Resi film director speaks out

By Ellie Gibson Published 28 June, 2006

On why his job is so hard.

British director Paul W.S. Anderson, the man who brought us the Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil movies, has declared that it's no easy task to put games on the big screen - since gamers are a seriously demanding lot.

Speaking at the Hollywood and Games Summit, Anderson began by explaining how he first got into games: "As a nerdy young boy growing up in the north of England, I often contemplated the nerdy future ahead of me. Playing Dungeons & Dragons, the inevitable sexual frustrations afterward, and then playing more Dungeons & Dragons." (Anderson was once engaged to Resi star Milla Jovovich, by the way, so don't feel too sorry for him.)

"In the 1980s, I took shelter from a rainstorm in an arcade in London," Anderson continued.

"There, I saw a dozen boys gathered around what looked like a black monolith out of 2001. That game was Space Invaders. And on that rainy night, I played so long that I had to walk home in the rain because I spent my bus fare playing that game."

So what's a Hollywood director who likes his games to do but start making films based around them? Which is what Anderson did, of course, though it hasn't been an easy path.

"Clearly, it's a minefield. And it's a minefield as a film-maker you'd better learn to navigate," he said.

"If you stray too far from the source material you're doomed, but if you stay entirely true, you're equally doomed."

And that's not your only problem - there's the challenge of working out how to appeal to your target audience. Take Mortal Kombat, Anderson explained: "If it was to be a successful movie, it had to be PG-13 or the kids who actually played the game could not come and see it. Or worse, they would buy a ticket for another movie and sneak in."

Mortal Kombat ended up with a PG rating, of course, much to the displeasure of some fans. "Were there a few complaints that we didn't rip Liu King's heart out then pulped it in front of his eyes? Sure!"

So how do you make a good game movie? Well, "Sometimes you have to break the rules," Anderson reckons, "But in order to break the rules, you have to learn them.

"You have to develop a true love of the IP. You have to love it as much, or even more, than its most hardcore fan base, because really, only when you have that knowledge and you're equipped to not only satisfy the fanbase, but also broaden it to a wider non-videogame playing audience, can you have a successful movie."

It also helps "When the games themselves are cinematically influenced", according to Anderson - hence Resident Evil is Sony's second most profitable franchise after Spider-Man, while the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie failed to perform at the box office.

"I believe that some games weren't meant to be movies," Anderson concluded.

"Movies about plumbers are a genre that has passed us by."

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • deadlock #1 6 years ago

    My head hurts from reading some of these sentences.

  • Darkedge #2 6 years ago

    The first Resi Evil wasn't bad - the second one was pure rubbish.

  • Blerk #3 6 years ago

    I thought the first one was cack and the second one was better. So there you go. :-)

    Anyway, gamers aren't an overly demanding lot - just make a film that doesn't suck. Simple!

  • PeterM #4 6 years ago

    "You have to develop a true love of the IP"

    It's called a *game*. This is why your movies sucked Anderson. How many gamers yelled "man, this IP rocks!!" during a game of Resident Evil 4?

    Bueller? Bueller?

  • Cabelo #5 6 years ago

    To be fair, he didn't direct the second one... Resident Evil Abomination...

  • neuroniky #6 6 years ago

    Resident Evil one: 1 gorgeous woman, zombies, some action and some scares.
    Resident Evil two: 2 gorgeous women, zombies, more action, less scares, and a bad "final boss".

    All in all the first one was better than the second, but they were both fun in a popcorn movie way. Now I want to see the third chapter... I sense it will be something like this:

    3 gorgeous women (one with psi powers), zombies, even more action and some pretty scary f.e.a.r. like psi scenes.

    Edit: BTW, are all the nerds entitled to engage in an affair with a Milla Jovovich equivalent after all those sessions of D&D? I think I deserve two of them, then :D.

    Can't wait. :D
    Edited by 1 at 28/06/06 @ 15:23

  • absolutezero #7 6 years ago

    Most people hate his game movies because they have little to nothing to do with the actual games. Look at Resident Evil, think how good it could have been if it had followed at least a slight amount of the games story.

    ""You have to develop a true love of the IP. "

    Se when he says something like this I want to punch his face. You obviously don't love RE or you would'nt have put Michelle Rodriguez in it.

    However if you look at one of the films he made that was'nt based on a game it was actually quite enjoyable. Event Horizon.

  • SeesThroughAll #8 6 years ago

    "Movies about plumbers are a genre that has passed us by."

    There actually was a movie based on Super Mario Bros. And yes, it was horrible. Not even Uwe Boll could have anything as bad as that one...

  • thelastslice #9 6 years ago

    It seems to me that the only time movies based on video games really do poorly is when they stray from the source material... except in the case on Tomb Raider, which just sucked.

  • Xerx3s #10 6 years ago

    "If you stray too far from the source material you're doomed, but if you stay entirely true, you're equally doomed."

    Well that depends on how good the source material is. I.e. Mortal combat isn't to deep in the storyline area, so there you can take some liberty. With a universe such as halo, there as a ton of detailed descriptions ( 3 books, 2 games, 1 conversation manual, etc.) and if you stray from that, your fucked. Btw, I quite liked mortal combat I as a nobrainer, did he make that as well? But then again, I thought that the sequels where absolute rubbish.

    "Were there a few complaints that we didn't rip Liu King's heart out then pulped it in front of his eyes? Sure!"

    Do I smell a directors cut version on the way there? ;)
    Edited by 1 at 28/06/06 @ 15:50

  • CyberClaw #11 6 years ago

    I heartfully disagree with someone that says that the Resident Evil movie could have been made better by sticking to the original story.

