Tag: Video Game Movies

Deconstructing Pixels Bit by Bit, A Movie Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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When considering Pixels was originally an animated short by Patrick Jean and the movie of the same name was re-conceived by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, the only person to blame for this travesty on the big screen is simply in the fact that Adam Sandler‘s production company is involved, he’s one of the many producers calling the shots, and he is starring in it. Couldn’t someone else star as the hero?

Sandler’s trademark lowbrow sense of humour is not popular anymore. When you tune him out, and mentally filter out his scenes, there’s a germ of a good idea that director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter, Home Alone) is trying to bring forth. That’s not necessarily with conjuring forth feelings of nostalgia for the 80’s, the decade when arcade games was popular.

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Is Temple Run “Doomed?”

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Geek)

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Yes, the inevitable had to happen. Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Warner Bros is in negotiations to bring the video game, Temple Run by Imangi Studios to the big screen with David Heymen, the producer of the Harry Potter series, on board. He can no doubt churn a fun product, but a better question is why this game?

Are audiences starving for some kind of Indiana Jones style action that will wash away memories of the fourth film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? As fans will recall, the first ten or so minutes in Raiders of the Lost Ark made for one great introduction of the world’s luckiest archaeologist, Indiana Jones. He grabs a golden idol from some forgotten tribe and before he knows it, he triggers a trap. Poisonous darts spring from out of nowhere as he races away. Indy has to leap a chasm and dodge a spear trap. But much to his chagrin, can he escape the massive ball of stone that’s tumbling in his direction?

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Videogame Movies, A Look Back on the Good, Bad and The Ugly.

These videogame movies are memorable because at some point in time, they’ll be broadcast television for all the world to see.

Videogame Movies - Mario Bros.In the past three decades Hollywood has recognized the appeal of adapting popular video games to film. They provide a ready-made audience of fans who will most likely see them, and some have become cult classics. These videogame movies are memorable because at some point in time, they’ll be broadcast television for all the world to see. Usually the adaptation is a fun romp in the director’s part in translating pixels to a more realistic product. More often than not, the video game’s appeal is missed in the translation and critics and fans are quick to point out what’s missing in the film. In this look at the worst of what cinema had to offer, maybe they are gems after all:

As any fan and they will say that Super Mario Bros (1993) was mostly disliked even though it had achieved a cult following. This movie starred Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi. Turning the bad guys into gangsters was appropriate in what would otherwise be a fantasy film set in an alternate Earth world. To entirely base the movie on the mythology established in the Mario games would have been disastrous, especially in a decade when digital special effects was in its infancy.

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