In which I go all ANDY ROONEY on the dumbest thing
Max Payne sucked, but not for the reasons you're probably expecting*.
See, Max Payne (the PC game), despite being better known for its use of bullet time, was really best at being a first-person narrative disguised as a third-person shooter. It was both a pastiche of and an homage to various sub-genres of Noir, and whether or not you liked the story itself, the manner in which it was presented - Payne's own rapid-fire monologue, full of darkly rich metaphors like a pot of steaming coffee in an unlit room** - moved players through the game just as much as the gameplay itself.
You don't even have to watch that. Just listen to it. Wonderfully, unrepentantly over the top, it knows what it is and it plays its strengths for all it's worth. Intersperse a few early-level wintry gunfights into that, and you already know the bleakness that is Max Payne's life.
Max Payne (the movie) had exactly none of that. They played it straight, and neither the hacked-together plotline nor the phoned-in performances of the actors involved are buoyant enough to counteract that kind of ballast. The game excelled by having Payne himself drag players kicking and screaming into his own psyche; the movie tried to replace that with fancy-schmancy CG-rendered PCP hallucinations. For this and many other reasons, it fails.
It's sad that I could make a better version of this movie with nothing more than a digital recording of the original film and the audio tracks from the original game. They finally got around to putting out a few decent comic book movies; what's it going to take to get the same results with games?
----
* The movie sucked for the reasons you're expecting, too.
* Goddamnit, now I'm doing it.
*** Mila Kunis with a submachine gun is adorable, but she's hardly intimidating.
See, Max Payne (the PC game), despite being better known for its use of bullet time, was really best at being a first-person narrative disguised as a third-person shooter. It was both a pastiche of and an homage to various sub-genres of Noir, and whether or not you liked the story itself, the manner in which it was presented - Payne's own rapid-fire monologue, full of darkly rich metaphors like a pot of steaming coffee in an unlit room** - moved players through the game just as much as the gameplay itself.
You don't even have to watch that. Just listen to it. Wonderfully, unrepentantly over the top, it knows what it is and it plays its strengths for all it's worth. Intersperse a few early-level wintry gunfights into that, and you already know the bleakness that is Max Payne's life.
Max Payne (the movie) had exactly none of that. They played it straight, and neither the hacked-together plotline nor the phoned-in performances of the actors involved are buoyant enough to counteract that kind of ballast. The game excelled by having Payne himself drag players kicking and screaming into his own psyche; the movie tried to replace that with fancy-schmancy CG-rendered PCP hallucinations. For this and many other reasons, it fails.
It's sad that I could make a better version of this movie with nothing more than a digital recording of the original film and the audio tracks from the original game. They finally got around to putting out a few decent comic book movies; what's it going to take to get the same results with games?
----
* The movie sucked for the reasons you're expecting, too.
* Goddamnit, now I'm doing it.
*** Mila Kunis with a submachine gun is adorable, but she's hardly intimidating.
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