So a lot of people saw my Top 11 Comic Book Movie Adaptations thanks to the ScrewAttack feature (thanks, guys), and many weren't happy with most of my choices. As such, I want to explain how I judge films, and hopefully, you can understand a bit better. This is also how I judge stories entirely and why some games that some may not have thought of at all belong on my personal top ten lists.
As the title was meant to suggest, there's a lot that goes into a good film and good game's story. Chief among these is, is some version of the Hero's Journey. Love it or hate it, some form of it has to be in anything in which you follow the protagonist's story from beginning to end. It can be back story that you glean only from statements, and have to guess at their full extent. However, even in those cases, there's often more to the journey shown in the film. You may not agree that this is exists in any complete film...but, I'd like you to name five films that don't have it in some way. I'll open it up to games with stories, too (so...no really early Arcade games or sports games where stories simply can't exist except what you give them). In case you don't have a good grasp of the Monomyth theory, this list does pretty good at explaining it, and at the same time keeping it neutral of setting and characters (save for Campbell's titles). The great thing about this though, is that every protagonist has some motivation, and this in essence, speaks of that motivation, regardless of their actions.
The second thing a complete story must include is thematic elements. Drama and Comedy are the big two, but there's also Tragedy, Suspense (which encompasses Terror and/or Horror), Romance, Adventure, and Action. A truly complete story has each of these covered to at least a complete extent (so, terror can't be defined as a monster jumping out of the closet becoming a quick comedic scene...the protagonist has to feel fear for the duration of the scene).
Sadly, not many movies can do all of this, and there's a lot of reasons why...some of my list can't even do this, or have a lot of trouble seeing it all. Let's look at what is my number two, Batman Begins. Drama, definitely. Tragedy...it's Batman, so, duh. Suspense, yeah, you don't know who's really in charge til he shows himself. Romance, pushed to side, but Rachel Dawes. If you've seen the movie, you should understand. Adventure and action...seriously? If this is in question, you need to have your head checked. Comedy though...it get's really tough. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman make the quick quip but, for the most part, it's really tough. The only scene that can really be pointed to as this is funny is Bruce meeting Lucius Fox in the R&D department for the first time.
As I said, it's really hard to do...the latter half of my list, seven through twelve simply couldn't do it all (a few got close, X-men First Class and RED), but they simply couldn't do it. Others, focused more on the dramatic, leaving out comedic almost entirely. When it comes to action and adventure heavy films, you can rarely count drama out entirely...but Kickass tried, even it's heavy drama and terror scenes to be comedic.
To put this into perspective though...it takes watching both Star Wars A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back together (and at that point, you might as well watch the original trilogy back to back to back) to get every aspect, out of every Zelda game, only two have really gotten every aspect in (because, while heavily implied...Link and Zelda...not a couple), and if I ever make a top Zelda list, they sit at the top. Neither's Ocarina of Time nor A Link to the Past (though the former comes close thanks to Saria, Malon, and Ruto...but not all the way, sadly). It's one of the reasons I argue Link should probably have a voice at this point (if you disagree...go, read, as these are gonna come up again really soon; I haven't read Phantom Hourglass yet, but the rest are awesome, but discussion for another time).
Now, just because I really like story, this is not the only reason I like films, however, a good story doesn't hurt in my eyes and a bad story can bother me. It explains why I like Halo when I'm not a big fan of first person shooters (yeah, requires the books...but still, their officially part of the canon...so...) and why I dislike Watchmen (when there's named the Comedian, and I don't laugh at all during a movie...there's a problem...I though the book had some funny moments, but not the film, and I hated the psuedo-love story between Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II).
So, I hope this gives everyone a bit more perspective on why the list is the way it is, and how I determine what I like a bit better. Still working on some of the Indie Download Games (some of them are quite difficult and pretty long drawn out...that, and I spent a lot of time on Iji collecting everything and Cave Story's always been killer to get 100%), so it may be a bit longer til you see it. I also would like to reread the Zelda books before getting to them...tracking down Phantom Hourglass may be an issue there, though. As such, I'm not sure what's next...we'll see.
As always, please, share your thoughts in the comments section, and if you have any indie games you think I might be missing going into Free Games part 2, go ahead and send me a message. Right now, I've got about eight really good ones in my opinion, but there could be more.
-Sara
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