Series and film adaptations of video games are currently very popular – but unfortunately not always as good as their originals. Neil Druckmann from Naughty dog and Craig Mazin, showrunner of the HBO series The Last of Us, talk about the boundaries between film and games and how they want to blur them.
Where to go with the video game adaptations
Druckmann and Mazin discuss the topic of video game adaptations in an article in the New York Times. Often these do not convey the feeling of their templates or are just embarrassing. Rarely have adaptations been really good and successful in the past. Druckmann hopes to break the “curse of video games” with The Last of Us adaptation and deliver a really good TV adaptation. Mazin laughingly suspects her adaptation will only make things worse.
What can be the reason? Druckmann has a few theories as to why series and movies based on video games just don’t work that well: “Sometimes adaptations didn’t work because the source material wasn’t strong enough. Sometimes they didn’t work because the makers didn’t understand the source material.”
However, the relationship between film and video games is currently changing for the better, says Druckmann and thinks that both media can merge. The industry would only have to be more open to switching between media. He himself wants his next project to be “structured more like a television series,” like everything Naughty Dog has done before.
More on the HBO series The Last of Us:
The Last of Us: Second trailer for the HBO series goes into the two main protagonists
The TV series based on The Last of Us rings in the new year in January
The Ellie from HBO’s The Last of Us didn’t play the game – on the advice of the creators of the series
This will certainly make it easier to film the game later, but the game as a medium should not suffer the other way around from the convergence of the two media. Unfortunately, Druckmann does not explain exactly how he envisions this new structure. What are your thoughts on this? What do video game adaptations need to be really good?
For me personally Arcane to League of Legends was the highlight of the year. I think everything worked well here, because the gameplay wasn’t filmed – please, no one should do that with a MOBA – but just grabbed the lore that existed in some texts and short trailers and told it with a new medium.
Here, in contrast to games where the story is actively played out and experienced through one’s own actions, there is even more leeway for the filmmakers than if they have to shimmy along a thread that the players have already followed in the game. They have already seen and experienced everything, so deviations from these images and feelings are often punished by fans. So it’s not that easy when the same story competes with the game experience, even if the story has real depth.
