ADAPTATION OF VIDEO GAMES INTO FILMS: THE ADVENTURES OF THE NARRATIVE
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
mkatsaridou@gmail.com
Abstract
In the past, the most common adaptations were first made from literary texts to films and only after that, to video games. Recently, this order started to reverse and more and more frequently, video games are produced first and then transferred to film. The reason that makes games being transferred easily to movies is their many similarities: games incorporate many cinematic features, aesthetics, and narrative. But while there are so many similarities between games and films, there is a big difference, that is interactivity or in the words of Brown and Krzywinska (2009): “…that a game has to be played”.
This paper takes as a case study the adaptations of survival horror games into films and more specifically the adaptations of Resident Evil (original title Biohazard, Capcom) video games. Through a Greimasian narratological/semiotic analysis of the Resident Evil’s texts, this paper aims first to examine the adaptation of an interactive medium such as games into films, as well as the narratological consequences of the process and second to address theoretical issues concerning video games’ narrative.
1. Introduction
In the past the most common adaptations were primarily from literature texts to films and only secondarily into video games. Recently this paradigm has begun to change, as we are witnessing an increasingly growing number of video game adaptations into films, “one of the most immersive forms of adaptation” (MacArthur et al. 2009: xx). This development is not surprising if we take into account the increasing profits of the games industry which often compete with or in some cases overshadow the profits of the film industry. Also, as stated by Brown and Krzywinska (2009: 86) (the increasing numbers of movie-game tie-ins is due to their many similarities since "Like film, digital games are screen-based, and as such utilize many cinematic features, providing thereby one of the more basic and formal reasons for the increasing numbers of movie-game tie-ins "while in parallel they are stressing out a central difference, which is the games’ interactivity: “yet what defines games generally, distinguishing them from other media, is that a game has to be played."
Taking into account this difference, this essay examines the adaptation of video games that are belonging to survival horror genre into films and more specifically Resident Evil video game instalments (Capcom 1996-2013) into films which can be considered, at least commercial, very successful: Resident Evil film series have grossed more than $900 million to date, with each film making more money than the last (boxofficemojo 2014: n.p.). The series also holds the record for the "Most Live-Action Film Adaptations of a Video Game" in the 2012 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition.
2. Games as narratives
Recently we have witnessed a heated debate among game theorists as to whether it is legitimate to analyze the games as narratives or not. We will not enter into the details of this controversy as this is not our subject here, but it is useful to point out that even though ludology suggests that video games are radically different from narratives as communicative structures and thus not “eligible” to be analyzed with the use of narratology, not all of the ludologists deny the relation between narratives and video games. For example Espen Aarseth in his book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997) states: "To claim that there is no difference between games and narratives is to ignore essential qualities of both categories. And yet…the difference is not clear-cut, and there is significant overlap between the two"” (Aarseth 1997: 5). Following Aarseth’s reasoning, although this essay analyzes games as narratives, it also acknowledges the necessity of a ludological approach and the input that it has to offer in an analysis
In order to analyze Resident Evil texts, we have applied Algirdas Julien Greimas ' actantial model. Based upon Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale (Propp 1968 [1928]) and his syntagmatic analysis of the narrative structure into thirty-one functions, Greimas (1983 [1966]) replaced it with six actants which are abstract elements of the deep structure of the narrative. In other words, Greimas proposed a methodology towards a paradigmatic analysis of narrative structure. Greimas distinguishes the actants into three pairs of oppositional value: subject – object, giver – receiver and helper – opponent. For Greimas actors are abstract elements too, but in antithesis to actants which are structures of the general narrative syntax, actors are the manifestations of the actants in a specific narrative. By applying Greimas model, all games from the simpler to most complicated ones can be analyzed as narratives with the gamer in many cases taking the position of the narrator. Given that there are many different types of games that offer various degrees of autonomy to the players concerning their narrative, we could generally say that if we sum up all the individual narratives of the players of a game we acquire the story world of the game or in other words, the semiotic system of the game.
3. Resident Evil games
The first Resident Evil video game was released by the Japanese company Capcom (1996) establishing the survival horror genre in games and it is also one of the first games to implement the zombie apocalypse. While it is not the first game of the horror genre, in fact the first game of the genre is considered to be Alone in the Dark (Infogrames 1992) and it was influenced by many preceding games with a horror theme such as Sweet Home (Capcom 1989) and Haunted House (Atari 1982), Resident Evil, along with Silent Hill (Conami 1999-2012) video games, are considered to be the most emblematic games of the genre. After the first release and its huge commercial success, more than fourteen Resident Evil installments were produced with the total number to depend on the game platform we are referring to, such as xbox, playstation, wii, Nintendo etc. and since today five live action and two animation film adaptations were based upon the Resident Evil game series, not to mention adaptations to short films, books, comics and other media.
