My girlfriend came back a few days ago, saying she just saw some weird movie with her friends. When I asked which one, she said "Max Payne", to which I replied something along the lines of " ".

Seriously, those games have a special place in my heart, especially because of the film-noir-esque portrayals and comics. So who the hell thought that this would make for a good movie?

It was a perfect idea for a game - you can just slip into Max' point of view, have him narrate the story as if talking to himself, just one man trapped in a New York minute. I don't know how that kind of feeling could be projected in a movie.

So no, I haven't seen the movie and I seriously don't want to see it. Also because my girlfriend mentioned something about the Russian mobsters looking more like latinos than anything.

Now please excuse me, all the nostalgia is welling up again so I'll just see if I can find those old CDs with the two games again while I listen to Poets of the Fall once more.

This post has been edited by Gobbler: 26 October 2008 - 02:46 PM

[Dr Lecter]

All they needed was to have night time, drugs and loads of slo-mo shooting... How could they fuck it up?

[Heccubus]

All they needed was to have night time, drugs and loads of slo-mo shooting... How could they fuck it up?

Well for starters, they took a screenplay by someone with NO previous experience in writing screenplays. Or in anything else, for that matter.
Then they hand it over to be directed by that useless prick who redid "The Omen" in 2006.

It was a guaranteed failure from the start.

[TheOrator]

Right. Because first screenplays are always shit.

Just look at Rocky.

[Heccubus]

There are exceptions to every rule. Of course there are some first time successes--there are in every medium--but for most people it takes time and experience to hone their craft and get genuinely good at what they do, be it drawing, writing, directing, composing, or whatever.
In this case, the screenwriter's lack of experience was probably part of why people are complaining about how poorly written it is. I mean, call it a hunch...

This post has been edited by Heccubus: 27 October 2008 - 12:04 AM

[Dr Lecter]

Call me a new age radical, but I think they should have maybe PLAYED the game before making a movie about it...

I mean, I doubt I'd make a very good movie about Max Payne, but I think I'd atleast be able to get the content and mood right.

This post has been edited by Dr Lecter: 27 October 2008 - 05:26 AM

[TheOrator]

I was not disagreeing, Hecc, that a first script isn't less likely to be sucky (although to be fair it was only his first published script--I've never heard of a writer who doesn't write stuff that doesn't get published) but that you cannot point at a bad film and say "Well OF COURSE it was going to be bad--it was his first movie!"

[Heccubus]

So you're not disagreeing, but....you...disagree?

[TheOrator]

I am saying that while a first script is probably more likely to be bad than a fifteenth, a bad film is not necessarily the fault of the rookie screen writer, which you seemed to imply.

[Heccubus]

Assuming you ignore the fact that immediately after that, I pointed out that the director has become known for making one of the absolute worst horror remakes ever. My point being that the writer's inexperience and the director's ineptitude lead to a horrible movie.

[TheOrator]

Perhaps I should have been more specific:

It is wrong to blame a bad movie to any extent on the inexperience of a screenwriter (or any other crew or cast member).

Especially when it was directed by a bad director.

I'm sorry I seem to be picking on you with just a little thing you said, but screenwriters don't really get enough credit. The following rant is not directed at you but at others I've experienced in the past. Actors and directors get all the credit for good movies and most of the time bad movies are said to have "bad scripts."

I'm fucking sorry but the screenplay is the single most important factor (if there is one) of a movie.

And also, what the hell is "good" or "bad" directing? How can you tell what a director did? For an actor, or a screenwriter, or a cinematographer it's easy because their jobs are laid out. All the director's job is (in theory) to keep everyone from sucking. If everyone sucks I suppose that could be the director's fault, but then it seems redundant put it on a list of things wrong with a film.


Many directors do more than just keep everyone in check, though. They do specific things to change the film from how it would have been otherwise. But there is no way to tell (aside from, I suppose, recognizing a director's style) which things have been added by the director.

So the moral of the story is directors get too much credit, screenwriters not enough, and actors just enough, bordering on too much.

[David-kyo]

We're talkin' Max Payne, not filmmaking in general, have you seen it yet?

[Spann]

You know what's terrible? I can't think of a single film/game adaptation that is considered universally 'good'.

Mind you, I can't think of any game adaptations of films that are particularly good.

[Slade]

I haven't seen this movie, and I probably won't. It looked pretty bad from the trailers, and like it has been said, it's a game-to-movie.

(I'm quite fond of the Super Mario Bros. movie, but that is surely the Bob Hoskins Effect.)