Transmutations and adaptations

[This text actually started as a review of Return to Silent Hill (2026) but that spiralled into an overview of the first three games and a scene by scene breakdown of a movie I don't care enough about to watch again.]

Between films and games there are many similarities, games pulled from cinema for their entire existence, whether it being just thematically, structurally or directly adapting, the nature of cinema gets easily translated into a gaming format. Within games themselves we can create engaged textual films through machinima practice, reappropriating their function to what is arguably its parent media. With such easy acclimation to a gaming format one would assume that not only can films be games but games can be films too.  

I don't mean in a machinima sense but directly adapted to the screen. While the previous few years have highlighted the potential success that lies dormant in these adaptations with such examples as A Minecraft Movie (2025), Super Mario Bros (2023) and Five Nights at Freddys (2023), historically, generally video game adaptations have failed to capture the minds of audiences and existing fans alike. 

A Minecraft Movie (2026) - CHICKEN JOCKEY

So what is it that differentiates these two intertwined mediums, they share the same methods of storytelling, many have shared formats already seen in successful games/films, their visual language is for all intents and purposes the same. Films and games still maintain that material difference, that of interaction. While I can still touch the screen, experience the sensation of the images by being engaged with my perception of the film I cannot interact with it. 

Not physically I can not actualise myself in the filmic space, only sit, chastised, and fantasise about my potential existence in a world which I am in forced closeness with. A lover which cannot touch, cannot respond. Films play on this, a director is aware of your position, as is the projectionist and the eyes staring out at you from within the screen. 

To play a game is not to be a voyeur like you are in the cinema, you are in control. Your desires are translated on screen. Your hands move through a controller in a slew of unintelligible sentences, translated into code, on to screen becomes your will. 

Cinemas textual relationship with its audience relies on an imagined astral projection, games however provide devices for this to happen, changing this projection from something infallible, impossible to something physical. A convincing bluff. Your mind no longer notices a difference. You become somewhat self-present within the game world, navigating it with your digital self or transmuting your being to another one (such as an in-game character not in your likeness). 

screenshot from Crossroad (2005)

For a player, there becomes a cognitive dissonance between their expectation and the film text in an adaptation. 

A different kind of expectation, not one which comes from marketing or speculation, once which comes from nostalgia, from the memory of a place. The bluff presented by virtual environments from our supposed “meaningful” interactions with them convince us of their reality, of their significance. As such these can be seen as the same as physical spaces in our mind. 

Like visiting your hometown after a long period of time things have changed, this is not an enjoyable experience.

For a player their individual in-game experience is an authentic one, treated as pure fact. As such in adaptation they are affronted with an alternate reality. 

Video game adaptations seem to really only take two routes. Appearing to rely on either being approachable to a new audience like that of PTA’s resident evil or the games ability to exist outside of its virtual world. I’m talking about game-adjacent activities like the games continued existence in other media, fan worlds, youtube, literature and merchandising. 

For games like Minecraft, Mario and Five Nights at Freddys their existence is far beyond that of the in game experiences they offer. These films in my opinion are becoming instead of “game adaptations” moreso just conventional cinema. The films seem less interested in adapting a game or its events and more interested in filling the film with recognisable characters and pleasing a loud minority of a games’ playerbase. Any of the Silent hill films are guilty of this, the inclusion of pyramid head only really makes sense in the painful Return to Silent Hill (2026) as the villain is specific to the character of James Sunderland, who doesn't appear in the other movies. 

"Pyramid head" from Silent Hill 2 (1999)

crazy clickbate "Pyramid head" from Return to Silent Hill (2026)

Their game text(s) and characters have been assimilated into the cultural mainstream and generally speaking the films have more of a relationship to their respective fan cultures instead of the game itself. Becoming less like an adaptation and more like a fan film. As is a surprise to no one, films based on existing properties are more interested in a big opening weekend, or selling off to a streaming service than anything faithful. 

This however, seems to be a recipe for success at least for casual fans. 

Veering far enough away from the “player” experience by not including core storylines or central characters to avoid too harsh of a cognitive dissonance. And targeting more casual enjoyers of the IPs or those obsessed enough to forgo any shortcomings as long as withered bonnie is on screen. 

There is a new Resident Evil reboot/adaptation happening this year, the director has been given full creative freedom and hasn't and will not play any of the games. It will be interesting to see what happens because at that point you might as-well just write your own zombie movie.

I’m not sure what the point of this essay is, or what any solution could be, maybe players to too hard to please, or we should stop doing adaptations at all I guess I was interested in figuring out what made films and games so different and why adaptations fail.