The games follow the structure and the stereotypes of the horror genre that are based on pre-existing literary sources such as Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809 –1849) and Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s (1890 – 1937) texts while the specific stereotype of the undead, the zombies owes much to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and more recently George Andrew Romero’s films like Night of the Living Dead (Romero 1968).
Survival horror games generally and Resident Evil games specifically, even though they contain action elements, they have as their basic characteristics the feeling of fear that they evoke to the players, the awareness of constant lack of safety, the hostile environment either in the sense of a place that was familiar to the hero before a horrific incident transformed it to something hostile and dangerous or of a place that is totally unknown and perilous and also a strong feeling of weakness and isolation. Combat is part of the gameplay as the players have to confront and win their enemies achieve their goals and survive. Usually they feel less powerful than their enemies due to the limited ammunition, strength and health that the games provide them. Consequently, unlike action games, here the basic purpose of the gamers is not to “kill” their enemies but to survive in this unfriendly, hostile world passing through dark and many times claustrophobic locations full of monsters ready to attack them at any step, any corner. The players have to control their fear in order to survive and finish the game and decide when they have to fight, using their limited ammunitions and when to flee so as not to fall prey to their enemies. The enemies that the players have to defeat are monstrous, unnatural. While they were once people, they became something that should not exist. In other words the natural laws have been violated turning the world into something 'other' and terrifying.
The players also have to do a lot of puzzle – solving and to find items that then are used to unlock their path to new locations. It is important to stress that in survival horror games the narrative is usually very well constructed and has such limitations per se: for example there is a limited number of characters that the players can choose to play with, and even though the gamers can wander around different locations of the game world, they actually have very specific choices to make in order to survive and to end the game. Specifically at Resident Evil games there are very few alternative endings per character in comparison to other games.
3.1 Basic storyline of Resident Evil games
The basic storyline of the games involves the creation and spread of artificially created lethal viruses or ancient parasites mainly by the evil company Umbrella Corporation but also by other groups of bioterrorists and in parallel, the effort of the heroes the majority of whom belong to a special team, the Special Tactics And Rescue Service task force (S.T.A.R.S.), to survive and to stop Umbrella and the bioterrorists from destroying the world. In their effort they have to confront various monstrous creatures like zombie dogs, monstrous snakes and spiders, humans infected by the virus who have become bloodthirsty zombies etc. In most of the games the pattern is that most of the citizens of an infected area have become zombies while the uninfected are fighting for their lives in their effort to escape the infected area. At Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica we encounter a religious cult that uses a breed of ancient parasites to turn humans into mind-controlled victims. The religious cults is another very common theme in survival horror games, for example it consists a key motif in Silent Hill video games.
3.2 Resident Evil live film series
Resident Evil (Anderson 2002), is the first movie of the series followed by: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Witt 2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (Mulcahy 2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (Anderson 2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (Anderson 2012) while the production of the 6th film of the series Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Anderson) has already been announced. The basic plot of the films follows the adventures of Alice which is the heroine of the series, who is trying to survive, stop the evil Umbrella Corporation and restore the natural laws. In the films like in the games, lethal viruses transforms people to zombies. Unlike the homonymous protagonist in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 1992 [1865]) who lives her adventures in an “other”, fantasy world and finally she returns to her ordinary, familiar world, for Alice in Resident Evil there is no way out: she has to confront her enemies in her “real” world, which has transformed into a dystopian place. The heroine has to face zombies, monsters and even clones of herself in her attempt to beat the “evil” and save herself and humanity.
4. What is transferred from the games to the films?
4.1 The viewers
From the big and general pool of the films’ viewers there are two categories that stand out: the gamers and the fans of the horror genre. These categories overlap: many fans of the horror genre are also gamers and have played Resident Evil series while others are only viewers and had never played any of the game installments. In any case, the gamers and the horror fans comprise a big part of the movies audience which is crucial for the commercial success or failure of the movies. Therefore this is the audience that the production company has to satisfy.
Bearing the specific audience's demands and the variety of the viewers who are both gamers and non-gamers in mind, as well as the basic differences between games and movies, that is, the interactivity, it is quite interesting to examine the choices that have been made during the transfer.
4.2 Analysis
The narratives of the fourteen games and five films were analyzed by applying Greimas’ methodology as it is explained above. Unsurprisingly due to the large number of the texts under analysis even though the deep structure of the games and films is the same, the plots are different. More specifically, while the deep structure of the narratives and the functions of the actants coincide in games and in movies, there is no "faithful" transfer of the plot or the actors of any specific narrative from games to films.
