Friday, August 29, 2008

The soundtrack album which feature the noises of joysticks being waggled

The history of computer games turned into movies is not, it has to be said, a glorious one. Bob Hoskins as a Super Mario Brother, anyone? That one with Kylie in? Admittedly, when Lunar JetMan was filmed as 2001 A Space Oddity [note to self - check on Wikipedia before posting this] it was a success, but generally, it's a genre which seems to exist solely to ensure that the 99p DVD box on my local newsagent's counter is always well-stocked.

Still, at least you can understand how a movie might be made from a computer game with a plot. What's less clear is how you'd adapt a game that's not story driven, and turn it into a movie. That, it seems, is the challenge Brett Ratner is setting himself, as he plans - yes, really - to turn Guitar Hero into a movie:

“I love ‘Guitar Hero’ and I think it’s a part of pop culture. I would love to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie, if Activision would ever let me. I’m trying to convince them, but why would you have a movie screw up such a huge franchise? Not that I would make a bad movie. So that would be cool, to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie. ”

But, listen, he's telling us the plot:
“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

You can see why this story would need to be about Guitar Hero - because otherwise it would be every TV movie ever made about teenagers competing in competitions, and how would you persuade a video game franchise to fund that, eh?


4 comments:

Jeff said...

I could see this being a hilarious movie if they were making a spoof of the game and peoples devotion to the game. Maybe something like the Sout Park episode done on Guitar Hero.

But a serious movie about guitar hero? That's ridiculous.

Olive said...

A film about people entering a video game competition? Bloody hell, has hollywood run out of decent films to regurgitate, so they've started on the milk curdlingly awful ones? About 20 years ago there was a similar film. And I hate myself for knowing about this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_(film)

Jimbo said...

Heh, mention on a music blog talking about The Wizard. Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley was one of the "stars" and gets *incredibly* embarrassed if you bring it up to her now. Although as she's got a solo album out next month and is over here in October, you'll get a chance then (plug).

Anonymous said...

Funny that, I was about to mention the Wizard too. What chance of getting Fred Savage and Christian Slater to star in the Guitar Hero film too?

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