Arkham Asylum and the Dark Knight – Why the Batman game and movie worked – Part 1
There is a good reason why fans of both video games and films are looking forward to Batman: Arkham City and The Dark Knight Rises, as both are being hyped up to dizzying levels.
While most film adaptations of comic books and video games fail in the box office and among critics; Hulk and Max Payne being the better examples, the video game adaptations of popular movies and comic books do not fare too well either, the GI Joe games and Watchmen: The end is nigh (which was a disappointment as it did the graphic novel or the film no justice).
There are the odd exceptions of course, with the Resident Evil series doing well enough for the production studios to make four films and have a fifth installment under production, but that is a rarity.
How then, one has to wonder, has Rocksteady’s surprise of the decade, Batman: Arkham Asylum and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s work of art, did so well?
The fact is that the best answer is always the simplest, and the simple answer seems to be the fact that both the video game and the movie knew what they were: a video game and a movie, and only brought in those elements of their source, the comic book, which fit in with the format.
The Watchmen movie was a success because it brought to life those elements of the graphic novel which everyone identified it with. It only added special effects to add to the rich atmosphere, in some instances it was a panel-by-panel match to the novel itself.
The movie stayed true to its roots, but rather than being a novel, it worked towards adapting it to for movie audiences. The game on the other hand was another story entirely; it lacked substance, character, atmosphere, and seemed almost like an after thought.
The game tried to be something the graphic-novel was not, which was bad enough, but what made it worse was that rather than creating a mindset where the developers were working on a game, they seemed to be working on paying homage to the movie, which in video games is destined to fail.
Moving on the best example of a video game adaptation of a non-video game source: Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game pleasantly surprised everyone when it was released by Rocksteady in 2009.
While The Dark Knight has already been released a year earlier, in 2008, the game did not draw any inspiration from the Hollywood project; something of a necessity for most video games.
The voice acting was done by Kevin Conroy, not Christian Bale, the storyline was completely independent of the movie, the atmosphere in the video game was its own and not the films. All in all, the video game created an accurate, gritty, dark look, which made it look like an interactive comic book. It is something video games give developers license to do: create any world.
At the same time, The Dark Knight could not have been further away from its comic book origins. Yes, one could argue the rivalry between the Joker and Batman came from the comic book and yes, it was in Gotham City and yes, it had Harvey ‘Two Face’ Dent, but in the end that was about as far as the comparisons went.
This article is continued in Arkham Asylum and the Dark Knight – Why the Batman game and movie worked Part 2 – Feature
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Bettor.com
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