8 Movies that need sequels in video-game form

Galaxy Quest

While I’m not totally sure what the game would consist of, this is one in the vein of Ghostbusters, in the sense that I just want to revisit those world and those characters, and perhaps hear Alan Rickman say ‘By Grapthar’s Hammer’ a few more times.  Galaxy Quest is one of those movies that I have a borderline-unhealthy fixation on, to the extent that I once broke up with a girl partially because she didn’t think it was funny (there were lots of other reasons, but I’d say not liking this movie contributed about 15% of those reasons).

As for the game itself, the crew would be reassembled to face some new threat, and we’d get a mixture of space-flight missions and on-foot missions where you visit various planets.  What’s nice about the universe of Galaxy Quest is that it is, for all intents and purposes, infinitely large, which means that there’s no shortage of places you could go, and alien monsters you could fight.  By Grapthar’s Hammer, that sounds like a game I want to play.

The Princess bride

Mark this one as another in the ‘worlds I’d like to revisit’ category.  The Princess Bride is one of the best films of it’s kind ever made, seamlessly blending fantasy, action, adventure, romance, and comedy.  What’s awesome about The Princess Bride as a potential video game is the fact that parts of it already kind of feel like one.  Take that whole sequence, for instance, where Wesley is rescuing Buttercup from her three kidnappers.  First he has a grapple encounter with Fezzik, then a swordfight with Inigo, capped off by a battle of wits.  It’s like he must defeat three bosses in order to rescue his love.

I imagine a Princess Bride game playing with variety in much the same way, confronting you with a number of unusual encounters throughout the movie’s fantastical world.  There can be rats of unusual size, traipses through the Fire Swamp, and any number of new, inventive challenges.  Fezzik, Inigo, and Wesley could all be playable characters, each with a totally different play style. What’s that?  You’d want to play as Billy Crystal’s Miracle Max too, just for funsies?  As you wish.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple express is a funny movie.  We can all agree on this, yes?  It also works as a great twist on the action genre (an action flick where the two ‘heroes’ are stoned the entire time, so everything freaks them out) that I think would translate well to game form.  Mostly, though, I’d just want to hear James Franco and Seth Rogen banter with each other as you navigate your way through the cooperative gameplay.

You’d be able to play single-player, with the other character controlled by the computer, but Co-Op would be where it’s at.  You’d also have a Stoner Meter that made things harder to accomplish as it went up, but also let you take damage more slowly.  If you got SUPER high, the game would start to distort it’s sound and picture, to really get you into the heads of it’s two protagonists.

Monsters Inc

Yes, I know that we’re getting a prequel to this in movie form soon, but that’s not the same.  I want a sequel, damn it, where Mike and Sully meet up with Boo when she is a disaffected, sarcastic teenager whose whole life has been screwed up by her weird memories of visiting a monster city when she was little.  Part of the game would take place in the monster world, and part would focus on Mike and Sully trapped over here in our world, trying to get home with the help of teenage Boo (who prefers to be called Emily, thank you very much).

The world established in Monsters Inc. lends itself to a great platformer, especially when those doors get involved.  Image the madness as you hop from one world to another as either Mike or Sully (or both in Co-op).  Obvsiously the two would play totally differently, since they’re such different monsters. This also means that the variety of enemies and allies that you encounter throughout the game, both in their world and as, would be vast.

There you have it!  8 movies that should continue their stories in game form.  Get on it, developers!

Even if we never get a third Ghostbusters film, we will always have the option to pop in the Ghostbusters game from a couple years ago, close our eyes, and listen to the sweet voices of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis as they carry us off into the better days of our youth, only to realize that we’ve lost the game because our eyes were closed.  In all seriousness, though, that’s a great game, and one of the reasons for that is the sheer joy of getting to live in the world of those movies for a while.  It’s basically a new Ghostbusters flick, but you’re the main character.  There are a few other games like this (including the upcoming Aliens sequel, Colonial Marines), but I think it’s a trend that should continue.  Rather than movie tie-in games that just retread the plot of a recent film, I would love to start getting more interactive sequels to films that will probably never get a sequel movie made.  You know, the classics, like You Got Served.  Or, um, maybe not.  But I have eight (real) suggestions of films I would love to revisit in game form for a brand new story.

