Hollywood loves to take the games that we enjoy and turn them into a feature films. Why wouldn't they? Many video games have a cult following which equals big dollars in the eyes of studios. Unfortunately, the studios have no idea what they are doing sometimes we are presented with atrocities like Alone in the Dark (2005), or one of Uwe Boll's many other films.
I go into video game adaptions with extremely low expectations because history shows that they aren't usually good. There aren't really any great video game adaptions, except for Silent Hill (2006) and this past weekend's Prince of Persia (2010). Both of those films took what worked well in the games and translated them well to the big screen. I was particularly excited for Prince of Persia because it teams up two up my favorite Hollywood entities, Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney.
I think part of the reason that many of these adaptions don't do well is because the stories and characters are designed to work in an interactive world where you feel like you have control in what goes on, and not on the silver screen where you voyeuristically watch the plot unfold. Video games work because you become connected with your character. You live the game. With the film versions, you don't get the same character/story connection you would get otherwise.
Movies to Video Game translations also rarely work. I tend to stay away from video game adaptions of movies because they usually aren't very good. The only movie to video game adaption that I've really played was Spider-Man 2, and I liked that because it deviated from the linear plot of a film and allowed you to play in an open world with missions that tied in important plot points of the film. Most of these games don't work because they are extremely linear and carbon copies of their film.
Hollywood needs to step up their game if they are going to continue translating video games to movies and vice versa. There is a very fine line between the two, and it is extremely evident that that line is hard to translate.
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