Shigeru Myamoto Perfectly Explains Why Videogame Movies Suck

"I think that part of the problem with translating games to movies is that the structure of what makes a good game is very different from the structure of what makes a good movie. Movies are a much more passive medium, where the movie itself is telling a story and you, as the viewer, are relaxing and taking that in passively. Whereas video games are a much more active medium where you are playing along with the story. In some cases, you are progressing the story yourself, or perhaps you get to a point where it gets too difficult and maybe you give up. I think that people who like movies also have an interest in the creative work that goes into making a video game. So there is interactivity with the video game that you don’t necessarily have with a movie. In that sense, I think the structures of the two are very different and you have to take that into account when converting a video game into a movie. I think that video games, as a whole, have a very simple flow in terms of what’s going on in the game. We make that flow entertaining by implementing many different elements to the video game to keep the player entertained. Movies have much more complex stories, or flow, to them, but the elements that affect that flow are limited in number. So I think that because these surrounding elements in these two different mediums vary so greatly, when you fail to take that into account then you run into problems."