Wang Xiaobo said in "My Spiritual Homeland": "There must always be a cornerstone of a building of thousands of feet, and the initial hobby is irreplaceable. ”
Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
I remember when I was in college, there was a buddy in the dormitory who loved to play Final Fantasy.
As a result, one day he came up to me with a movie magazine and said:
Love love, Final Fantasy out of the animated movie, this CG effect you see,
Hair is a little bit, facial expressions are no different from real people, you must watch.
Whether he went to see it later, I don't know.
However, when the movie was released in 2005 called Final Fantasy VII: The Arrival of the Son,
Box office Waterloo is still inevitable.
Interestingly, the original producers only promoted the game.
Made a 10-minute CG short.
As a result, because of the appeal of a large number of players, it was eventually expanded into an animated film...
Why is there such a mass base and failure?
Is the story bad?
In fact, the story of the movie, the player does not know.
Because, the whole story of the film takes place two years after the end of the game's plot,
In the face of new crises, heroes who have returned to their respective lives,
Assembling again on the battlefield to save the world,
Defend their homeland.
In other words, this can be regarded as a digression or a spin-off plot,
But it is by no means as super-outlined as "Resident Evil", but it is a different flavor.
So what is the key point of failure?
Maybe it's my buddy saying: too real.
Some people may say, it should not be said that whether it is an infinitely close to the real animated film or a live-action movie,
The results of the game adaptation are too copycat!
For example, "True Three Kingdoms Matchless" received the following evaluation: "The painting style is cheap, and the network is textured."
And people in the industry often say,
Compared to the game graphics and cool special effects that have become more and more realistic, higher than real,
Live-action movies, on the contrary, due to problems in the performance of combat effectiveness, have a bit of a taste of war.
It is true that live-action movies are not dolls,
A series of cool that goes beyond gravity and ergonomics cannot be restored.
But this is not the truth.
To give an example, it is easy to prove:
Why did Super Mario Bros., the first game adaptation film in 1993, fail?
It is difficult to be that the 8-bit pixel wind game of the year, coupled with the shocking electronic music, is worse than the live-action movie...
Another example is "Samurai Order", adapted from "Yin and Yang Division".
More invited good actors, but also smashed real money and silver to do special effects.
It also changed the Japanese style into a Tang style to catch up with the Chinese atmosphere.
It's still hard to swallow.
Obviously, the reasons are insufficient.
Perhaps, the game movie is just missing an initial hobby.
When you make the game real, it becomes unacceptable.
What was this initial hobby?
The answer may be a sense of substitution.
Or rather, movies and games can be immersive though.
But the movie is a limited view of God, you can see everything, but you can only see it.
And no matter what the game's perspective is, it is basically a first-person perspective.
That is, the player controls his own character, in the virtual world, without asking anything.
Even with quest lines, Warcraft players can still walk through every landscape of the continent of Azeroth every day, regardless of clues.
Count the stars, look at the scenery, talk about the sky; even if you can only follow the plot.
Contra players can still come back again after completing the level.
Use as a feeling of death to challenge a variety of difficult gameplay postures.
Even in order to find the legendary underwater eight levels, and again and again generously "to die".
Without him, the world of the game is a relatively free space of their own that each player marks with a spiritual home.
The self-righteous thoughts, actions and values characteristic of adolescents can be vividly demonstrated.
As a result, in the movie, no matter how real, it makes the viewers who substitute from the player character have a sense of powerlessness:
Unable to embark on their own adventures.
You can only follow the camera as a crowd of onlookers eating melons.
Published in People's Post and Telegraph, Column No. 298, July 2, 2021