The subject, the hero in the live action movies is Alice and her character does not appear in any game. On the other hand, the games’ heroes in some films don’t exist at all and in some others have secondary roles. For example the basic actors of the first Resident Evil game are: demolitions expert Jill Valentine and sharpshooter Chris Redfield both members of the same team, the Special Tactics and Rescue Service Task Force (S.T.A.R.S.). We encounter Jill Valentine at the second movie, while the nemesis character was hunting down the remaining members of the team but Chris Redfield isn’t introduced to the viewer until the fourth movie and they find him in the basement of a prison. Apparently, according to the films plot, he was never a member of S.T.A.R.S. and has no idea who Jill is. In the fifth movie they introduced Leon and Barry into the movie franchise. The only problem is that Leon has been a main game character since Resident Evil 2 and even had Resident Evil 4 all to himself. In most of the cases the games’ subjects are taking the role of the helpers in the films.
Even if the heroes of the games didn’t make it to the films, the opponents, the antagonists did. Most of the monsters and enemies have been transferred to the films while the ones that didn’t make it, is probably due to their grotesque nature: for example the live action movies never incorporated the "red head" zombies, which is what happens to zombies that are not decapitated or burnt. The Umbrella Corporation, which is one of the main antagonists in the series, as it is responsible for the zombie apocalypse, keeps its role in the films too.
The object remains the same in all games and films: survival of the protagonists and saving the world from the evil.
The fundamental antithesis which governs both games and movies is that of zombies versus humans that is the antithesis between the undead and the living, the unnatural versus the natural.
While the unnatural has the negative connotations of evil, monstrous and sinister, the natural on the other hand connotes the good, human and familiar. This antithesis is present in most texts belonging to the horror genre.
Moreover, the game constitutes a world that is absolutely familiar and known to the gamers. The gamers know its laws, its feeling, its aesthetics and what can happen in this world or not. Their characters “live” and belong to this world. For any film to be considered as a successful transfer for the gamer-viewers, it has to exist within this universe. Even if the film is about another, unknown to the gamer-viewer hero that does not exist in the games, it can be thought of as successful only if the transfer respects the universe and the rules of the game, namely its deep structure that is largely defined by the genre. So, following the rules of the genre, the part of the audience who do not belong to the category of the players is satisfied as well since they belong to the fans of the horror genre generally.
5. Horror genre as a cultural pool.
As mentioned above, Resident Evil game series are based upon the already existent genre philology in the already established codes and conventions and the already existent stereotypes. In the same way, the films based on horror games primarily follow the same codes and conventions.
Thus the genre could be seen as a common cultural pool from which both the games and the films draw their material from.
In almost all the Resident Evil’s texts the human/alive has to fight the undead/unnatural/monstrous and that is what all the stories is about. The zombies are not alive, not dead, so they are not natural, they are monstrous and thus they shouldn’t exist. But in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica the opponents are not zombies but mind controlled people. The change from killing dead, monstrous creatures to killing alive mind controlled humans may not seem much of a change during the game play, but it is a huge difference in the whole universe of Resident Evil.
Taking into consideration all the above I argue that genre is important and many times with a shift in genre we get dissatisfied gamers/ viewers. An example from the Resident’s Evil’s last game proves it: Capcom made a more “action oriented” turn and even though Capcom characterized Resident Evil 6 as "dramatic horror”, they got disappointed gamers, and critics: “Resident Evil 6's messy mix of annoying quick-time events and constant set pieces makes it a poor caricature of modern-day action games…this is no survival horror game, certainly” (VanOrd 2012: n.p) “Is this what Capcom's legendary survival horror series has become? …Capcom has abandoned any pretense of the survival horror genre and embraced a world of skin-deep Hollywood audacity”. (Sterling 2012: n.p)..
The transfers of Resident Evil games to films can be considered successful not because they transfer the exact plot or the actors-heroes, but because of the transfer of the monsters, the zombies, the atmosphere of the game and the feelings of suspense and fear, that is the elements taken from the horror genre. What horror video games — labelled survival or not — actually offer is similar to what the mainstream contemporary horror cinema proffers. To refer to the well-known expression of Isabel Pinedo, it’s a «bounded experience of fear» (1996: 25 and 2004: 106). (Perron 2005: n.p). Both the games and the films are based upon the need of the human beings to feel fear, so that when the game or the film ends, they can take a look at their known environment around them and feel safe: The monsters have been killed and the world has presumed its relieving familiarity one more time.
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