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3D Realms "Bewildered" by Max Payne Flick

Kris Graft's picture

By Kris Graft

October 20, 2008

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"There are several fundamental story flaws ... in the film that have me shaking my head in bewilderment."

20th Century Fox said over the weekend that revenues from the new Mark Wahlberg-starring game-movie Max Payne hit $18 million in North America, topping the box office.

Reviews have been roundly terrible, however. Even Scott Miller, CEO of 3D Realms, the producer behind the Max Payne games, found the flick straying significantly from its source material.

"There are several fundamental story flaws ... in the film that have me shaking my head in bewilderment," Miller told Edge.

For instance, he said that one of Max Payne's enemies, the drug distributor Jack Lupino, is "lamely killed by one of the film's non-action characters."

In the first game, Max Payne finishes off Lupino.

Miller elaborated, "...The entire time we're told that this drug makes 1-in-100 people super-human, yet Lupino doesn't demonstrate this in the least. It should have taken a hail storm of bullets to bring him down, plus it should have been Max that kills him."

Miller, whose company is best known for Duke Nukem, also took issue with the portrayal of the character B.B. Hensley, a colleague of Max Payne who ends up betraying the titular character. He also thought the character of Max Payne himself fell short of the game series' standards.

Miller also disagreed with the direction of the movie's narrative. In the game, players know that Max Payne seeks revenge on the drug circle that murdered his family. But moviegoers wouldn't know this critical point until well into the film.

Miller said, "A big problem with the film is that we do not really know what is driving Max until we see the flashback scene showing him coming home and finding his family murdered. In the game, we put this scene right at the front of the story for a reason!

"Saving this scene until mid-film is a narrative blunder, because the audience needs to empathize with Max in order to like him and understand what drives him."

Miller added he "could go on and on" about problems he had with the movie, which was directed by John Moore.

A film adaptation of Duke Nukem is also reportedly in the works.

himanshu9632's picture
On November 4th himanshu9632 said:

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GloriousWolf's picture
On October 21st GloriousWolf said:

*SPOILER ALERT*
Ok, so the US government contracts a huge pharmaceuticals company to make a super soldier serum. Fine.
But do you really expect me to believe that the best they can do is a blue drink that's highly addictive, works on only 1% of the population, lasts for an hour or so and has a side effect of crippling terror? Excuse me? Seriously, soldiers would be better off on PCP and steroids.
But rather than improve on the design they put it into mass production... huh?
Now this corporation that I can only assume is worth millions if not billions of dollars has a bunch of this next-to-useless serum, so what do they do? Incinerate it? Sell it to Russia?
No. Their best idea is to profit from the debacle by selling the serum on the street as a "recreational" drug... What?! Are they really so strapped for cash? I doubt it.
And it seems like quite a stretch that people would actually line up to ingest the stuff for fun, the only effects I could see were a brief rush that makes you scream followed by terrifying hallucinations and "the shakes."

The narrative style did not work for me. I agree the family background should have been explained at the beginning of the film, then the rest could have stayed focused on Max Payne and his quest for justice. Instead the film constantly switched its focus to unimportant one-dimensional characters who did next-to-nothing for the plot.

There were some nice elements. The slow motion effects were great, and there was some nice lighting and environmental effects. The sets were cool and reminded me of the game. The action/shootout sequences themselves were all right, but nowhere near as good as the Hong Kong classics like "Hard Boiled."

AlphaBovine's picture
On October 21st AlphaBovine said:

The crucial part that is wrong is the flash back, no doubt about it. I thought Mark Whalberg was the perfect part to play his role, but in my opinion, he does not do a good job as an actor in any of his movies as creating empathy, he does a good job of taking an empathy creating situation and running with (4 Brothers, Italian Job, The Truth About Charlie). To take the central reason this character is acting upon and only give it to you half way to to the end is like pushing a car down a hill hoping is starts before you crash at the bottom.

All in all the movie was not Bloodrayne horrible, but it wasn't exactly Silent Hill (Hey, I liked it, sue me) good either.

Leathersoup's picture
On October 20th Leathersoup said:

I'm not sure a literal translation should be expected for the transfer of stories when crossing genres from from video game to movie. When movies are based on books they take a lot of liberties with the story line, but and you don't hear a lot of people whining about it.

Simon_Winstanley's picture
On October 21st Simon_Winstanley said:

You probably do on the book equivalent of Edge!

John Petersen's picture
On October 20th John Petersen said:

The movie might need to be longer