Video games were once the only intellectual property (IP) in Hollywood that no one wanted to touch. This bad precedent likely started thirty years ago with the first game-to-movie adaptation, the 1993 super mario bros..has been slowly changing over the past few years, thanks in large part to things like fall out, timethe last of usand super mario bros movie.
Not all adaptations are suitable for the big screen, and not every story can find the best screenwriter.
BorderlandsThe long-awaited 2009 video game adaptation Star Wars reminded us of this after becoming a proven box office bomb, taking in $8.8 million domestically on a $115 million budget. although super mario bros movie Became the highest-grossing video game movie of all time, Borderlands suffered the fate of many live-action video game adaptations.
There is indeed one place where video game adaptations can thrive and writers can be creative: television. Before we get into why this type of IP is booming on TV, let’s first understand why Borderlands It’s hard to connect with viewers and fans of a beloved game series.
crack Borderlands This story needs many, many writers
Troubles encountered in production in the past 12 years Borderlands Get started now. After the series became part of Monoculture and the project was greenlit in 2012, the team spent nearly six years developing a linear, plot-driven, non-interactive script based on a deeply An open world video game rooted in procedurality.
“The character of the first draft was completely different,” Borderlands Founder Randy Pitchford told Epic Games. “It’s just like Borderlands The universe consists of resonance. There’s a different planet, different characters, different timelines, different stakes, everything is different.
The second draft didn’t work either–even though elements of the story were written in Borderlands 3—Craig Mazin was hired to write another draft for the film. Mazin, later adapted the last of us after his success Chernobylhave played the game and are familiar with the series. Pitchford said Mazin is close to cracking the adaptation code to obtain Borderlands Make a movie.
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“A lot of it was Craig playing the game,” says producer Ali Arad. “He basically picked everyone he liked and came up with a story to include them, which I thought was a great way to do it. Lead with what you love.
Borderlands (2024)
Eventually, Mazin left the project, and the script went through several rewrites before finally landing in the hands of writer-director Eli Roth. While Maxine’s core concept remains at the heart of the story, the story was changed to fit within the video game’s universe.
“It’s adapting the characters, the universe, the themes, even the same plot points, but not the exact plot points, not the storyline,” Pitchford said. “If you’ve played video games, you’ve already had that story, that experience, so we hope you get something from this movie, something you couldn’t possibly get from a video game. If you watch The movie, we don’t want you to not play the game because you think you’ve already experienced that storyline.
final, Borderlands did hit the screen in 2024, but it failed to capture the greatness of the video game.
“People like us play a lot of video games. We love them. There’s nothing we can do about it,” Pitchford said. “But not everyone in our lives plays video games like us. They watch movies or have other experiences. So, to me, the coolest thing about this movie is that it gives people who like Borderlands– Who spent time in the game – An opportunity to share Borderlands Surround yourself with people in your life who don’t play video games as often as they do, or even at all.
While the movie does look a lot like the game, the story fails to make viewers care about the world or the characters within it. Instead, the game seems to be fan service for people who fell in love with the game nearly 15 years ago.
Read more: 21 Film Treatments and Outlines Every Screenwriter Should Read
Borderlands (2024)
What does a video game adaptation require?
Adapting video games, e.g. Borderlands This can be extremely difficult and tricky for a number of reasons. Most video games have long and huge stories that take players nearly 18 hours to play. If the video game is open-world, this number may be extended to 40 hours. So how do you compress such a long story into 90 pages?
The second problem faced by these types of adaptations is alienating the audience. Not everyone is familiar with video game storytelling, so how do you make the world accessible while also appealing to game fans who are already familiar with it and the storyline?
Screenwriters should focus on three aspects when adapting video games:
Focus on the story of the game
One of the biggest concerns behind video game adaptations is sticking too closely to the story and boring fans of the game, or alienating viewers who are unfamiliar with the story and unable to keep up with the rapid pace of the story. But if you stray too far from the story, fans of the game will question why the movie was made.
