I think the whole idea is to rip off Resident Evil. When Hollywood sees an idea that has any promise, they milk it over and over and over and put it into any movie that it can possibly fit in and some that it can't.

I enjoyed the Starship Troopers movie personally (though not the straight-to-video sequel), even if it didn?t come near the cerebral heights that Heinlein?s classic literature did. Of course, that?s how most movie translations of books work. A prime example would be how the industry has been raping Philip K. Dick for years, always conveniently excluding any traces of philosopher in favor of action. Blade Runner was pretty good and Total Recall wasn't that bad, but they still lacked the great thought cycles that were found in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. Of course, it could be worse, look at Pay Check or The Minority Report

Exactly.

Most movies cater for the masses. These people are worthy, but not intelligent. Movies are made to sell, otherwise no one would fund them.

You?re spot on with James Bond, however I?m going to disagree with you on The Lord of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ. From a personal standpoint, I found The Lord of the Rings trilogy to be incredibly boring and clich?, but I find that most high fantasy stories are. As for the Passion, there was little to no thought involved in that, since it was indeed about nothing but violence and was also a longwinded movie. Religious biases aside, The Passion of the Christ was awful. Despite my paganism, I?d really like to see an epic done about the life of Jesus, but two hours of him merely being beaten without a word of his teachings is nothing but a thinly veiled guilt trip. I won?t get into any of the other reasons why Christians really shouldn?t like that movie, as this isn?t the thread. Hollywood is right in assuming that people are stupid, in America they far outweigh the intellectuals.

Apocrypha, Blade Runner was the reason that I picked up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I must agree that the entirety of it?s philosophy was missing. I?ve only ever read one other Dick book though and that was The Man in the High Castle. It was good, though seemed to lack an ending. The author definitely belongs on a shelf right next to Kafka and Vonnegut.

Just forget Hollywood for a while, and go see a few oriental movies, and some european works, while you're at it. Works refreshing after that J.Bond crap you mention -- they've thoroughly killed that series indeed. And with movies like 'Van Helsing', I think we're going for an all-time record mental flatline in the movies.

Malchia, I was referring to the fact that Hollywood has no clue as far as what will and will not be popular because their assumptions about the populace are heavily downward in nature.  People don't like other people assuming that they are morons and tend to react badly to that.  The fact that LOTR and The Passion sold as much as they did is not necessarily a sign of intellectual sophistication of the audience, but merely a fact that Hollywood lives in its own little world and should realy try to deal with the "masses" on their level as opposed to looking down their noses at them.  That's why these movies were successful - the directors, producers, and screenwriters took their work seriously and knew who they were appealing to and how to do so.  Personally I think people are a bit fed up with egotistical elitist intellectuals who don't know how to treat people with respect and instead just assume people will eat whatever crap is spoonfed to them.  If you assume the audience has at least some degree of intelligence and take your own script seriously you're more likely to keep their attention and will probably appeal to a wider audience in the process.  Regardless of your personal opinions and beliefs regarding The Passion, you cannot argue that it was successful and generated more ticket sales than anyone expected.  So what was Hollywood's answer to the success of The Passion?  Saved!  And we all know how well that one sold.  Really.  That's like following The Godfather up with Johnny Dangerously...  

BFG = Big F-cking Gun.

Well, it's a given that Hollywood would rape the Doom universe in creating a move. They did it to Wing Commander as well (have you SEEN what  they did to Wing Commander?!). The movie studio actually said that they couldn't write a script to match the fear, tension, and excitement of the game's story, which is pretty sad. Doom 3 had a good story by video-game standards, but it's still just a video game and its story isn't that complex or compelling.

At least it probably won't be quite as bad as those old Doom novels. Not only did the author create a terrible ending (the Klave? Destructionists? WTF?!?!), but he gave Doomguy a chickenshit name like Flynn Taggart. Flynn Taggart! Ugh.

Movies based on games:
- Mortal Kombat
- Streetfighter
- Double Dragon
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse
- Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
- Pokemon the First Movie - Mewtwo vs. Mew
- Super Mario Bros.

Now I've left Resident Evil (the first) out of this list, because.. it was actually half-decent. ;]

Nuff said, I fear.