Uwe Boll defends his films
But HOTD was 'complete crap'.
Notorious film director Uwe Boll has gone on record talking about the films he's made based on videogames and some of the things he'd like to do in future, including a project based on Postal. He'd also like to work with game makers including Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege) and Crytek (Far Cry) to ensure that the films he's making based on those titles receive more attention.
In a lengthy interview with 1UP, Boll admits that the House of the Dead film was awful - blaming SEGA and the acting cast for the film's fundamental problems - but refuses to apologise for Alone In The Dark, pointing instead to the film's success outside of Western cinemas and decent returns from rentals and DVD sales. He reckons that Tara Reid's acting was "the only weak part", and insists that most of the negative reaction to his films comes from people who haven't seen them.
The House of the Dead was "complete crap", he admits, but he also reckons that's largely because SEGA didn't get him involved until it was too late. Apparently he had to make up 50 per cent of the dialogue on-set and it's still "cheesy" because "there are no characters".
"This was one point of the fans where the fans are totally right," though. "Don't use video game material in the movie!" One of the many criticisms of House of the Dead was the way it included random splurges of in-game footage between scenes. "I thought with House of the Dead [and] the way we did it and it was so cheesy in a way it was kind of pop culture doing it... I still say it's quite cool, but it takes you out of the movie and out of the story," he admits.
On the subject of Postal, he says it "could be a movie that's like Falling Down but more as a satire, more as a thing where you can actually laugh about it also," which strikes us as a bit odd, given that that is pretty much how we felt about Falling Down anyway. Boll hasn't sewn up the rights to Postal, apparently, but is working on it - despite comments to the contrary from developer Running With Scissors.
What's more, Boll says he'd like to work on Silent Hill and Hitman if he was ever given the choice, but in the meantime he's focusing on what's on his plate - Dungeon Siege, starring Burt Reynolds among others, and BloodRayne, starring Kristanna Loken of Terminator 3 fame.
He also has a few words on the people who continually insult him on message boards and websites. Apparently he reads a lot of it. "Like, there are some hardcore fans who you never can satisfy because they played that game over and over again and they have their own movie in their head, so no matter what you do, they don't like it," he says.