Red Faction: Origins (2011)

Red Faction: Origins (2011)

Directed by: Michael Nankin

Starring: Brian J. Smith, Danielle Nicolet, Kate Vernon

So, I knew ahead of time that Red Faction is a video game series, but I also knew that I had never played any of the games in it and that my knowledge extended to the fact that you can blow up walls in it. So I think my first impression was that there weren’t nearly enough walls blowing up in this movie.

Let’s see if I can remember what this movie was about… I know it took place on green-screen Mars, and there were two warring “red factions”, if you will, which were being played against each other by a third “red faction”, if you will. Also there was a really poorly developed romance subplot where the male lead basically said “welp, it’s 3/4 of the way through the movie, I love you now.” Oh, and Robert Patrick is a sad old man. I think that was about it.

I gotta say, this movie didn’t exactly inspire me to play any video games. If anything, it reminded me the poor state of affairs that is modern video game storytelling, and made me really angry that it isn’t ten years from now when the concept of a game with a better story than graphics still makes it worthwhile to play, like it was BACK IN THE OLDEN DAYS WHEN YOU KIDS NEVER GOT OFF MY DAMN LAWN!