Xbox

Blamed for... Movies losing the plot

We've long since given up hoping that there will, somewhere over the rainbow, be a brilliant movie adaptation of a brilliant videogame. We don't think its too much to ask, but Hollywood consistently fails to deliver, instead seeming content to rely on concept rather than execution to sell the overpriced popcorn.

One movie critic - the hip shooting, Star Wars disliking, Mark Kermode - looked squarely at the influence of videogames on cinema when lamenting the plummeting standards of narrative in movies. "Viewing a film based on a computer game is like hanging around in an amusement arcade, peering over the shoulders of other people playing video games," Kermode wrote in his Observer arts column. "It has less to do with story-telling than conceptual shelf-stacking. And it is symptomatic of the painful death of the art of narrative cinema."

Above: Summer blockbusters might not be high art, but are videogames really to blame?

The lacquer-haired man of words observed that games are "a format of scenarios rather than stories, elements which can be bolted together in differing orders with varying outcomes." Kermode likened this template to the emergence of the boy-friendly movie blockbuster that "often boast nothing more than a collection of spectacular interludes assembled in the manner of a catalog rather than a chronicle."
 
Verdict: Videogames - guilty or not guilty?
Not guilty. No matter how crappy the stories in videogames are (and it is superfluous drivel 99% of the time), they still can't be held solely responsible for the rise of poorly scripted, set-piece heavy movies. It may be a factor in the changing tastes of cinema audiences, but is by no means the prime suspect. Videogame movie spin-offs, however, are without doubt the effluent filth pumped from Hollywood's most cynical corporate boardroom toilets.