Editorials
In Defense Of ‘Silent Hill’ (2006)
Video game adaptations. You either love them, or you hate them. I’ve found myself on both sides, though I usually find myself siding with the latter. The reason for this is while there have been a few that have genuinely tried to be faithful to their source material, they’re lost in a sea of lazily crafted cash-grabs from people who aren’t willing to invest more than a modicum of effort into them.
These half-assed movies ignore the fact that gamers are an incredibly passionate bunch. Like some sort of geeky hive mind, we’ve spent years amassing our knowledge, holding week-long celebrations, and building insanely detailed wikis that serve as virtual shrines to the things we love. We could use this hive mind mentality for evil, but we don’t.
Because there’s a good chance we know considerably more about these worlds than the folks adapting them, we can tell when the filmmakers haven’t even played the game they’re trying to turn into a movie. We can also tell when they have played them.
It’s alarming how rare that is. Turning a game into a movie without playing the game is like deciding to adapt The Lord of the Rings when your knowledge is limited to the six minutes you spent watching the 1978 animated flick. Don’t do that. Seriously, don’t. As fervent as gamers can sometimes get, the communities that surround Tolkien’s works are exponentially more intense.
They won’t hesitate to cut you, and they’ll do it with a genuine replica of a Greenleaf knife, probably while yelling in Elvish.
There’s really only a handful of video game franchises that have communities like that, and one of them is Silent Hill. This series has had 15 years to make us love it. For people like me, who have been playing these games since the first released in 1999, that love is unconditional. The first three games guaranteed its status as one of gaming’s greats early on.
Christophe Gans is a fan of Silent Hill, and it shows. Before he was able to direct the adaptation, Gans hounded Konami for five years before he was given the film rights, even going so far as to send them an audition tape to explain his love for the series.
There’s a number of reasons why I consider this film to be the most successful of Hollywood’s many attempts at bringing a video game to the silver screen, but among them, keeping Konami Japan and Team Silent — the team behind the first four games — involved with its production the whole way through is what kept it from becoming just another video game movie.
With a fan in the director’s chair and consistent input from the developer, Silent Hill was able to retain much of what made the games so memorable. Akira Yamaoka’s work on the games’ soundtracks is iconic, so pulling a selection of tracks from the early games was smart. That move went a long way in making the film feel like it was an extension of the games.
You don’t need to spend any significant amount of time with the games to be familiar with their very distinct atmosphere. Silent Hill has a very unique aesthetic. The world is opaque and dreamlike, it feels like a living thing. It shifts and changes based on your darkest fears, secrets and sins. It’s a very personal nightmare.
It’s not surprising that some of this was lost in translation. It makes sense that Gans and Co. would want to use familiar creatures from the series, like Pyramid Head and the Nurses — originally manifestations of James Sunderland’s psyche — rather than try and come up with something new. Revelations would later take a stab at being original, and we all saw how that turned out.
Clive Barker called. He wanted me to tell you you’re bad at this.
The film’s cast of monsters serve as a sort of highlight reel. Fan favorites like the Grey Children, Bobble Head Nurses, Lying Figure and Pyramid Head make their necessary appearances, and while I would’ve liked to see them tied to Rose, seeing them realized outside of the games with such an impressive attention to detail made up for that unrealized narrative potential.
That’s not to say the movie didn’t try anything new. That old-timey flashback bit near the end was beautiful and did a fantastic job of cleaning up the near-incoherent mess that was the film’s story.
We may have reached a point where there’s a dozen awful video game movies for every successful — relatively speaking — attempt, but it’s films like Silent Hill that keep me from developing an entirely pessimistic view of the popular trend. It’s far from perfect, but I believe Gans and Friends have come the closest to bringing us a decent adaptation.
How about you? Feel free to share your thoughts on this movie, or even video game adaptations in general, in the comments!
