Why the industry hates Uwe Boll

Mr. Boll has been quoted in one of his commentaries as not knowing why we, the gaming industry, get so mad at him, and he's come up with some pretty simple retorts. Time to tell Mr. Boll the truth. The temptation is to run this whole article through Babelfish for German, because maybe he'll understand it better. But anyway.



MR BOLL: The concepts are "in their heads", gamers will not be satisfied.

ME: No. Yes, Gamers do get concepts of a game in their head. But is it that hard to figure out exactly what they want? Take, for example, Final Fantasy Advent Children. It will certainly win no Oscars, but it did exactly what gamers want- present the same game world, and present the characters in the light they wanted them presented in. So, it is possible.

The issue is simple: Uwe Boll does not think about gamers, he thinks about normal film making. Gamers want games based around the games, and do not give a flying shit if it has famous actresses or the like. You could hire completely unknown actors (Who fit the parts, of course), put them in an appropriate environment, and make a great game movie. On the other hand, you could hire Tara Reid and film it with all the above things but focus on her, and you'll auto-fail.

As well, gamers really do not care that much about the special effects or the like. Well, we do, but not as much as you would think. Big explosions are nice, but if you're making a movie based around Shenmue, it won't fit. What we want is familiarity. In that same example (a Shenmue movie), how about having some of the same camera angles? It would be interesting purely because it would show the difference between the game and your own skill. We do NOT want "Mario meets punk" or some sort of modifier added into the mix. You might as well make a Zelda movie with guns.

So, the point I mean to make is that instead of bitching about these notions, use them. After all, it would be much eaiser, because it would automatically be a handbook to make the movie anyway, instead of attempting to be "Creative".


BOLL: People on the internet who talk badly about my movies just want to discredit my works.

ME: Yep. That's because you don't get it. The people who know these series well can adequately describe how bad your movies are. The only reason that Uwe Boll's movies sell is because either:

A. Someone goes out and watches it not knowing the franchise, or
B. The fan of the series gets it out of fandom, but still hates it (See: The Mario Brothers movie).

Just because you get bad reviews doesn't mean everyone's out to get you, it means that they may have a valid opinion and you may be purely arrogant. When almost every single movie you've made (I'm not sure about the German flicks he made, but, I lived in Germany for three years and never saw anything cinematically amazing, so...), that generally means that you may have an issue that spawns more than just "Those Internet Flamers".



Well, that's about it for his bitching, but I have one last rant before I cut out MY bitching. See, Uwe Boll tried something interesting on his latest movie (Bloodrayne). Yes, he actually did go to Romania. But what did he do for his movie? He hired prostitutes.

"They were better than actors. We looked for local Romanian actresses, but there they are all from the theater and act very broadly. For 150 euros a piece the whores would be naked and do as they were told. It was better.?

So, apparently good film making involves PROSTITUTES. This doesn't suprise me one damned bit. When you're a director like Uwe Boll, from which no-one expects anything special out of you, I guess you can go to the local whorehouse and pick out the ones without STDs crawling all over their bodies. I remember an old quote- "There are no small parts, just small actors"? Well apparently, Uwe Boll completely forgot about this and decided that if you were going to be in the background in this movie, you might as well be nude and lesbian or something.

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