THQ and Syfy have released the first details of the previously-announced Red Faction prequel movie, created through a licensing agreement between the publisher and Syfy parent company Viacom. The movie, entitled “Red Faction: Origins”, will bridge the gap between the last game release, Red Faction: Guerilla, and the upcoming Red Faction: Armageddon.
The film is set to air in March 2011, the same month as Armageddon, and will focus on Red Faction hero Alec Mason’s son Jake as he organizes a resistance movement against the titular organization, joined by his sister.
With a live-action film being used, essentially, as a marketing tool for a video game, this could be seen as a way to showcase how far gaming as a medium has come. However, this could go even further than that – as a way to make gaming movies actually successful.
This past summer’s release of “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” was just the latest in a series of gaming movies underperforming, both financially and critically, at the box office. It seems that gaming movies, for whatever reason, have a strange aversion to being good.
And then, there’s the Syfy channel. With a range of Friday night cinematic fare of great taste and class, such as “Rock Monster”, “Goblin”, “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus”, and “Sharktopus” – and no, I’m not kidding on that last one – the network has become a haven for gaming films. With “Silent Hill”, “Resident Evil”, and of course, Uwe Boll’s range of masterpieces all finding homes among the campiest of the camp, they’ve gone on to new lives as films to be enjoyed, or in most cases, endlessly ridiculed for our own entertainment.
“Red Faction: Origins” is not going to be a good movie, in the sense that it will break new ground in artistic achievement. With its Syfy TV movie budget, it will undoubtedly not have the best effects or actors either. But no matter what happens, it will likely be worth the watch just to see how much of a train wreck it really is – and perhaps, it could go all the way around and be good again. And how ironic would that be – the best gaming movie could end up being the one set up to be one of the worst.
