Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > April > 21 > Entry
‘Silent’ morning
Long-time video game players are holding their collective breath this morning for word on whether the latest game-to-movie translation “Silent Hill” will be a heartbreaking, spectacularly failed fiasco or merely a fiasco.
Despite heavy promotion and even a tie-in PSP “Experience,” the movie wasn’t screened for most critics and early reviews range from admiring of the film’s style to perplexed by a perceived lack of plot.
My brother tried to hit a Drafthouse midnight screening in San Antonio, but the room was sold out.
Game players have not had much to cheer about when games they love have been turned into films. Much of the blame can be set on the stooped, evil shoulders of director Uwe Boll who, apart from having an easy-to-make-fun-of name is also mindbendingly untalented in his medium of choice, film. Uwe Boll is to video game adaptations what Sam the Butcher of “The Brady Bunch” was to sides of beef. He leaves blood and grist in his cleavering wake. His work, on a purely aesthetic level, makes hard-core gamers wake up in the middle of the night, clutching at their pillows, mouths open in a silent scream, as the nightmares recede.
“Silent Hill” has generated more advance hope among gamers than any other adaptation I can remember. It was written by Roger Avery (no slouch having co-written “Pulp Fiction”) and directed by Christophe Gans, who made the silly but visually thrilling “Brotherhood of the Wolf.”
The video game in the “Silent Hill” series themselves are extremely stylish, genuinely scary experiences that, in their own small way, have helped push the medium a little closer to becoming an artform.
We’re not asking for an Oscar-winner here. We just want something watchable that won’t embarrass players in general. Please, don’t let it be “Super Mario Bros.” or “Street Fighter” or, heavens help us, “Bloodrayne.”
Please let it just be mediocre enough to stand tall among other Hollywood spring dreck.
Permalink | | Categories: Movies & DVDs, Videogames