    Understand this people, the Resident Evil story, is mostly there, to fit the gameplay and medium, and a RE game is made to last plenty of hours.
    A movie on the other hand, lasts 1 hour and an half, so it has to have a much simpler story, (specially in the case of an action/horror flick, where the rules must be established early, to give room for the character development and action sequences, 2 classical examples, The Ring - you understand from early on, that people get 1 week to live, together with freaky phonecalls, if they watch the doomed tape, and Die Hard XYZ - the XYZ was taken over by terrorists, the Hero must save the day by going into Yippee-ki-yay mofo mode). Sure, after you understand the "rules" (be it people get doomed after watching the tape, or hero gets trapped in a building filled with mooks ready to be shot down, or even simply, espace from somewhere alive), the story has some little twists and turns to keep you interested (someone else gets doomed, the hero gets closer to save the day but fails, etc), but there isn't much space for heavy story.

    In a movie (back to RE case) what might be a interesting premise in a game, quickly becomes something boring (specially in a action flick). How boring would it be if all the hero got to explore was a old mansion? Obviously anal retentive fans would even go as far as demanding a semi-acurate replica of the mansion in RE1/RE0, which would make the movie even more limited (specially in terms of action stunts). Realistically, all we can expect, is some character likeness, as well as lots of bonus scenes (like when in the first movie, the end shot is arranged in the same as the first scene where you play in RE2, etc).

    If anything at all, most games don't make good movie adaptations and vice versa... RE was good enough, and mostly because they chose wisely what use from the games, and what to change. People who didn't like the game liked the movie, and that's really important, it shows that the movie itself was decent/good.

  • CyberClaw #12 6 years ago

    Xerx3s, exactly my opinion. When we have games that have a whole universe of rules (like your example, Halo), we expect certain things from the movie. Even if it's not 100% accurate it has to stick mostly to the cannon. Other good examples is Star Wars and LOTR... Be it in movie, books, comics, we expect certain things to show up in those IPs, because they already have a whole backstory and universe designed that consists of Cannon.

    In games like Resident Evil, where the story fits the game (each game is obviously built upon the last one, we don't see misteries left behind or unsolved on purpose, there isn't a real continuity for the Squels), it's more acceptable to change the source, and is in most times necessary. I see the RE movie, and I don't see more changes than those made by RE4... Gamers just like to complain ;) Think of it as an alternative universe - like the X-Men and Spiderman movies don't match the comics in many things, but they make decisions based on the medium. No Hugh Jackman in yellow spandex please. Thank you.

  • Genome #13 6 years ago

    This man made Aliens vs Predator. And assraped the Alien franchise while doing so (Predator was dead after 2, anyway). And that's a pretty strong feat to perform, considering 3 and 4 weren't exactly fantastic.

    This man is a hack and before Uwe Boll came along, he was THE hack in Hollywood.

    Don't let him do movies anymore, please.

  • trench #14 6 years ago

    "Movies about plumbers are a genre that has passed us by."

    Although pornographers would have you believe otherwise.

  • albundy #15 6 years ago

    Maybe if they would respect the game in question, and stick to the template already laid out for them, then they might not find things so difficult. That's what games usually do, whenever they try to adapt movies. They try to capture the feel of the movie, through using the same characters, voice actors, set pieces, enviroments, etc. But movie adaptations of games never reciprocate this respect. Look at the first Resident Evil film, for example. Why was Milla Jovovich running around in a skimpy red dress? I don't remember that in the game. Nor do I remember a 'Hive'. Or a silly little computer girl. And where was Albert Wesker? Were Jill and Chris Redfield there? I really can't remember. And what happened to the gothic mansion in the Arklay forest/mountains? In short, they paid zero respect to the mythos of the game, so what else do they want? They want gamers to appreciate their monstrosity? Well, I didn't. I thought the film, and every other game to movie adaptations, was/were shit. Hopefully, Halo won't let us down. If that can't bring the game properly to life on the silver screen, then there's really no hope for any other franchise.

  • dudefella #16 6 years ago

    Mortal Kombat is fun. Resident Evil is goddamn horrible.

    the movies, that is.
    Edited by 1 at 28/06/06 @ 23:13

  • animal_mother #17 6 years ago

    Paul Anderson is a shit director. After Event Horizon it's been downhill all the way, and that wasn't the greatest film anyway.

  • secombe #18 6 years ago

    Soldier
    AVP

    Need I say more? I see he is now down to direct Castlevania and DeathRace 3000, he's not a believer in original works then!

    He's also producing DOA: Dead or Alive and Driver. Waiting in anticipation to get involved in Animal Crossing: The Movie.
    Edited by 1 at 29/06/06 @ 07:54

  • dbeamish #19 6 years ago

    Mortal Kombat was a 15 or an 18 in the UK ? What's all this PG crap?

  • psychokitten #20 6 years ago

    I bet he's thanking his lucky stars that Uwe Boll came along, suddenly his movies are almost decent. Almost.

    Also, know your material Mr Anderson, it's Liu Kang not Liu King. Unless EG got that bit wrong, but I doubt it.

  • rinoaMW #21 6 years ago

    I thought that The RE movies were ok, and I’m a HUGE RE fan. There were a lot of pure fan stuff in them - like the train that they used to get into the HIVE was the one from the end of RE2, and from the way that Jill carry's her gun and moves in the second film as she explores the church, you can definitely see that the actress playing her has studied the RE remake on the cube, for example.

    My point is that the films are fun, fast, have plenty of in-things for the fans, and lots of new materials to entice new people and keep old fans entertained as well. I'd find it dull if he regurgitated the old games exactly as they were, shot-for-shot (after all Capcom seem to be doing a pretty good job on that front with the number of RE1 remakes we've been getting :)

    Personally I think he's doing an OK job.


  • dk_rare #22 6 years ago

    The first Resident Evil movie was awesome. The second was a wasted oppertunity