One year from now, the Warcraft movie will arrive in theaters and hopefully put all other video game movie adaptations to shame. And the Assassin’s Creed movie will apparently start filming this Fall. Both of those could be brilliant, or at least that’s what I’m hoping. Until then, we’re going to have to make due with that Adam Sandler movie that’s based off that one episode of Futurama. Video games and movies just don’t go together all that well, for some reason.

So I’m here to tell you that it can be done! I have a few ideas.

Watch the Rifftrax, it’s really good

Considering some of the best video games are already pretty cinematic, I don’t see why it’s so hard to adapt a killer video game into an awesome movie. But whether they change everything completely, like the Resident Evil series, or play things way too straight, like the Mortal Kombat series, or just go insane, like the Mario Bros. movie, Hollywood just can’t seem to get video games right.

Join me after the jump for six video game to movie adaptations that I think would actually be pretty cool.

6. Starcraft

It’s the personality that counts

If Warcraft is a success next year, then we’ll hopefully get a sequel. And double hopefully, Blizzard will be looking to expand their might in Hollywood. They could take the easy route and turn Diablo into a new franchise, with mighty warriors battling against the Lords of Hell. That would be a pretty amazing movie. But me personally, I’d rather go with Starcraft and let Blizzard take a stab at revolutionizing the space alien genre.

Big, hulking space marines in their giant armor (most of which are hardened criminals turned cannon fodder), the mysterious and enigmatic Protoss and then the monstrous yet conniving Zerg are all ripe for some big screen action. The Starcraft cut scenes are already pretty darn cinematic. And when was the last time Hollywood really made a good, big budget cosmic creature feature? Starcraft would be the perfect fodder for such a franchise, especially if Warcraft takes off.

5. Gears of War

Chainsaws make for the perfect weapon

In the midst of all the guns, the massive armor and the explosions, there was a story at the heart of Gears of War, and it’s right there in the title. There’s a reason why the characters belong to the ‘Coalition of Ordered Governments’ or C.O.G. for short. Sound familiar? Cogs? In a war machine? Seems like a pretty simple metaphor. And a good metaphor is all you need to make a good movie. You start with the basic stuff, like the feel of the Gears of War universe, the power armor and the iconic chainsaw machine guns, and you pit them against the larger than life CGI Locust army, with all their grub soldiers and big, scary bug monsters. And then you let the metaphor of just being a cog in a war machine permeate the rest of the movie. Add some sorrow to all the testosterone.

4. Fatal Frame

This is as close as I’ll get to ever playing it again

This will probably going on another list someday, but the scariest video game I have ever played was Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly. That game was so scary that I never made it past the second hour or so. I just couldn’t handle it. The game is all moody atmosphere, spooky noises and jump scares. I stopped playing and never looked back.

And that sounds like perfect fodder for a new horror movie! Of course, considering the state of horror movies these days, coming out with one that involves a ghost-fighting camera as a gimmick would probably get a Fatal Frame movie lumped with the likes of Ouiji or whatever the hell else they’re making these days. Still, a good filmmaker could ignore the gimmicky nature of the game and keep to the basics: a young girl must brave a haunted village to save her sister. How often do horror movies star children? It would be even more terrifying!

3. Portal

It’s dangerous to stick your head partway through a portal like that

We’re living in a world where CGI and special effects are no longer captivating, they’re obligatory. It’s only when something is new and unique that we get excited. What was the best scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past? It was Quicksilver’s slow-speed take down of those security guards, when the whole movie was slowed down except for the speedster. That was new, that was interesting, and audiences loved it. Likewise, there was nothing like it in Avengers: Age of Ultron, so there isn’t one exciting scene that has audiences talking around the water cooler.

Portal could be an entire movie of those types of scenes. Portal is similar to the character of Blink at the start of X-Men: Days of Future Past, using connected portals to teleport through the fight scenes. Portal the video game revolutionized physics-based games, amazing gamers with its unique gameplay and style. So if a filmmaker could figure out how to turn that same wonderment into a film, we could be looking at the next great ‘Wow!’ movie. Portal’s story is pretty good too: a female protagonist must use the portal powers to escape a research facility controlled by a monotone, psychotic robot. So the building blocks for a great movie are there, you’ve just got to find a filmmaker creative enough to turn them into a big screen spectacle.

2. Metal Gear Solid

He is, like, totally surrounded by giant robots right now

Spy movies are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, so why not turn one of the most popular spy video game franchises of all time into the next one? Metal Gear Solid tells the story of Solid Snake, a black-ops badass who must infiltrate villainous lairs and then taken on giant, robots called Metal Gears. Along the way, he’s got to take on a bevy of fascinating villains, like Revolver Ocelot, Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf and so on.

The Metal Gear games are some of the most cinematic in all of gaming, and while the games can get pretty trippy at times, their basic structure is perfect: badass hero + spy mission + interesting bad guys + giant robot battle = awesome movie! Cut out all of the shifts in the timeline and the weird political philosophy and you’ve got yourself a pretty great action movie franchise.

1. Shadow of the Colossus

Almost as if this is a metaphor for life

Speaking of fighting giant monsters, Shadow of the Colossus is probably my favorite single video game of all time. It’s a hauntingly beautiful game, known for its large, cinematic scope and utter simplicity. It’s just you, a voiceless warrior, your horse, and the endless, open plains as you hunt down a dozen or so giant monsters. But they’re not the city-destroying Godzilla types of monsters, they’re large, peaceful goliaths who probably wouldn’t hurt a fly if your warrior didn’t suddenly show up to start stabbing them. And therein lies the beauty of Shadow of Colossus, one you don’t realize at the start: you’re the bad guy.

In a perfect world, some movie maker would get this part absolutely right. I wouldn’t mind giving the protagonist a voice and a name, that’s fine. But keep the movie simple, with awe-inspiring visuals. Tell the story of the main hero as the tries to save the life of his dying love by hunting down and slaying these larger-than-life monsters. The CGI adventure alone would be staggering. You’ve got your hero, sword in hand, crawling up the hairs on the back of a giant, skyscraper-sized monster. But instead of some rampage, the monster is just strolling along, doing its thing. And you’ve got a ton of different monsters, some even as small as an oversized puppy. The monsters are loaded with personality.

I’ll grant you that there’s not a lot to work with, but the movie would be about the grand adventure, not about the action. You’ve got the friendship of the hero and his horse, you’ve got wide open landscapes (shot on location, of course), you’ve got the twist in the end that killing the monsters was a bad idea, and you’ve got enough tragedy to really pull the heart strings.

Think back to The NeverEnding Story, when that horse sank into the Swamp of Sadness. Multiply that tragedy by a thousand and you’ve got the start of Shadow of the Colossus: The Motion Picture.

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Those are a few of my pics, what are some of yours? Let me know in the comments!

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