Game movies

[dr_whom]

So apparently they're making a movie based on the game Battleship? The movie is apparently about space aliens engaging humanity in a naval battle where neither side knows exactly where the enemy ships are.

And it occurs to me, the space of board-game movies seems like a largely untapped one, doesn't it? There's Clue of course, which while not necessarily a good movie is at least an awesome movie. But consider the following:

Monopoly could very easily be a David Mamet–style drama about cutthroat real-estate investors in Atlantic City.

Candy Land would be an unutterably terrible computer-animated film for six-year-olds that's a blatant ripoff of Strawberry Shortcake except without the depth of character and plot.

Mastermind is a psychological-suspense spy thriller in which an enemy spymaster captures several American agents and only communicates with them through mysterious patterns of flashing lights in their cell.

Sorry! is an ontological mystery—twelve people from all walks of life find themselves trapped in a featureless labyrinth (where the floors occasionally turn into slides with no warning) with no memory of how they got there, and have to work together to figure out where they are and how to get out. (Spoiler: it's Purgatory!)

Trivial Pursuit would be a documentary-style competition movie about the no-holds-barred world of quiz bowl.

And those are just classic traditional games. We can get even more variety in plots by looking at German-style designer games.

Ghost Stories: This game is practically a horror movie already: a team of four monks defend an ancient Chinese city from the ghosts and monsters that plague it every night. Shadows Over Camelot is similarly easy to adapt.

Ticket to Ride is a comic adventure film set in the 1890s in which an eccentric railroad investor makes five hobos the following offer: whichever of them can ride the rails from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles in the shortest amount of time will win fabulous wealth. (Seriously, I'd go see this movie.)

Basari: An Indiana Jones–style adventure archeologist finds that bandits have made off with a cache of priceless gems found in an Egyptian tomb, and must track them down at the marketplace before the gems have all been sold off.

Carcassonne: Peasants in medieval France discover that the very layout of the countryside around them changes when they're not watching it. As the monks in their cloisters work against time to find out what is going on, the peasants solve the problem the only way they know how: send people out into the countryside to stand around and watch the landscape constantly.

And of course... an adventure film set in the age of exploration in which pioneers voyage across the sea to colonize a newly discovered island, forging a new civilization out of stone, wood, brick, wheat, and sheep.

...What else?

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

the dame deal that's bringing us Battleship includes a couple of those already.

the only board game i really want to see in film form is Kill Doctor Lucky.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I'd go see this movie.

He's modestly refraining from mentioning that we've already cast this.

[lowellboyslash.livejournal.com]

I would totally direct Carcassonne. It would be a film about the meaning of life, as examined through the quaint and yet historically accurate (and therefore often horrifying) attitudes of the villagers. The main character would be an old widower who sees no point in going on with his life, and just when he discovers the magic and beauty of the world, he dies. The last scene of the movie is his son returning to town to announce that he's made his fortune, only to find that all the walls have moved, and he leaves without looking at his father's grave. As he goes away, the wise woman of the town says, "And they cried when they saw the place of its burning, 'What was the like of this great city?'"

Oops. Sorry. I got a little carried away there.

[lowellboyslash.livejournal.com]

Please tell me I'm in it.

To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

In 1890s Pittsburgh, an eccentric railroad investor (dbfclark) encounters five hobos (KV, reversepolarity, CE-L, occultatio, and wolfheart17) and offers them a deal: whichever of them makes it from Pittsburgh to LA first wins fabulous wealth; meanwhile, each of them is asked to retrieve a separate object, and each hobo to do so successfully wins a smaller prize. Each hobo, furthermore, is given a different train ticket between two different cities, to ensure that they have to split up. This is all arranged by the investor's Trusty Girl Friday ophblekuwufu, who is the one who "makes the trains run on time", as dr_whom put it.

Various Wacky Hijinks ensue.

KV manages to retrieve his object very quickly, only to belatedly discover, following a run-in with a mysterious woman (LVK), that he has run afoul of the railroad investor's arch-nemesis, a wealthy banker (TL), and now he has both of them on his tail. The mysterious woman is the banker's mistress, but she ends up switching sides and she and KV decide to become bank robbers.

reversepolarity accidentally loses his object in a poker game and then has to get it back, which results in his receiving tutelage in the art of poker by a Beautiful and Mysterious Bad Girl (boojum42). Then at the end he decides to give up being a hobo and give up the game for the sake of love and poker.

