With so many movies being remade and rebooted, I guess it makes sense that games based on films are coming back for a second try as well.
You’ve read on TG Daily that Rambo is returning to the gaming world after a twenty-two year absence, and now Paramount wants to give the Godfather video game another shot.
According to Variety, with The Godfather: Five Families, Paramount and game developer Kabam will bring the title to Facebook and Google+, “the first time the series has ventured into the casual gaming space.”
The game is a prequel, which seems kind of silly because Part II had the prequel backstory of Don Corleone’s immigration to America and his rise to power.
The first Godfather game, which was created by EA, didn’t do well with gamers, and like a lot of games based on movies, didn’t exactly receive stellar reviews.
Francis Ford Coppola has always been ambivalent about the Godfather films, but he was also unhappy the game was done without his permission (Paramount owned the property), and publicly denounced it.
Similarly, Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader were also not happy there was a Taxi Driver game in the works, but couldn’t do anything about it because Columbia owns the rights.
Others involved in the Godfather films weren’t happy about it either. “I think it’s tacky,” says Fred Roos, who cast The Godfather with Coppola, and also cast American Grafitti. “Why not a video game of Gone With the Wind or Orson Welles’ films? Is nothing sacred?”
Yet Roos stopped short of saying turning The Godfather into a game is crossing the line. “I don’t want to exactly say that because one has to be a realist,” he continues. “The Godfather movies are great works of art, but they’re also gigantic mass entertainment. That’s the Holy Grail of moviemaking when you can do both. So I guess it’s okay. It’s such a part of the culture, and if the game gets people to go back, buy the DVD, and look at the movie seriously, that’s a good thing.”
Michael Chapman, who was the camera operator on The Godfather, and went on to be the cinematographer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, says, “I’m sure the original Godfather will long outlast any videogame of it. The sanctity of The Godfather as a movie is going to exist no matter what they do to it. You rent a DVD of it, and there it is, just as it always was.”
