Indian movie industry’s peculiar video game connection

In India, movie making is a multi-billion dollar business. It produces more movies than Hollywood and the Chinese movie industry combined. However, if you look at the quality, good Indian movies can be counted on the fingers of a hand. The problem is not just overpaid actors, mediocre directors, or producers that dispose cinematic pile of garbage on us viewers. It is lack of creativity and originality. The industry hardly produces anything original. Bored of stealing from Hollywood, they seem to have now turned to our beloved video games. Phantom Inspired by Homefront  If you are brave enough to put up with Saif and Katrina’s acting skills, Phantom movie actually has an interesting plot. The thriller revolves around Indian intelligence agency personnel getting rid of the terrorists. However, despite the hefty Rs 50 core budget, the movie could not manage to afford an original poster. It is lifted straight from 2011’s FPS (First-Person Shooter) Homefront developed by Kaos Studios. The game wasn’t a huge success back then, but it did have excellent narration and artwork for sure. This should explain how the Phantom team got to know about it. Indrajith Inspired by Uncharted 2 If you think that stealing Homefront’s poster was a shameless act, then check out Indrajith did to our beloved Uncharted. Not one, the folks took “inspiration” from two games in the Uncharted series —  Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.  Another poster has an uncanny resemblance to the chapter 20 Caravan from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The movie stars Gautham Karthik and is produced by his father. Gautham has to be the luckiest kid in India. His dad not only bought a PS3 and Uncharted, but is also funding his dream to play Nathan on a big screen.  Mr X 3D Scarred Max Mayne 2 for us Max Payne is more than your regular third-person shooter. The franchise is known for its cinematic noir treatment and engaging story. We still consider Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne a benchmark video game art direction. Little wonder then, it caught the attention of “creative” folks of Bollywood — guys behind an abysmal movie called Mr X to be precise. Had they simply taken the inspiration from Max Payne’s artwork, we wouldn’t have felt bad. However, the Bollywood people scarred memories of many gamers by morphing Emran Hashmi’s face on that of Max Payne.  Ek Tha Tiger Inspired by Max Payne and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Ek Tha Tiger was a big budget Bollywood flick. Produced by Yash Raj Films, the movie had a budget of millions of dollars. If a normal Indian production steals artwork from one source, the extravagant one has multiple inspirations. Ek Tha Tiger guys went after two of the best video game franchise in the industry — Max Payne and Uncharted. Here’s the first poster inspired by Max Payne 3:  What if Bhai’s fans are not impressed by this poster? Let’s copy another one from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception for a good measure:  Bonus content: third poster copied from Michael Bay’s movie The Island: