UK film maker Mike Newell (best known for working on the Harry Potter films) spoke with CVG recently to discuss his part in creating the movie adaption of Prince of Persia. While speaking on the movie he made a point of bashing video games themselves, despite the fact that Prince of Persia is based on one. He mentioned that video games bore the arse off of him, because they lack the ability to include any form of gripping drama. Check out a couple quotes below to better understand where he is coming from.
God Damn the gamers! Get them out of my head! The Prince Of Persia movie is a great big, general entertainment with a romance, a boy and a girl, comedy, action and a very good melodramatic story. It should be enormous, free reign entertainment. That’s what a Bruckheimer movie is, and that’s what this tries to do.
But when the discussion turns to the minutiae of the games, it begins now to bore the arse off me, frankly.
He then goes on to compare video games to successful TV shows such as 24 and the Wire, basically saying that games cannot capture the amount of drama included in these types of TV programs.
of course they can become a threat to Hollywood. But [they cannot] do so with drama in any real sense.
When people watch 24, they’re watching for the surprise, you know – when is the great big bad surprise going to step out from behind the palm tree. When they watch The Wire, they’re watching the human drama of it.
You can’t do it without the human drama. And the video game cannot do that. The video game can do all sorts of face-pulling, all sorts of: ‘I am a bad man, I have a mean jagged sword,’, but it can’t do any more than that.
When asked how he managed to capture the world of Prince of Persia on screen without getting a feel for the game itself, Newell assured us that he did indeed take many things from the video game, although he felt nothing for it.
Don’t get me wrong – I watched the game and took many things from it. But I haven’t had the experience of feeling in a game. The one thing I do not do when I watch my son mow down Brazilians by the regiment – nor when I watched my assistants playing Prince Of Persia – I don’t feel anything, which is why I hate my son doing it.
Harsh words coming from somebody who worked on the movie adaption for one of the most popular gaming franchises. In my opinion he seems a little bitter towards the video game industry, but we know how much of a threat it has become to Hollywood. Let us know your thoughts on this.