Editorials
‘The Vampire Lestat’ Concert Event Launches New Season With The Ultimate Expression Of Fandom
There are thousands of passionate fans decked out in gothic chic and champing at the bit like feral creatures. They’re screaming for Lestat, a legendary vampire-turned-rock star, as if the entire crowd has been glamored into submission.
The entire experience is magic, but not because some supernatural thrall has been activated. What’s going on is even more special. It’s the power of the effusive fandom that’s been authentically assembled by AMC’s sublime Immortal Universe, namely Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, now, The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat is far from the first Anne Rice adaptation, and it’s not as if there’s been a lack of erotic vampire material for audiences to sink their teeth into. On June 2nd, during a one-night-only spectacle, New York City’s prestigious Beacon Theatre shook from Sam Reid’s bravado performance and an audience full of adoring fans who had already memorized Lestat’s songs.
It’s clear that The Vampire Lestat just hits differently than its predecessors. It’s become more than just a TV series at this point, and this opulent display of ego, swagger, and pure sex is the perfect way to premiere the new season and give back to the fans who helped make Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat such a breakout success. It’s exactly the sort of hyperbolized hedonism that would make Lestat cackle.
For all intents and purposes, AMC has successfully created the illusion that this concert/premiere is just one of the many destinations on Lestat and his band’s 54-stop tour that is simultaneously playing out on this season of television. It’s such a sophisticated and thorough level of interactive fan engagement that the audience doesn’t just understand, but also manages to accentuate through its involvement.
It’s a level of seamless synergy that’s not unlike the give-and-take relationship of vampire and victim.
Before the concert started, “LeStans” were sitting in the Beacon and flipping through a fake Rolling Stone issue with Lestat emblazoned on the cover, complete with interviews with the undead frontman inside. Other fans were admiring the vinyl pressing of Lestat’s EP as they walked past a section of undead band merch. Fandom and fantasy blur together, and it all becomes this elaborate, immersive experience. Fan celebration, erotic gothic fantasy, and a lavish rock concert transform into one beautiful thing.
To this point, AMC Global Media’s Chief Content Officer and President of AMC Studios, Dan McDermott, introduced the event by reiterating to fans, “You are the heartbeat of the series.” That’s abundantly clear on nights like this as that heartbeat collectively pulses to this performance. In terms of how AMC engages with The Vampire Lestat’s fans, it’s as bold a reinvention as the season itself.
This intuitive gamble speaks to AMC’s creativity in this department and a fandom that is eager to seize such opportunities. It’s the same innovation that led to zombie walks for The Walking Dead and real-life Los Pollos Hermanos restaurant pop-ups from Breaking Bad. It’s a great way to pump up the audience for The Vampire Lestat and then maintain that enthusiasm for the whole season.
For most series, a rock ‘n’ roll concert just doesn’t make any sense as a promotional tool. The Vampire Lestat finds itself in a very unique position where it can deliver an excellent concert at an iconic theater, but also use it to showcase The Vampire Lestat’s music by Daniel Hart (who was shredding on stage alongside Reid and the rest of their band) and, more than anything, Sam Reid’s endless charisma.
The way in which Reid feeds off of the crowd’s energy, modulating his performance and giving different sections of the Beacon life, is a perfect distillation of the series’ thoughtful relationship with its audience and how it’s become such a breakout success for AMC. AMC Studios President Dan McDermott emphasized that the fans are the reason that the show is still here and why an event like this is even possible. It’s rare to see a series in which every single cog in the machine is so perfectly attuned to its fans. Reid’s fans already cheer whenever they see him, so why not translate that to a concert setting?
It’s clear in this season of television that Reid was born to be a rock star, but it’s surreal to see him effortlessly command the stage — and the audience — at every step of the concert. He recites Shakespeare monologues and bitches out Armand between songs, all while the audience screams in support. For the duration of this concert, Reid is Lestat, and he’s given thousands of fans a memory that’s as immortal as any vampire.
Now bring on the encore and get this show on the road!
You must be logged in to post a comment.