Movies Vs. Games

taken from http://maddartist.hubpages.com/hub/Silent-Hill-Monsters-Movie-vs-Game

Besides being a gamer, I sometimes like to immerse myself in a good movie every once and awhile.  So when I hear that a video game that I love is going to become a movie, I can’t help but get excited at the news.  However, as I’m sure you all know, the movies rarely turn out to be good.  They may be enjoyable, but when they are dissected, you can tell something is missing.

Today I wanted to specifically talk about Silent Hill and the movies that tried to follow the feel of the early games. You could call this more of a review, but I will leave that up to you.

Music:

Take from http://www.fanatyk.es/noticia/el-play-fest-amplia-las-entradas-para-ver-a-akira-yamaoka

I figured I would start out with the positives when it came to comparing the movie to the games.  If there is one thing they got right, then it would most certainly be the music.  The Silent Hill movie mainly just reused the music that was composed by Akira Yamaoka.  Some of them are the OST’s and some have been tweaked a little bit.  Nevertheless, these soundtracks really give the audience a sense of dread, which helps create the atmosphere that is a trademark of Silent Hill.

Visuals:

Once again, I have to give it to the director and his team; the visuals in the movie, for its time, were phenomenal.  I’m not referring to the way the characters looked or even the monsters–since I do have an issue with the monsters.  What I am referring to is how the scenery is dealt with, particularly when Silent Hill transforms from day to night.  When those air raid sirens start blaring, that is when you know you are in for a cinematic experience.  The way the area around our protagonist decays and starts to change is portrayed very well.  However, some of the camera angles that were lifted from the game felt forced to me and didn’t portray the same experience that I had when playing the game.  The scene in particular that I am referring to was when our protagonist first entered Silent Hill and is chasing her daughter through the “fog.”  She comes to this ‘L’ shaped ally that was directly taken from the first Silent Hill game.  This scene is given a very off-kilter feel thanks to camera positioning.  This was extremely effective in the game because it disoriented the player when navigating through the environment, which in turn added to the tension.  However, in the movie it loses power because there is no sense of control, or, in this case, the experience of losing control.  I could go on about every possible scene, but that would spoil your own experience of the film.

Characters:

Taken from http://s347.photobucket.com/user/prepress_gun/media/PyramidHead.png.html

Okay, once again I’ll start with a positive.  Sean bean is in the movie and doesn’t die.  Okay, now here comes all the negatives.  Sean bean’s role in the movie could have been safely died.  His character adds very little to the plot and has practically no interaction with the actual Silent Hill we know and love.  We have Andrea (Laurie Holden) from The Walking Dead playing Cybil, which is pretty cool even though the acting is a little sub par from time to time.  My main complaints come from the monsters, which I actually consider to be the main characters of Silent Hill. So let’s start with the poster child of Silent Hill–Pyramid Head.  Now don’t get me wrong, Pyramid Head is one of my favorite characters of all time and I imagine a lot of people share that in common with me.  However, if you know the story behind Pyramid Head, then you know he has no place being in this installment of Silent Hill, only because Pyramid Head is tied to a character in the Silent Hill universe that doesn’t show up in this movie.  Unfortunately, this is the same for the nurses and the acid spewing Lying Figures, aka Armless Men.  I think the misplacement of characters is my biggest disappointment, because it’s almost like the director wanted to cash in on a popular franchise by throwing elements of the game in a blender. *gasp* I can hear it now: “but Matt, this is just an interpretation, a re-imagining of the game series, if you will.  It doesn’t have to be exactly like the games.”  In that sense, you would be right. But lets save that for the next section.

Story:

Taken from http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Cybil_Bennett_(film)

It may have been difficult to guess this by now, but I love Silent Hill 2.  The way it handles its story is genius, because it shows that psychological horror wrapped in ambiguity can go a long way.  In fact, Silent Hill 2 is an outlier when it comes to plot, because it has nothing to do with cults and was pretty much the only game in the series to focus every little detail about our hero to be reflected back on to Silent Hill.  Now let’s take a look at the movie.  To me, the story–and movie in general–is a stitched up Frankenstein’s monster that had arms for legs and a nose for ears. The creator just didn’t know where–and more importantly, how–to put the pieces together.  This is clearly evident in the final 30 minutes of the movie where they flat out put in narration to tell you all of the plot holes, which is extremely lazy and it is a terrible design. It took out all of the opportunities for the audience to actually use some critical thinking skills.  For me, the chance to decipher story elements on my own was a tremendously powerful aspect of Silent Hill 2 that made me love the series. Unfortunately, for everything that the movie tried to cash in on, this was one thing it neglected.

Conclusion:

Taken from http://www.popscreen.com/v/6aDOk/Silent-Hill-2Dog-Ending

I am a simple man who is easily entertained. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to distinguish a good movie from a bad one.  When I look at the Silent Hill movie, I see the potential to be something great and it pains me that it wasn’t anything more than what it is now.  It plainly takes elements from the game by copying and pasting it into the film and hopes that the audience gets the same experience that it got from the games.  There is one thing that directors who take on these projects don’t seem to understand. They don’t understand that games and movies are not the same medium.  Seems obvious to say that, but it’s an important observation to make.  I think Jesse Schell hit the nail on the head when he spoke of what defines a game.  One of those qualities was “games are interactive,” (The Art of Game Design, page 43).  I think this is where the movie goes wrong.  Obviously you can’t expect a movie to behave like a game. It just can’t.  Since they are not equivalent, a director should think of a new and innovative way to elicit the same experience from a game, but do it in a manner that is unique to the film medium.  Today’s society is quick to crucify a movie that they just didn’t get. This puts pressure on movie producers to add a cookie cutter ending where everything just falls into place.  I believe it’s time to  step away from that mentality and get those creative juices flowing.

PS: If you want to play the first game, I know its on the PSN for 6 bucks.  However, I implore you not to get the HD collection for Silent Hill 2 and 3.  You would think that HD means everything looks better, but in this case it means everything looks terrible.  The fog is pretty much non existent in the bundle.  I would recommend actually getting the greatest hits version of Silent Hill 2 for the PS2.  That is the way the game was meant to be played.

References:

(There is currently a Let’s Play being done by the TwoBestFriends.  I recieved some info about the games from there.  Here is a link to the Let’s Play of Silent Hill 2)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1168522/

http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_Hill_Wiki

Schell, Jess. The Art of Game Design A Book of Lenses. New York: CRC Press/A K Peters, 2014. Print.