...Why? Just... I... The First One.... Why?
 

Here's a trailer for the video game Silent Hill 2. Here's a trailer for Silent Hill: The Movie. Here's the Wikipedia page for Silent Hill: The Movie. (Which I just posted so you can check out the critic scores for the flick. Now... I consider myself a SH fan. I like it a bunch - it's really neat; story, characters, atmosphere - it's got it all.

I can say for a fact the Silent Hill 2 is one of my favorite video games. It's garnered enough critical acclaim to see it placed on the top of the Silent Hill pyramid. So why are they doing this to it? I mean - the first movie sucked. It really stank. So why are they making another one?

Hopefully it has nothing to do with Silent Hill, and instead focuses on the Alien Adventures of the SH gang - including Pyramid Head - and they all go out and solve space mysteries.

Ah, thread titles that are unsolvable riddles. Very nice.

Seil: The answer you are seeking is the same answer as "Why does Uwe Boll keep making movies?"

Answer: Because Hollywood is the engine of hell.

I thought Silent Hill was one of the best movies I'd seen in a long time. I love the video game series, its one of my favorites.

You didn't like the movie? The direction was phenomenal in my opinion. A lot of the shots felt like you were involved in a video game, and pyramid head made you shit your pants. Plus, the "parallel universe" and the ending were....amazing. .

The music was also fantastic. I bought the entire album after I saw the movie. (And then I bought the movie).

Definitely very excited for a second.

I've never played any of the games, but I really dug the movie. Well, other than the Here Is Everything Explained To You right before the ending, that was poorly handled. But I really dug the mise-en-scène.

There is no way this movie is coming out as soon as next year, though. Besides, Christophe Gans still needs to direct Onimusha first, and if he's not directing the sequel to SH, then I'm not really interested.

Oh come on. I haven't seen the movie, but the trailer at least doesn't seem terrible. At all. It looks like it curbstomps other video game movies.

Silent Hill was a good video game movie if you hadn't played the video games. Several things were ripped from Silent Hill 2: The Game in a colossal case of "Missed the Point Entirely". The point being that Silent Hill is unique to the person experiencing it. James Sunderland's Silent Hill is not going to be the same Silent Hill as anyone else's. The monsters all represent psychological aspects of the characters.

Pyramid Head and the busty nurses are specific to James' Silent Hill because he hates himself and wants to be punished and because he's looking for his sexy wife. Putting them in any other person's Silent Hill dilute their meaning.

Or if you really cared that much about it and had inflated and completely unrealistic expectations that the most memorable and identifiable manifestations of the entire series weren't going to be in the movie at all.

I treat all game/novel/tv show based movies that I bother to see the same as I treat any other movie. Was it good? Was it thoughtful when it meant to be? Did it entertain me with the subject at hand? Could you tell the actors actually took the role serious/as a joke? Could you tell detail was given to attract both casual viewer and those who knew the subject?


We really expect way too much out of our video game-to-movie adaptations, though...rather, we hold them to too high a standard. There's never going to be a good enough transition between the two because movies and games build and wield their plots differently.

But really the movie could've just been SH2. It's probably the best of the series and could have completely worked as is because it had less factors. You could cut out Billy and Angela if you so desired! But they melded 1 and 2 into something new and a whole lot of the Silent Hill experience was lost (the deep psychological themes being first to go because, well, no one wants to see that in a movie apparently. And the action- read, Pyramid Head- was watered down for the most part because PH the unstoppable unkillable juggernaught can't break down a door and half of his killing power are those insect things. Sure the skin bit is awesome as hell but...him killing Maria and his interaction with the mannequins made him creepy.

Also, look at it this way: The movie has to make money. It can be faithful as it can, but if it's only going to bring in 50% of what they expect to get, they'll hardly bother making one that delves deeper into the nightmare of Silent Hill.

You can't throw people right into the pit from the get go. A movie costs more money to make then any game ever will, so they can't rely on fans of that particular niche to make up the costs of production and rights and the seed cash to justify another trip. It's a problem with making a movie out of a game. If you stray too far you risk losing the fan revenue and have to deal with the bog of bad reviews that spread from fans to casuals. If you make it too faithful, you pull away from the viewers who are going to make up the largest slice of your money. There has to be progression, scaling. There has to be balance. They didn't drop Unicron and Headmasters on our plate in the first live-action Transformers movie for a damn good reason.

There has to be acceptance that the balance must exist.

this can also be the case of Re-writing symbolism.

You know? Instead of personal fears, the monsters represents fixed characteristics of human kind. Self Loathing, Lust, that stuff...

But c'mon... let's be honest here. You really think they could create a Silent Hill movie without Pyramid Head? They could... it just wouldn't make as much money. And that's the point of Video Game movies, cash in from gamers, cash in from movie goers.