No Metroid Movie

[Weltall]

That's why screenplay writers stay away from video games. Even in a massive RPG like Final Fantasy there's still very little story.

I agree with everything but this... kinda.

The problem with translating even a game that is story-heavy is that even though the game DOES have a lot of story, the story is told in parts... sections... Hmm...

Let's use Final Fantasy VII as an example, as it has two sections where the flow is very different.

When you are in Midgar at the beginning, that part of the game could very easily be translated into movie form. Each event in that part of the game flows into the next. There are no long periods of travel or sidequests involved. Hell, if that part of the game had it's own conclusion, it would make a great movie alone. It's relatively short and is almost totally linear. You can pass it in the span of under three hours if you are steady. It is almost totally story-driven, without interruption.

After Midgar, however, you start to get those long, long periods of exploration and the story becomes very disjointed. Until you get to the Temple of the Ancients, it is almost completely episodic, and the entire point of the journey (tracking down Sephiroth) becomes almost lost in the background for a good while. Between the Temple and when you acquire the Highwind, it becomes story-driven once again, but then along comes the Huge Materia quest and we're back to the do-your-own-thing thing, more or less. Final Fantasy VII at these two points becomes less of a story and more of an RPG: it becomes more open and less linear. It would be impossible to make a two-three hour movie out of this, no matter what, unless you first eliminate about 90% of it, and then totally recraft the rest... essentially butchering it for the people who love the game, and unless it's done extraordinarily well, everyone else won't give a damn and you have a shitty game-to-movie translation.

Unfortunately, it is as you said: Producers are so desperate to cash in and make a movie based on a hot game franchise that they don't stop and consider for a moment how badly most games translate into movies, even ones that have somewhat-cohesive storylines at their heart.