Today’s audiences are being overrun by adaptations of any entity that have some sort of fragment of a plot, from cheesy morning cartoons (Captain Planet) to retro arcade games (Space Invaders).
However, it’s the recent surge of board game adaptations that really heave the ipecac of absurdity. Universal have announced plans for bringing Candyland to film (which’ll probably be a Wizard of Oz ripoff), 2012 will give us Battleship (The Hunt for Red October knockoff) and Ridley Scott’s keen to make Monopoly happen (The Social Network+).
It probably comes off like I’m already bagging the films, but I don’t want it to seem that way. Board game adaptations have proven to work before (here’s a Clue for those that don’t know what I’m referring to), and if it works for the up-and-comers I mentioned, we might just have a winning formula we can tap.
I’m also unfair when I use the terms ripoff and knockoff. Everything’s derivative nowadays, so why not pick one source of movie inspiration to help keep the wafer-thin board game plot in a firm direction? Since I’m bursting with criminally unnoticed movie ideas, let me pitch you some more board-game-to-films (and the movies they should ripoff).
The objective of Guess Who? is to spot your opponent’s face amongst a crowd of other distinguishable heads before he/she spots yours. This is Infernal Affair‘s plot in a nutshell, the Hong Kong crime thriller that pretty much spawn The Departed. What sets the board game apart is how you play it: via process of elimination. Are you male? Do you wear glasses? Are you sporting a Dick Dastardly mustache? Guess Who? The Movie should assimilate these concepts into a similar crime story. Of course, this means the lawmen and criminals will need to look like background Looney Toon characters.
Did you know that the concept for the Final Destination series actually originated from a game of Mouse Trap? OK, I’m lying, but if I had kept a straight face about it, a part of you would’ve believed me. Like a line of dominoes, a specific chain of events occur that eventually trigger the final one. But instead of following a bunch of dumbass teenagers to their doom, why not follow a family of mice getting caught in impractically long traps one by one? Knowing the board game however, it’ll probably take eight goes to get the trap to work.
Yeah… second thought… nah…
Downfall is a foreign film that depicts Hitler’s last days. The film also started a was-funny-but-now-is-completely-overused internet phenomenon. What I want to see from a Risk movie is not a History channel quality story of global conflict. I want the film to focus on the last few moments of a guy losing a game of Risk. I want to see the intolerable fury that arises out of the loser, knowing that the meaningless hours he/she devoted to that stupid board game will have been for nothing and realising that that time could’ve been spent doing something practical, like playing Civilisation.
Let me tell you something about myself that’s rather personal: Hippos terrify me. I don’t give a crap if Walt Disney sees them as sweet creatures with the uncanny ability to perform flawless ballet. If you give one of those hippopotamuseseses’sss a chance, their granite-powered jawlines with crush your feeble human skeletal system. Trust me, I’ve studied this shit. Hungry Hungry Hippos must be an R-rated horror in the style of Jaws or, at the very least, a lukewarm Lake Placid horrordy. I shudder at the thought of a malicious rampaging blood-thirsty hippo. It’s not just hungry, it’s hungry hungry.
I never fully got the concept of sliding down snakes, though I understand the logic in Snakes and Ladders. If I saw a snake in a tunnel, I’d turn right around and run like a bitch. The bigger it is, the further and bitchier I’d run. So basically, climbing makes progress while running into snakes hinders it. Hence, The Descent. Though, if it were to be a horror, you’d probably need to borrow that Windows ’95 CGI snake from Anaconda. In which case, if you land on that snake, you would end up sliding. Down it’s throat. And die. Rather horribly.
Take Christopher Nolan’s Memento and flip it on its back. Lets have the murderer be the memory-damaged character who collects the weapon of his killings, surgically hiding the implements inside himself. In a psychopathic attempt to relive/remember each kill, he kidnaps a surgeon’s family and traps them in a basement somewhere. If she wants to know the location of her family before they run out of oxygen, she must operate fast without killing him. A gruesome story comes with each bucket, ice-cream cone and pencil she removes from his body. Oh, and the murderer has some sort of nose cancer.
Left foot blue + right hand green + right foot yellow + left hand red + right hand blue + left hand green + left foot yellow + left hand blue + right hand red = The Human Tarantula. ‘Nuff said.
The ancient tactical Chinese war simulator isn’t a potential film-board-game that immediately comes to mind, yet it’s the one that makes the most sense out of all my pitches (excluding Hungry Hungry Hippos). 13 Assassins may also seem like an odd choice of inspiration. For one, it would be more like 16 Assassins vs 16 Assassins. Perhaps I’m still on a 13 Assassins high, but the idea of seeing a film about two samurai clans with different classes harnessing different skills and abilities in a tactical battle to the death until only a handful are left standing *breeeeeeeeeeathe*… sounds phenomenal.
