Written by Emmanuel Gundran
Promotional poster for Mega Man (2010) Hollywood has disappointed video game fans time and time again over the years. Films such as Super Mario Bros. (Morton and Jenkel 1993), Bloodrayne (Boll 2005), and Hitman: Agent 47 (Bach 2015) were critical and box-office bombs that disappointed fans and bored audiences. Problems fans have had with Hollywood's video game adaptations range from straying too far from the source material to nonsensical action sequences and unnecessary easter eggs. For these issues and more, fans have taken their own initiative to make proper video game adaptations.
One practice among video game-based fan films is to take the story from the original source material and adapt it to film. Some films rely on the main story of the original game to carry the adaptation's story. Eddie Lebron's Mega Man (2010), based on the popular Capcom game franchise, is a film that adapts a game's story and characters to the narrative medium while also developing the protagonist's motives and relationships with other characters and humanizing the antagonist.
Mega Man, both the game and its live-action adaptation, follows the story of Rock, a personal robot assistant, who wants to find his purpose in life after being built by Dr. Thomas Light, a robotics expert he considers his father. When Light's former colleague Dr. Wily rebels and steals Light's robots to conquer the world, Rock feels a sense of justice, re-purposes himself as a fighting robot, now dubbed Mega Man, and challenges Wily and his robots. The source material is straight-forward in presenting its story, with the player as Mega Man, traveling from level to level destroying Wily's robots until they reach Wily himself; while the film does show Mega Man fighting Wily's robots it takes its time with character development and build-up. Before we see him find his true purpose, we watch Rock aimlessly wandering Dr. Light's house, questioning his role as Light's personal assistant and wondering if it's actually meaningful. Meanwhile, Wily broods on his being let go from Dr. Light's latest project and wanting to take back the media spotlight which he believes Light has stolen.
One practice among video game-based fan films is to take the story from the original source material and adapt it to film. Some films rely on the main story of the original game to carry the adaptation's story. Eddie Lebron's Mega Man (2010), based on the popular Capcom game franchise, is a film that adapts a game's story and characters to the narrative medium while also developing the protagonist's motives and relationships with other characters and humanizing the antagonist.
Mega Man, both the game and its live-action adaptation, follows the story of Rock, a personal robot assistant, who wants to find his purpose in life after being built by Dr. Thomas Light, a robotics expert he considers his father. When Light's former colleague Dr. Wily rebels and steals Light's robots to conquer the world, Rock feels a sense of justice, re-purposes himself as a fighting robot, now dubbed Mega Man, and challenges Wily and his robots. The source material is straight-forward in presenting its story, with the player as Mega Man, traveling from level to level destroying Wily's robots until they reach Wily himself; while the film does show Mega Man fighting Wily's robots it takes its time with character development and build-up. Before we see him find his true purpose, we watch Rock aimlessly wandering Dr. Light's house, questioning his role as Light's personal assistant and wondering if it's actually meaningful. Meanwhile, Wily broods on his being let go from Dr. Light's latest project and wanting to take back the media spotlight which he believes Light has stolen.
The robots in the film were a blend of actors in motorcycle outfits and CGI.
Other fan films, instead of following an already written story, decide to take their source material in other directions that give production teams more creativity but remain faithful to the essence of the original game. Metroid: The Sky Calls (Balcomb 2015), a short film based on Nintendo's Metroid series, takes the main protagonist, Samus Aran, and the overall look and feel of the games in the franchise, and places them both in a simple, originally written story that feels complete in a little under twelve minutes and gives viewers an essence of what the Metroid games are like. The film follows intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran who sets out to find the secrets of the Chozo, the alien race that raised her since childhood, hidden away on an ancient temple. Though the film doesn't follow the plot of any particular Metroid game, its stylistic and atmospheric visuals perfectly capture the environmental qualities of the series.
Metroid: The Sky Calls (Balcomb 2015) perfectly captures the essence of the Metroid series' science fiction space roots.
Meanwhile, other filmmakers may take a radical approach to the video game source material they're working with. Take, for example, Mario Warfare (2014), a web series created by the YouTube film-making group Beat Down Boogie, which takes the Super Mario Bros. franchise by Nintendo and re-imagines the classic Super Mario Bros. story formula with a Call of Duty-esque setting and style, gun and fist-slinging action, and mature, referential humor. Though the series is not entirely faithful to its source material, it is enjoyable enough and aware of its source material that fans enjoy it much more than the hollywood-made Super Mario Bros. (1993).
Video game fan films posted online are vastly unique from their Hollywood counterparts because directors have the freedom to do what they want with the source material without worrying too much about mass appeal. Some directors can choose to make faithful adaptations of their favorite video game franchises to live out their dream of seeing it on the big screen while others take different artistic approaches to the source material. As long as Hollywood continues to search for a success in the video game film genre, fans will continue to cling to the Internet and fellow video game fans for the films that they want to see.
