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With the exception of porn shoots (maybe), there is no faster way to earn the disrespect of the filmmaking community than to get involved with a gaming movie. And perhaps rightfully so, considering the unrelenting string of unbelievably terrible offerings thus far. Commercially, there have been some success stories, and while I'll admit I actually like Resident Evil (something about the apocalypse turns me on... that's weird right?), none have been met with anything but critical disdain.

So the question is, why are movies lifted from video games so horrendous? Some argue the innate interactivity of video gaming doesn't translate well into the passive format of film. Personally, I find the narrative disparity between a novel and film more cumbersome than video games and film; film and games both have to "show it", while novels can simply "tell it" and tend to have very internal perspectives.

There is a case to be made that gifted directors and producers avoid movies about games because well... they suck. I'd make fun of Uwe Boll here, but I'm afraid he'd kick my ass. So it was particularly disappointing when the Halo movie lost Peter Jackson and Alex Garland (28 Days Later). There is some hope for the upcoming Gears of War movie, which just signed Cliffy B. on as executive producer, and has a reasonably talented screenwriter, Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean, Collateral, Derailed). But while there is no question of Cliff's game making ability, it remains to be seen if he knows jack about filmmaking - I'll wait to see whose directing.

In my opinion, gaming movies are such lowbrow fare because almost without fail they are created from game genres that have the least interest in storylines - shooters and fighters. Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Street Fighter, and Doom do not good stories make. It makes much more sense to pull from narrative intensive genres like RPGs or the old adventure games. I've always thought Sierra was something of an untapped resource in this regard - The Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry series could be absolutely hysterical and pretty unique comedies. Of course this will never happen because there is no synergy in resurrecting a dead game series, but a boy can dream can't he? As for a more realistic possibility, Zelda seems like a good choice.

And let's not forget that gaming is still a very young medium. As society slowly stops viewing video games as mindless schlock created for 15 year old boys, storylines on both the big and small screen will mature. Comic book based movies made the same transition. Who knew that the genre that spawned Howard the Duck and Flash Gordon (another of my guilty pleasures) would one day bring us Batman Begins, Spiderman, and X-Men?