Comments on: Movies Seen Recently: The Midnight After, SAGA: Curse of the Shadow, Camp Cold Brook https://nathanshumate.com/movies-seen-recently-the-midnight-after-saga-curse-of-the-shadow-camp-cold-brook/ I make things, and I make things up. Mon, 18 Apr 2022 17:10:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.1 By: Nathan https://nathanshumate.com/movies-seen-recently-the-midnight-after-saga-curse-of-the-shadow-camp-cold-brook/#comment-3064 Mon, 18 Apr 2022 17:10:19 +0000 https://nathanshumate.com/?p=7421#comment-3064 In reply to Blake Dennis Matthews.

That’s probably so. On the other hand, Kozo does harp on the unfinished, unresolved story appropriately.

]]> By: Blake Dennis Matthews https://nathanshumate.com/movies-seen-recently-the-midnight-after-saga-curse-of-the-shadow-camp-cold-brook/#comment-3063 Mon, 18 Apr 2022 17:01:49 +0000 https://nathanshumate.com/?p=7421#comment-3063 This review (https://lovehkfilm.com/reviews_2/midnight_after.html) suggests that the nuances in the characterizations of THE MIDNIGHT AFTER will be lost on Western viewers.

]]> By: RK https://nathanshumate.com/movies-seen-recently-the-midnight-after-saga-curse-of-the-shadow-camp-cold-brook/#comment-3061 Wed, 13 Apr 2022 04:07:12 +0000 https://nathanshumate.com/?p=7421#comment-3061 Sounds like there’s a bit of World of Warcraft thrown into that SAGA movie too; orcs being a proud warrior race whose brutal nature is tempered with a sense of honor is definitely a common theme in the later games of that franchise. Of course, as you say, that makes for a movie which is basically a recounting of some gamer’s favorite campaign from back in his youthful days (be it a board game or computer game; Dungeons & Dragons in particular transitioned pretty well from the one medium to the other). On a positive note, a movie like this does prove it’s actually possible to make a good—or at least watchable—movie based on video game premises; you just have to focus more on fleshing out the characters and plot than on unimportant stuff like the game’s mechanics.

I remember in one of your reviews (for the old Double Dragon movie, I think), you pointed out making a video game movie is like trying to make a story entirely about a football game; not about the lives of the players on and off the field, which might actually be rather interesting to watch, but just the game itself. That’s exactly the opposite of the approach a writer ought to take: you want a video game movie mainstream audiences might actually want to watch, you should definitely focus on the lives of the players on and off the field. What motivates a character to go trying to achieve whatever the game’s goal is (e.g. become tournament champion, rescue a princess, overthrow an evil overlord, etc.) tends to be far more interesting than the goal itself.

I remember hearing some rumors that somebody was planning to make a movie adaptation of the classic arcade game Joust. (Nothing ever came of those rumors, so far as I know.) While that was a pretty dubious choice of games to adapt (because, y’know, it’s one of those “Story? Why would we need to have a story?” kind of games), I do remember thinking “That could actually work if someone actually put his mind to it.”

I mean, guys with lances flying around on space ostriches trying to unseat each other? Bizarre as that situation is to describe, the novelty of seeing that happening up on the big screen would surely wear off after no more than a few minutes, so that’s hardly the basis for feature-length movie. Show us what kind of civilization would actually build arenas for this kind of game and host these tournaments, however, and show us what kind of people would actually want to enter such tournaments (and maybe what kind of people are in the audience cheering on their favorite players and/or making bets on the outcomes of these games) and what kind of lives these people live in and out of the arena, and then you’ve got a premise for a movie people might actually want to see.

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