Hacker Cinema
Max Payne
2008 · Film · 100 min
Directed by John Moore
A DEA agent whose family was slain as part of a conspiracy, and an assassin out to avenge her sister's death, join forces to solve a series of murders in New York City.
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7 comments on Hacker News
Likewise video game -> movie adaptations, it seems to be very hard to do. Or they just don't get it, but that's probably my own bias. Thing is, some games are basically interactive movies, but they still make changes to meet some Hollywood ticklist.
(I am forever salty about Max Payne, Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, etc. Max Payne could've worked with 1/10th of its budget (no CGI or famous actors necessary).
> e.g. if they used a seperate rendering package or mostly painted by hand
IIRC Max Payne was one of the earlier games to rely heavily on photo-reference textures (instead of hand drawing or computer generating them). Keep in mind that in 2001 digital cameras were rare, expensive, and low-res, so people often just used film cameras and scanned in the physical photo with a flatbed scanner. Max Payne was far from the first, though; even 1998's Half-Life used some photo-ref textures.
The lighting in Max Payne's textures was probably mostly just the lighting from the original photo. Every texture had to be hand-manipulated to make it usable on 3D models, so changing the lighting would have added even more work and would have looked less realistic.
I thought the same about Max Payne when I played it. What a story. And you know what? They ruined it...the movie was awful.
A big Max Payne 1 & 2 video game fan here and I completely disliked the movie. For me it's a prime example of what the article debates.
Couldn't sit through the whole thing. I just don't buy Mark Wahlberg as Max Payne. He's a little too clean-shaven in that movie. Was he at least using pain killers to fight past his injuries?
Oh wow. I recently dug up Max Payne again. Guess what, I find some of the content to be quite inspiring:
The trick in my situation was that there was no trick, no matter what the movies tell you. No rules, no secret Mantra, no road map. It wasn't about how smart or how good you were. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought different was a fool. All you could do was hang on madly, as long and hard as you could.
I think you're looking at the wrong metrics for 'did well'.
Tomb Raider was successful, for the studios, successful enough for them to give it another go. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=tombraider.htm The second one lost money, and it looks like that was the end of the franchise.
Resident Evil has been a mixed bag, but clearly the studios were willing to risk it. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=resident%20evil
Max Payne also seemed to make a bit, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=maxpayne.htm