Then, you have a video game that you don’t have real There is a story.
The Legend of Zelda It’s currently being adapted into a movie, and one of the main focuses is how the writers can write a tight story around Link’s open-world mission to save Zelda. This is a similar question super mario bros movie face. although Super Mario While incredibly successful, it often felt boring as characters moved from scene to scene in order to advance a relatively simple, family-friendly story.
If you’re interested in a video game adaptation for the first time, I highly recommend focusing on the story. Write the concept, highlight the main beats that drive and strengthen the story, and find thematic threads between these story beats. From there, trim to create a tight silhouette that will serve as the backbone of the script.
Your creative judgment is critical in changing the story’s formula to suit the film medium without changing the original essence of the story.
Taken from one game in the series, not all of them
Ross decided to shift his focus away from the video game’s Vault Hunter Squad and all installments of the series to create a story centered around bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett). Borderlands Not the only adaptation to do this. Uncharted did something similar, distilling a decades-long character story into a more exciting story.
Unfortunately, this does more harm than good to adaptation.
There’s enough story in one video game to make a true adaptation. Crafting stories from other games in the series often dilutes the original story’s good interactions with fans and possible future fans of the series.
Video game characters are important
since Borderlands It combines multiple stories but misses out on the main characters that made the original game so fun to revisit. Two playable characters, Mordecai and Brick, did not appear in the movie, and the other heroes who made up the movie’s Sanctuary team also didn’t appear in the original game.
Rather than an adaptation of the first game, Borderlands Like an expanded universe, it struggled to introduce the world to the unfamiliar without giving fans a familiar face to lead them through a new world.
While writers can introduce new characters that audiences will love, fans want to see characters they already have an emotional connection to. Why make things harder when the character arcs and relationships are already loved and established?
Borderlands (2024)
Video games turned into TV series are better
These adaptations are difficult. There is no way around this problem. One of the biggest factors in the widespread success of these games is interactivity. If you take that away, what is left but the drama’s emotional connection to the story and characters?
Video games make for great television because viewers care about and are affected by the setting and payoffs.
Movies have limited time and space to replicate these significant emotions through setting, relationships, and story beats. Maybe that’s why they tend to focus on the big story moments throughout the series that fans champion.
But television gives writers the necessary time to flesh out stories and make these adaptations feel worthwhile.
The best example is the third episode the last of usIn the story, two small game characters, Bill (played by Nick Offerman) and Frank (played by Murray Bartlett), undergo transformations, revealing the humanity in a wasteland littered with corpses.
This episode takes a break from the main story to show us the love story between Bill and Frank and why they decided to go to the end together. While gamers will have to navigate most of Bill’s traps, the show shows us why they are so dangerous. Learn about love stories
Television gives writers the ability to show us why playable moments in games have weight. We don’t need to see the entirety of a man crouching and sneaking around. Instead, we need the emotional weight that makes the moment tense. The screenwriter also has the creative freedom to make changes that push the story in the same direction without necessarily hitting the same narrative beats.
Again, this only works if the video game you’re adapting has a story to work with.
Open world games, e.g. fall out and Borderlands It’s more difficult to piece together, but fall out Emphasizing multiple stories where characters often intersect feels rewarding. The story is evolving in a direction that affects everyone involved, and each storyline raises the stakes of translating into other narratives.
Fallout (2024)
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certainly, Borderlands While not the best video game adaptation, this is a very difficult IP to adapt! Don’t feel like your favorite video game doesn’t fit in because of all the moving parts that make it run. Instead, take the time to map out all the storylines and create an outline that makes sense for the series.
As writers, we have the power to make creative decisions that highlight why we adapt the stories we love and want to see on screen. Trust your gut and tell us why we need to see this video game on our screens.
Read more: From a Producer’s Perspective: How to Find and Obtain Intellectual Property Rights
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