Oh, and SPOILERS for a bunch of these.

Zombieland

Portal was significant for a lot of reasons, but chief among those was its use of humor as a significant part of the game.  We’ve been inundated with zombie games lately, and honestly, they’re all sort of starting to blur together in my brain.  So how can we make one that’s different from the pack (or the horde, as the case may be)?  By making it goddamn funny.

At the end of Zombieland, the characters drive off into the Sunset, and everything is great and dandy, apart from the fact that the world is still infested with bloodthirsty, super-fast zombies.  Giving those characters another adventure set after the events of the movie would be a piece of cake, and as long as it was funny and fast-paced, I feel like most fans of the movie would be along for the ride.  Throw in some big celebrity cameo (although it will be hard to top the first one), up to four-player co-op, and plenty of zombie-killing action, and you’ve got yourself a game worthy of the Zombieland name.

Plus, the movie had those credits and title cards that the characters could interact with, which could be super fun/hilarious in game form.

The Raid

The Raid (or as it was called in America, The Raid: Redemption, despite not really having any redemption in it) is a brutal, non-stop actioner about a SWAT team trapped in a building full of criminals, all of whom are out to kill them.  Most of the film consists of our main character fighting his way through hallways, mowing down dozens of faceless goons with guns, knives, and martial arts, much like one does in one of these video games I’ve heard so much about.

The action is varied enough that the colorless, repetitive sets (Fun Fact: They used the same hallway set over and over and just changed the door numbers depending on what floor the characters were on) don’t ever get too old, but for a game I would love to see this style of combat transplanted to somewhere with a bit more personality.  Mostly I just wanna do all those cool moves, but without having to practice them for decades.  I don’t have a huge hankering to see the story of The Raid extended, but I would love to see the tone and concept heightened to another level.  And punches.  So many punches.

Unbreakable

One of the most interesting things about Unbreakable, a movie full of interesting things, is that it’s essentially the first third of a superhero origin story stretched to feature length.  I remember as a kid hearing that it was the first of a trilogy, that we were going to some day get to experience the rest of the Origin of Trashbag Man, but alas it was not to be.  The villain is revealed, a hero becomes aware of his powers and weaknesses, and that’s all we get.

I feel like there could be a really great game extending the adventures of Bruce Willis in a Trashbag, especially considering his powers.  He is indestructible, and he can see a persons secrets when he touches them.  I imagine it taking place in an open world, with missions being gathered by brushing up against people and seeing where you need to be, like in the climax of the movie..  Since there’s no way for you to really get hurt, (apart from water, so expect plenty of missions near pools and beaches) progress would be measured by how many people you could save in time.  If you let someone die, or don’t get there in time, or fail a mission, the game goes on, but it takes a psychological toll.  And then, at the end, you get to punch Sam Jackson in the face.

Inception

When Inception first came out, it blew everyone’s mind with it’s dream-logic, inventive action sequences, and ambiguous ending (because apparently no one had ever seen one of those before).  While many people were quick to proclaim it the new Greatest Thing Ever, what Inception actually was was an extremely creative action/heist flick with a knack for laying out the rules of it’s world in a clear and concise way.  Perfect for a game, no?  Each subsequent world could be either a different person’s dream, or the different layers of one person’s dream, with the gameplay changing radically depending on what sort of dream-state you are in.

Considering the ending of Inception, setting up a sequel may seem tricky, but there are plenty of ways to maneuver Leo into having to pull off One More Big Heist.  He came to terms with a lot of his past trauma in the movie, so perhaps the story could focus on the past of one of the film’s under-utilized supporting characters, like Eames, the Forger played by Tom Hardy in his pre-Bane days, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hallway-fightin’ (in the sense that he fights in hallways, not that he goes around beating up hallways) badass Arthur.  .  Regardless, what many games are lacking these days is sheer unbridled creativity, and by setting one in the dream-world of Inception, this game would have plenty of opportunities to blow our mind.