CE-L, who somehow turns out to be reversepolarity's brother, has a random encounter with another hobo while sitting around in a boxcar looking glum, and the other hobo starts giving him advice and then ends up helping him out of all sorts of scrapes. The other hobo turns out to be not just any hobo but a Gender Fucking Girl Hobo Extraordinaire (lowellboyslash) and they go on to whoop all sorts of ass.

occultatio retrieves his object, but in the process manages to make a well-dressed Bostonian Rich Girl tiamat360) miss her train, thus stranding her without money or recourse. He has this free train ticket, so he manages to convince the conductor to let her on with him, but then it's all boxcars after that, and she gets very irritated, but then of course she turns out to be an awesome swordswoman (despite having to fight in full 1890's Bostonian Rich Girl clothing) and kicks serious ass, and the hobo realises that he's actually madly in love with her, and at the end they decide to continue riding trains together, only in Europe.

wolfheart17 is the wisest and most philosophical of the five hobos. He has a less complicated plotline than the others, but manages to execute several rescues and dodge the police and stuff. He wins the grand prize, but he decides that really riding the rails is all he's ever wanted anyway, apart from a dog, so the final shot of the movie is wolfheart17 gazing soulfully out at the passing scenery from a boxcar with his new dog (a soulful-eyed hound of some kind). Wearing a tuxedo.

[lord-codfish.livejournal.com]

Manila would work very well as a kids' TV show along the lines of Wacky Races.

Pandemic, of course, is fairly obvious.

And what would Diplomacy be but a four-hour World War I epic?

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, you're totally in it.

Re: To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot to mention that each of the five hobos has a leitmotif. All of the leitmotifs are, of course, different arrangements of the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride":

- KV's is a sort of honky-tonk piano.
- reversepolarity's is a Romantic-style arrangement with lots of brass instruments.
- CE-L's has a sort of Appalachian feel; it's played on fiddles at a fast tempo.
- occultatio's is also Romantic, but more towards lush strings, since his plotline is the most straightforwardly romantic.
- wolfheart17's has a laid-back country folksy sort of flavour, and is played solely on banjo and harmonica.

The main version of the theme is a typical orchestral film score arrangement, albeit with a somewhat more nineteenth-century flavour. Bryn Terfel would sing over the closing credits.

Re: To Wit...

[dr_whom]

CE-L is probably the voice-over narrator, looking back on the story with a certain amount of wisdom that he gained during it. I'm visualizing the narration for the first scene already—"Well, I didn't know who J. Biltmore Industrialist was, but boy, when you're a hobo lookin' for work in Pittsburgh and a lady like this one comes up and offers you a chance to earn more money than you can even think about, you don't start off by asking questions."

And the ending where-are-they-now narration, of course, after he's said what's happened to himself and the other three hobos, he says, "And as for [wolfheart17's character]—well, some folks never change", as we see that last shot of wolfheart17 riding off into the sunset.

Re: To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Also dr_whom and I both get to have cameos. He gets to be a ticket agent encountered by an intimidated wolfheart17 (who has never used a ticket in his entire life), and he talks really fast ("wellthat'soneticketforsanfranciscochangetrainsinstlouisatsixfifteendon'tbelateboardontrackfive"). I get to be a scantily clad prostitute.

[dr_whom]

You get to say "Why so glum, chum?"!

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

I knew this was building up to Settlers. Tagline: "They've got wood... for your sheep."

Me, I'd like to see them make a movie out of Stone Age.

[sandmantv.livejournal.com]

Risk 2210 has Michael Bay film written all over it.

Innovation is actually a 4 sided LARP written by ophlebkwu, with evolving societies and jostling mechanics for political domination.

Dixit is an Aronofsky like surrealist film about a group of friends trying to convince their drug addled friend to come back to reality, but can only reach him when they interpret everyday images the same way he does.

Turing Game the movie was already written by yaleartificer.

[dr_whom]

Ooh, I really like your Dixit.

[lowellboyslash.livejournal.com]

What about Civil War 2012?

[sandmantv.livejournal.com]

Kevin Costner prequel flick.

Alan Grant icon up today, how fitting.

[khyros.livejournal.com]

Dominion is about how out of touch the people building societies are with the commoners who live there, involving a negotiation being burst in on by a crowd and an impassioned moneylender gives the following speech:

"All you see are the markets and the gold, and even though you yourself came from a shanty town and earned your first provincial government through the sweat of the village smithies, now you claim yourself above them, and would see the village trashed if it got you a few coin... so you can retain the services of torturers, and hire goons to do your dirty work. Your chancellor's only idea is to start over, your bureaucrats are just in the way, and when all your officials come to you at once, then you wish you had the village to get things done for you, don't you?"

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Or Fluxx. They just make up the movie as they go along. :P

Re: To Wit...

[tilivenn.livejournal.com]

Good God. This is awesome.

[dr_whom]

Hee hee hee hee

Re: To Wit...

[(Anonymous)]

As CE-L, I accept. I will cancel all plans and meet you on the set.

Re: To Wit...

[dr_whom]

How would you like to end up being a bounty hunter? We're pretty sure you and lowellboyslash end up as badass bounty hunters.

