Max Payne gives theatrical hope to gamers

Remember the Super Mario Bros. movie? It was released in 1993 and was one of the first movies… Remember the Super Mario Bros. movie? It was released in 1993 and was one of the first movies based on a successful video game franchise to go horribly, horribly wrong. Hollywood adopted the idea that it’s okay to take classic video games and bang them with a hammer until they look like the deformed shell of a movie script. Since that time, it a cesspool of poorly constructed video game movies leaked into theaters What the video game movie genre needs is an epic, real life hero that will do a script justice and isn’t afraid to kick ass both on and off the set. Perhaps an actor, boasting extensive weapons training and the physique of a predatory African lion and yet has all the grace of a ’90s boy band rapper? That’s right: We need Marky frickin’ Mark for this one. ‘I didn’t steer away because it was based on a video game. There was a bit of a red flag raised just because the video games I grew up playing had no story whatsoever. I mean, I played PacMan and like Asteroids. So, I’m not really familiar with other games that were made into movies, I just really liked the script,’ said Wahlberg in a college press conference call. Tomorrow, Remedy Entertainment’s and 3-D Realms Entertainment’s acclaimed video game Max Payne will be taken from the comforts of console existence and condensed into a blockbuster movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges and Mila Kunis. Wahlberg played everything from a cop, a gangster, a high school science teacher, a porn star, a sniper, a rockstar and a football player. Wahlberg is a man’s man, and now, he will do Max Payne, the pain pill-popping slow motion master blaster ex-cop hell bent on avenging his murdered family. The character of Payne is a dark, dramatic and, well, painful role. ‘We wanted to satisfy the diehard game fans, and hopefully it will draw a lot of other people to the film based on the images that they see in the spots, and you know, maybe they’ll go and watch and play the game after … I’d love them to watch the movie before they play the game,’ said Walberg. In the Max Payne video game, Payne is a cop who returns home to find a bunch of junkies in his house, high off the new street drug ‘Valkyr.’ As Payne blasts his way through the junkies to the second floor of his house, the horror sets in as he comes upon the brutally slain corpse of his wife and newborn daughter, still in her crib. After his wife’s funeral, Payne transfers to the DEA and goes undercover to take down the Valkyr traffickers. Things get hairy for our hero however when the one man who knows Payne is undercover is shot in front of his eyes. After that, the police think that he is the murderer, his cover is blown with the Valkyr traffickers, and things get much worse. The game is accented by Payne’s own aggravated and dark narration throughout the game. The world of Max Payne has a very nightmarish quality to illustrate his mental anguish. There is also a heavy emphasis on Payne’s abuse of narcotic pain killers, which he takes to restore his health and ‘ease the pain,’ he narrates glumly. Wahlberg is confident he can capture all of this. ‘Psychologically, I would say I just had to put myself in that headspace of imagining that something horrific happened to my family, which is not a fun place to go, you know,’ said Wahlberg during a college press conference call. ‘I certainly knew I could go to that place and have no problems becoming a crazed individual because of it.’ The idea of making a movie that would inspire an audience to play a game and not the other way around shows that this movie might just be something different from the rehashed Resident Evils and Tomb Raiders of Hollywood. And that sounds like sweet music to the ears of an entire generation of gamers.