"Because you're her mother. Mother is God in the eyes of a child."

So far in this course, we’ve been discussing adaptations from literature to film, and while this is most common form of adaptation is media today, I am more interested in the adaptation of other genres that don’t get much significant study, such as comic books and video games. Which is why I’m focusing on the Silent Hill movie that was released in 2006, loosely based in part from the first game in the Silent Hill franchise - Silent Hill (1999), released for the Playstation.

I should note here with great emphasis and honesty  that I have never played any of the games themselves personally. I have watched my roommate play most of them, so I understand the characters, various devices used in-game, general play style, and general story arcs. Additionally, I own the movie myself, and have watched it several times only to discuss with my roommate the differences, so I feel that while I don’t have a 100% grasp on every little detail in the game series, I am knowledgeable about it enough so to speak about the differences. I liked watching my friend play the first Silent Hill game, mostly because he would play in the dark – which, let me tell you, made the cut scenes WAY more frightening) – and was excited to see the movie when it came out. I’m not that much of a gamer. I’ve played World of Warcraft for several years (which is also getting a movie adaptation soon!) but online games are much different than console gaming, of which I’ve found myself never quite becoming accustomed to the joystick and triggers. I prefer to watch others play, if nothing more than for the storylines. The Silent Hill series – including the games and the movie – are interesting because there are a wide range of interpretations and ideas one can have.

First, because I’m much more familiar with the movie, I’ll give a basic outline for those who haven’t seen it: the movie begins with Rose and Christopher and their daughter Sharon, who we learn is adopted. Sharon has been having nightmares and crying out the name “Silent Hill”. In order to discover more about why her daughter is experiencing these terrors, Rose takes Sharon – without Christopher – to a town she finds called “Silent Hill”, only to engage in a police chase with a motorcycle cop (Cybil) and crashes her car atop a mountain road. She awakens some time later to find Sharon gone. Strange ash is now falling from the sky, blanketing everything in sight. She searches the town of Silent Hill after seeing a girl who looks like her daughter, only to encounter abandoned and decaying buildings, a cult of religious fanatic who find safety in a church, and horrific, mutilated monsters that spawn after the town warps into a twisted, demonic unreality. She eventually teams up with Cybil, who has also crashed on the road, in order to find her daughter and discover the secrets of the town, which center around the strange girl named Alessa (who looks identical to Sharon) and a cult ritual that went horribly awry years ago that was intended to “purify” Alessa but instead split her soul in two, and her evil side is what is making the town as it is. Meanwhile, as Rose and Cybil race around the town avoiding monsters amidst the falling ash, Christopher has also come to Silent Hill, but all he can see is a decaying ghost town, deserted from the coal fires that still burn underground that render the area uninhabitable, void of any people - or monsters.

Meanwhile, the storyline of the original Silent Hill game – by which the movie is loosely based on – is similar, although there are some notable differences. You play as Harry, who also must look for his daughter Cheryl after crashing his car near Silent Hill. Cybil and Alessa still make appearances, although their interactions with the main character Harry are different than in the movie – decisions involving Cybil impact the ending much more, for example. The town is covered in snow instead of ash (there’s no reference to any coal fires), while the memorable monsters (Pyramid Head and the Nurses) are mostly taken from the 2^nd Silent Hill game (2001). Like the movie, it is also the workings of a cult that have turned the town into an evil hell, but it’s because of the cult trying to birth their new god through Alessa. A Silent Hill tradition was also started with this first game, as depending on the player’s actions, the ending can be resolved in different ways. Four endings in all are included in this game, varying in degrees from good to bad (which depends on who you save/sacrifice), and a joke ending in which the characters are abducted by aliens.

So, when we discuss the adaptation from one visual media (game) to another (film), it’s both a similar and different conversation that what we would look at from a text (literature) to visual (film).  Linda Hutcheon remarks in Adaptation that “What gets adapted here is a heterocosm, literally an ‘other world’” (14), which I thought was a perfect description of the adaptation process of video games. Gaming allows the individual to become part of the story. In a well-designed game, it’s the player’s decisions, actions and will that directly change the course of the game, thus creating a different gameplay for each person. An individual may watch a movie and be able to come up with the same thoughts or experiences as another, but a game requires more hands-on interaction, a deeper connection with what is happening on the screen, giving a more personal experience. Gaming allows us to become participants in a different reality rather than casual observers, and this is what makes video games so unique.

However, this provides the biggest problem when creating a film from a video game. Trying to compact down a vast universe with complex characters, storylines, secondary-storylines and visual elements – like the Silent Hill series – into an easily digestible, comprehensible (to most) two-hour film (compared to a 12+ hour game), the viewer loses much of the interaction with the story. They are forced back into “casual observer”, pushed further away from the story. We also see this happen with books that have sprawling, imaginative universes, like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings – much of the sub-plots, digressions and secondary elements are dropped in favor of a neatly packaged (and marketable) story. Thus, I think this is the reason why the film’s director and writer made some of the changes to the story in order to fit it for a film. Director Christopher Gans, on the film’s website through Sony Pictures, has answered to a lot of these changes, including why he made the main character a woman and not a man. Gans says that “It quickly became clear… Harry [the game’s protagonist] never acted like a masculine character… we felt it was better to change to a female protagonist and retain all those important [character] qualities.” I myself applaud this change! The film focuses on the female characters – Rose, Sharon, Alessa, Cybil, Dahlia, Christabella – as the saviors and destroyers. In fact, the original script didn’t include the father Christopher; it was only the studio’s worry about a lack of a male lead that prompted the creation of his character (played by Sean Bean). Gans also said that he understands that not every fan of the game will be a fan of the movie, but that he thinks fans “want a movie that they can respect and a film that generates conversation and an exchange of ideas. I want the movie to reinforce the cult and intelligence that surrounds the game… To do this well I had to sacrifice key elements in the game” such as secondary plot-lines and greater reliance on the player discovering secrets and puzzles.

But, just as Gans hoped, I found myself enjoying the film – not because it was a “perfect” adaptation of the game’s storyline – but because it allowed conversation and deeper thought into the binaries of good vs. evil, heaven vs. hell, innocence vs. malice. I found my interpretation – and stop reading here if you don’t wish for the film to be spoiled for you – to be quite different than other peoples: I believe Rose, Sharon and Cybil all died in their car accidents, and their adventures in Silent Hill was their journey to escape hell. Cybil is unable to, and is consumed by the fires of hell. However, when Rose and Sharon leave Silent Hill and return home, only to find that the fog and ash of Silent Hill has followed them, they are unable to see or hear Christopher, who is in the same house in the “real” world. Rose and Sharon, even after their struggles with hell and damnation, are left without a heaven, denied the perfect afterlife. They remain trapped in a limbo state with only each other for company.

(1497)

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York, NY: Routledge. 2006. Print.

Silent Hill. Dir. Christopher Gans. Sony Pictures, 2006. Film.

”Silent Hill: Notes From Director Christopher Gans.” Sony Pictures. Sonypictures.com, 2006. Web. 1 March 2011. 

< http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/silenthill/productiondiary/index.php>