As we’ve covered multiple times on the site, video games are slowly being accepted into other mediums beyond the gaming space. For example, Nintendo has made a literal theme park celebrating Mario and will have Donkey Kong and others join him soon. Then, you have seen Mario and Sonic in big-budget movies that have done incredibly well for themselves, with more on the way. Then, in the live-action space, things like Naughty Dog’s treasured franchise have proven you can do Emmy-worthy content based on video games. But the real question we want to ask is, is Square Enix really trying to do the same thing?
This doesn’t come from random thoughts we had but comes from the company itself. On the official Square Enix Twitter account, they posted this:
Yes, they’re asking if fans would want any of their big properties to come to movies. Now, they didn’t specifically say whether it would be in the animated space or the live-action space, but they did say movies, and so that’s given gamers plenty to think about.
What might be the most interesting thing is that fans had plenty of suggestions, and the official Twitter account responded to many of them. Some were in a more joking context, while others honestly debated what franchises could work in the movie space.
The main problem that many of their titles, regardless of the franchise, would have is that they would need to condense more times than not, a larger story into a two-hour or so film. Yes, you could argue that they could bill it as a “trilogy” or so of films to do everything right, but that’s a risk. Look at their recent remake trilogy for proof of why that could work but could also fail. The first game was good, but many didn’t like the condensed nature of being stuck in Midgar. If the game hadn’t sold well, we wouldn’t have gotten the sequel, and the same would apply to the movies.
Another element to consider is the theme. While there are many successful video game movie adaptations now, there hasn’t been one from the RPG genre. Mario, Sonic, Joel & Ellie, and more have done very focused kinds of storytelling. Oh, and the Pikachu movie doesn’t count, as that was a detective title.
So, could they translate the fantasy-style and themed worlds with RPG elements and characters into the movie space without making it too over the top or cheesy? Remember, they have done two Final Fantasy movies in the past, and only one of them is somewhat respected.
