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[Deon]

For what it matters to the discussion, I still think most of the "backstory" explanation was made up by somebody else during post-production, but whatever.

Yes, somebody who's now laughing their ass off as people attempt to take it seriously.

I fully agree. It's a commercial film which takes the common idea "natives vs conquerors" and uses fancy graphics, stunning effects in a colorful world which screams "LOOK AT ME I AM FANCY!". Don't you see, all those giant plants, moss which glows when you step on it, everything was made to look good.

It's an entertainment in its true form, meant to be watched and to deliver fun and visual impression. And it wasn't meant to be a science fiction, thus all the talks about DNA and viability of such world are too bloated.

[Cthulhu]

Not all movie games are horrible.  The Thing and The Godfather were both awesome, but they also took significant liberties with the plot.

That's probably why they were good, so they may not be the best examples.

[Aqizzar]

The Robocop and Terminator games were pretty good.  Then again, it was kind of hard not to make a platforming-shooter tie-in that was at least playable.

And of course the infamous Aladdin.

[Greiger]

Just as a random snippet. I saw Avatar 2 days ago and liked it.  It is basically US Army vs indians with floating rocks, and a few missionary-esque scientists stuck in the middle.

Plot is average, you generally know what's gunna go down well before it happens, it's just not specific exactly how it will do so since there are some tiny differences from the usual formula.

The CGI is the movie's main draw and it deserves it, it is some pretty spectacular stuff.

My idea is that it's worth watching.  The 3D is nice but I don't think you would miss a whole lot without it.

[Duke 2.0]

 I'll agree that Avatar is entertainment in it's purest form and not science fiction, because complaining about it here is entertaining to us.

 And l;east we forget the biggest movie game success of all time, Goldeneye.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Star Wars games were more often than not rather good as well. I still want to play Episode 1:Racer periodically, and Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy are still on my shelves somewhere.

Star Trek games, on the other hand, were plagued by poor design and incompetent creators, most of the time. Until Raven took a shot and made Elite Force. I loved that thing.

Btw, the reverse is often true as well. How many movies-of-a-game can you name that were good?

[Akigagak]

How many movies of a game can you name?

Apart from FF?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Doom, Dungeon Siege, Dungeons and Dragons, Blood Rayne, Max Payne, and that's off the top of my head.

I should note that two(three?) of these were made by Uwe Boll... So Yeah.

I'll just be better off pointing here. (don't click unless you've nothing else to do for the next few hours)

[deadlycairn]

Pretty sure Resident Evil and Silent Hill are also movies of the games.

And I loved the foliage that glowed when it was touched. It just looked so cool when the people were running around with their footsteps glowing.

[Duke 2.0]

 And don't forget the Prince of Persia movie coming out.

[Leafsnail]

Pokemon?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, it's an OVA rather than a movie, but it's not half bad as far as any series-based-on-a-game go. The thing that makes me wonder the most, however, is why no game in the series (not even the latest one) incorporate that counter-attack-with-another-attack thing we see in the anime. It seems easy enough to handle, and would add much more strategy to battles.

[Aqizzar]

Okay, so, I finally went to see Avatar, with a gutful of Jack Daniels and my toked up father.  Aqizzar's Inarguable Review Metric-

Welcome to Big Flying Turd Town

That was among the lamest attempts at a serious movie I've ever seen.  Maybe I've read TVTropes too many times, but if you've seen any two of Dances With Wolves, Little Big Man, Last of the Mohicans, Pocahontas, or any other "Welcome to the Tribe, now fit in" movie ever made, you could as I did write every scene three jumpcuts in advance.  The "waking up" montage, every line out of Sergeant Slaughter, Sigourney Weaver getting shot, the rivalry with Mohawk, Main Guy having alien sex and taming the dragon, two competing "let's go fight" speeches, Helicopter Girl with warpaint, the animal revenge, and reusing the Life Tree or whatever it was.  The only difference is the Indians win in the end.  Woo fucking hoo.

And that's not even going into the hideous mangling of logic and sensibility in character action.  For instance: The bad guys are going to drop explosives out of the space ship to blow up the Sacred Grove thing, i.e. a gravity bomb, so the logical answer is to bring the whole ship crashing straight down.  And good old biological improbability.  Thinking trees, fine, cool.  How about: why are the Na'vi humanoid, when every other creature on Pandora has the same four-arms-and-eyes morphology?

Yeah, the visuals are top notch, even if the movie can't be watched without polarized glasses, so it loses all fucking meaning on your home television.  I still say the Na'vi were so deep in the Uncanny Valley it's hard to take them seriously, especially with the atrociously hammy acting by Alien Princess.  It'd be awesome to watch on acid when you're too stoned to pay attention to the story, but even then you have to look at a bunch of ugly blue cat faces.  Sober (enough anyway), the visuals were hard to enjoy when every time the action starts getting good, the bipolar plot jumps in with more slo-mo and singing children.

Altogether I'm glad I saw it so I can stop talking out of my asshole, but it was nearly as big a disappointing groanfest as Terminator Salvation.  You got me again Cameron, I hope you're happy.

[dragnar]

Well, it's an OVA rather than a movie, but it's not half bad as far as any series-based-on-a-game go. The thing that makes me wonder the most, however, is why no game in the series (not even the latest one) incorporate that counter-attack-with-another-attack thing we see in the anime. It seems easy enough to handle, and would add much more strategy to battles.

How exactly would that be easy? In the show it seems just about any attack can block any other, it just needs to be used in some creative way.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Most of the time, it's just attack versus attack based on the game's extensive Elemental Rock Paper Scissors. Just about any directed attack can be intercepted with another attack, it's the strength that matters, and strength is adjusted by affinity. However, move combinations also matter, and I don't think I ever saw even two pokemon combine moves, let alone one pokemon doing two moves as one as seen in the anime. I also think that the Pokemon games would greatly benefit from Final Fantasy-style combat, simply because that's how it looks in the anime. Just taking turns is too simplified.