Strange, I don't remember any vampires in Saving Private Ryan!
It's always good to see a filmmaker on his way to carving his own niche; somebody who brings his own sense of style to every production, and manages to make it just that much more special. But not if you're name is Uwe Boll, and the only thing you're known for is making video game movies.
We make a lot of fun at Paul W.S. Anderson's career; after all, he managed to ruin Alien vs. Predator, Resident Evil, AND Mortal Kombat. That's quite a resume for just one man. But Uwe Boll has Paul topped, because Mr. Boll isn't planning on just making a couple video game movies in his career, he's going to do at least five of them ... in a row!
Spending too much time trying to picture Kill Bill directed by Uwe Boll can lead to headaches and erectile disfuction!
Believe or not, between 2003 and 2006 Uwe Boll is tapped to direct five game movies all without pause. He's already released the critical and box office dud House of the Dead, his take on Alone in the Dark was released in January, and he has been tapped to direct movies based on FarCry, BloodRayne, and Hunter: the Reckoning. Some filmmakers don't even have a chance to direct five movies in their lifetime, yet this guy makes five movies that only the most die-hard fans are going to watch.
Oddly enough, up until 2003 Uwe had never directed a video game movie. His fillmography featured low-budget German films and more than a couple direct-to-video action movies. But after House of the Dead (a film so bad it made one critic write, "You'd be hard-pressed to find a duller, more incompetent - and less scary - flick with cheesier effects in a remainder bin crammed with direct-to-video horrors.") I guess somebody saw something in him, because he was given the chance to direct Christian Slater (Alone in the Dark), Ben Kingsley (BloodRayne), and other big name talents in what will surely be one disastrous film after another.
We all know video game movies are the lowest form of filmmaking, so perhaps we should be happy that Uwe is wasting his "talents" there and not on movies we might actually want to see. But these days a couple of real filmmakers are starting to take
I suppose we should be happy that Uwe isn't remaking Akira Kurosawa films!
notice of video games, such as John Woo who directed the Spy Hunter movie and is tapped for Rainbow Six. Just imagine how much better it would sound to hear that the director of Hard Boiled was going to make the FarCry movie. Certainly sounds better than "brought to us by the guy who gave us House of the Dead", don't it?
And hey, since everybody keeps saying BloodRayne is the video game equivalent of Kill Bill, why not let Quentin Tarantino direct it? Or if not Quentin, then what about Robert Rodriguez? Or at least somebody who at understands style and good filmmaking ... somebody that didn't direct a bunch of straight-to-video action films. Nobody wants to see quality film making come from game adaptations, but it's going to take actually finding gifted filmmakers that are in it for more than a buck.
But no matter what this means for the game industry as a whole, you kind of have to feel sorry for Uwe Boll. Here's a guy that is probably on the top of his game right now, but in ten years how good is he going to feel when he has nothing but game movie on his resume? How good will he feel when he's managed to piss off every gamer, no matter their age, what console they own, or genre they like. Oh well, you can't feel too sorry for a guy who couldn't even put a house in House of the Dead.
