Movie directors who seriously should be making games

Uwe Boll
(House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne)

We were going to put Uncle Uwe in this article to discuss how his trashy guerrilla style and lack of respect for the format could actually translate to a really cool and transgressive, self-reflexive punk deconstruction of the videogame medium. But then we realised that he's working on an FPS based on his next movie, 1968 Tunnel Rats, and it just looks like a load of old crap. Moving swiftly on...


Takashi Miike
(Audition, Dead or Alive, Happiness of the Katakuris, Visitor Q, Ichi the Killer)

Takashi Miike is out of his goddamn mind. Whether working on a gangster movie, a dark and atmospheric horror, a feel-good, zombie musical comedy or a kids' film, his uniquely deranged "Screw logic, if it works, I'm doing it" approach has brought us some of the most striking, entertaining and quietly clever work in the recent history of extreme cinema. Basically, if Suda51 was making movies, he'd be Takashi Miike.

Takashi is no stranger to videogames. He even directed the 2006 movie based upon Sega's Yakuza. But what would we want from his own videogame output? Basically, anything he feels like making. Takashi has been far too successful in too many eclectic genres to be pinned down, so as long as he brought the same unbound imagination and immense kinetic energy of his movies to the table, we'd be happy.

Seriously though, a Hitman type game based around Ichi The Killer would be brilliant. Not that we're talking about licenses.

Stephen Chow
(Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle)

Stephen Chow knows how to make an action movie funny. As charming as it is skilled, Chow's approach to comedy martial arts shows as much influence from the cartoon violence and deliriously skewed logic of Looney Tunes as anything traditionally eastern. Wire-work meets CGI and slick kung fu blends with equally well-choreographed slapstick to bring about some of the most extravagant, imaginative, and blissfully silly action in recent years.

Let's have him directing a comedy fighting game. Let's have something like Powerstone or Smash Bros., only with deeper combat and even more lunatic special attacks. With Chow providing the motion capture as well as the choreography, and enough imagination in the level design, it could outdo either of the games that inspired it.

Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor
(Crank)

You might not recognise their names, but anyone who's seen the movie Crank will tell you exactly why Neveldine and Taylor need to be on this list. Inspired by the videogame aesthetic right down to its 8-bit credit sequence, to watch Crank is to witness a hurricane blow through the game-loving minds of its creators. A hurricane made out of cheese-dreams and hard booze.

The movie never references or pastiches any one game in particular. Rather, the directors use its plot - Hitman gets jabbed with Chinese poison; has to keep his heart rate up to avoid dying; does so by committing madness to keep his adrenalin high - as an excuse to condense as many different facets of the garish, exaggerated, no-consequences action we all hold so dear into one film as they can. If they could bring that affectionate, cinematic reinterpretation to an actual videogame, we could have the gun-toting, car-wrecking, western counterpart to No More Heroes. A post-modern GTA, if you will. And it would be mad in the face.

Doug Tennapel
(Sockbaby)

Okay, we're cheating on this one. You see Doug Tenapel has already been involved in videogame production, being as he is the creative mind/mental deviant (delete as appropriate) behind Earthworm Jim. We're also going against our "No licensed games" rule, but we've honestly got a very good reason to.

You see in 2004, Tennapel started work on an ongoing short film series called Sockbaby. It's a sci-fi martial arts comedy following the adventures of best friends Ronnie Cordova and Burger, starting as they fight to protect a Sock baby messiah from inter-dimensional aliens. Ronnie is like Travis Touchdown spliced with Johnny Bravo and a whole load of funk. Burger is a suburban cyborg. That explained, it obviously goes without saying that the films are brilliant. But aside from that, they would make an incredible game.

There's just something about Ronnie Cordova that screams "Videogame star"; and between the film's sharp, quirky characterisation, fast and funny dialogue and jubilant cartoon violence there's one hell of a fighting game to be made from the IP. Let's have the art style taken from the animated section in Part Two as well.

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