Re: To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

...Okay, I get to be a plot-relevant scantily clad prostitute. Near the very end of his odyssey, after already saving various other people, wolfheart17 saves me from an overly aggressive customer who doesn't want to pay for my services (sandmantv), and then gives me a lecture on how I ought to take better care of myself and my pimp (JLaR) a lecture on how he ought to take better care of his girls. I'm like, 'Hey, thanks for saving me from [sandmantv's character], is there anything I can do for you?' And wolfheart17 realises that this is the very character from whom he's supposed to retrieve his plot coupon. So my pimp and I are like, 'Okay, we can take care of that for you' and go rob his room or something.

Probably JLaR and I have an entertaining argument or two, which ought to make lowellboyslash happy.

Re: To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, hey, you want to get rescued by wolfheart17 too? In... Memphis, say. From... vile kidnappers?

Re: To Wit...

[yaleartificer.livejournal.com]

Dude. This is all awesome, but dr_whom's casting is the *best*.

[yaleartificer.livejournal.com]

Mouse Trap starring Christopher Lloyd, Jesse Eisenberg, and John Malkovich as competing inventors in a 1950's era GM-sponsored invention competition. Imagine the LotR style sweeping shots of giant Rube Goldberg devices, Christopher Lloyd shouting from the top, "It works!"

Give Me the Brain, directed by Kevin Smith, as a reworked script for Clerks III.

Munchkin, a Coen brothers movie about an adventuring party that gets together for one last job, only to find that when you're deep in the dungeon, it's every man for himself.

[sandmantv.livejournal.com]

I was gonna say Puerto Rico for the Coen brothers movie. "Ah, I have all this coffee to ship and it's gonna make us rich!" "Oh god there's no room on the boat, my coffee is tossed into the sea and I'm ruined!"

[cmouse.livejournal.com]

This is all amazing, post and comments!

[purplebob.livejournal.com]

Galaxy Trucker: this screwball comedy in space pretty much writes itself. An emerging civilization is discovered, they desperately need sewer technology, and a gold rush is on as everyone tries to be the first to sell it to them. Our hero is a plucky kid from a poverty-stricken garbage dump planet, who bolts together a ship out of random trash, using more rocket boosters than common sense. The real focus of the movie is not the kid and his ragtag crew, though; it's the slapstick CGI aliens whose purpose is to sell toys.

It's preceded by a 10-minute short animation in the same universe, named Space Alert.

Through the Ages: World War III strikes and wipes out humanity. An experimental, immortal military robot with a soft spot for humanity is apparently the sole survivor. He discovers time travel and travels back to the classical era, trying to alter history. He gets caught up in events and finds himself accidentally taking the place of famous historical leaders.

In addition to having to survive various disasters and invasions, he finds that he has a nemesis working against him: an amoral fem-bot that Nikola Tesla originally built to be his romantic partner, who has also traveled back in time, and wants to destroy humanity and create a world inhabited only by robots. Spoiler: in the end, our hero becomes a board game designer, and humanity is saved when world leaders are too caught up playing playing eurogames against each other to declare war. An ambitious, extensive plot, but when has that stopped Pixar before?

Can't Stop: This movie has already been written.

Re: To Wit...

[tilivenn.livejournal.com]

I just woke up from dreaming about this. Or, well, a dream that started out as this and mutated to being about some people performing a skit that really wasn't very good, but anyway. My subconscious had a hard time manufacturing so many variations on "Ticket to Ride".

[dr_whom]

Yetisburg, of course, is just a straight-up historical war drama... with a twist. (Actually, with good CGI, this would probably be a better movie than it is a game.)

Palastgeflüster is a black-comic satire about a short-tempered but short-sighted king, easily manipulated by his Lord Chamberlain, as all the courtiers and servants jockey for position and attempt to prevent the king from finding out who the queen is sleeping with.

Re: To Wit...

[tilivenn.livejournal.com]

I think, given that a large part of me is just going "TRAINS! So cool!" right now, I should probably be a little kid riding a sleeper car for the first time, who notices some bizarre antics going on to which my parents are oblivious.

Re: To Wit...

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

:-)

One suspects that there are lots of really minor roles that are played by the same handful of people, each of whom also gets a slightly more featured small part (as in my case and dr_whom's), so maybe you could play all the urchin-types.

[okosut.livejournal.com]

Apparently Universal has a deal with Hasbro to make movies based on a number of their games. One of them is actually Monopoly, apparently to be directed by Ridley Scott. The Ain't It Cool News article following the announcement had a bunch of comments similar in spirit to your post. I think my favorite is "Steven Spielberg to direct Hungry Hungry Hippos".

[dr_whom]

Hungry Hungry Hippos of course is one of those insufferable family films where an uptight character played by, I don't know, Jim Carrey or Ben Stiller or someone learns to appreciate his family more as a result of having to take care of a bunch of obnoxious slapstick CGI animals.