By Nathan Grayson on December 4th, 2012 at 8:00 am.
Once, I thought there was at least some cold, profit-maximizing business precision that guided whatever awfulness-seeking missile explodes games into not-great movies, but now I’m not even sure of that anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong: Company of Heroes is a work of absolute RTS brilliance, but it’s not exactly a household name. And yeah, much as I think my most brilliant tactical masterpieces – for instance, a nuanced little number I like to call TANKS EVERYWHERE – are worth their own movie adaptations, the game’s brand of top-down contemplaction doesn’t exactly make for the best big screen material. Then again, this one’s direct-to-DVD, so I guess that solves that. But obviously, making the leap to a new medium required Company of Heroes to take some liberties. For instance, when I say “making the leap,” I mean that literally. Across the top of a train. Like Indiana Jones. See for yourself after the break.
Unsurprisingly, Company of Heroes: The Movie of the Game of the War looks preposterously overblown and cliched. Also, if it can maintain the level of dramatic action movie leaping featured in this trailer throughout the whole film, well, it’ll certainly be… something.
The plot, meanwhile, focuses on evil Nazi science and the only company of soldiers – nay, heroes – who can Get The Job Done. Observe, courtesy of IGN:
“During the last major German offensive of World War II, a company of American soldiers is lost behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge and they make a horrific discovery – Hitler has a super bomb in development. The soldiers soon learn about a secret allied mission to retrieve a defecting German scientist in charge of a secret weapons program. Faced with impossible odds, the company and an escaping POW go on a daring raid into the heart of Nazi Germany in pursuit of the scientist.”
It’s actually got some fairly serious starpower going for it, though – or at least, starpower in the realm of war movies. Tom Sizemore of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down’s starring, and Neal McDonough from Band of Brothers is also on board. If nothing else, I doubt the ensuing mishmash of so-bad-it’s-good-ness will be boring. At least, I really, really hope not.
So yeah, Company of Heroes is getting a movie. One that’s significantly more existent than those of World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Wolfenstein, and many, many others, no less. What a world, etc.
04/12/2012 at 08:06 Aldehyde says:
That looks hilariously terrible.
04/12/2012 at 08:26 baby snot says:
That’s not a real trailer though? It has bits of Band Of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan spliced into some crap… No? I REFUSE TO BELIEVE.
EDIT: There’s no IMDB page. I want this to be a hoax so bad. But it’s not.
04/12/2012 at 09:02 yurusei says:
I don’t remember Vinnie Jones being in either.
04/12/2012 at 08:07 MeestaNob says:
At least we now have an actual reason why the THQ stock price went up, someone clearly paid them money for the CoH naming rights.
04/12/2012 at 08:17 Bilateralrope says:
Did they also pay to adapt the plot*, or are we just getting a WW2 movie ?
I know that if I was in THQ’s position, I wouldn’t turn down the offer. They need the money, and it’s not like anyone is expecting a video game movie to actually be good.
*I have yet to play any COH games, so I don’t know about their plot.
04/12/2012 at 15:58 DK says:
Company of Heroes games are straight world war 2 in the style of Band of Brothers. So no, the games don’t have Nazi Super Science and magic plots foiled by heroic supermen.
04/12/2012 at 08:17 Ephaelon says:
“I’m not leaving you!” … aaaaand stop. Surprised I made it that far.
04/12/2012 at 08:30 Fiyenyaa says:
Vinnie Jones?
Does this mean we’ll be recipients of the unimaginable treat of him doing an American accent?
04/12/2012 at 09:12 Hoaxfish says:
We just need Eric Cantona playing a Scottish highlander on loan and the experience will be complete.
04/12/2012 at 13:57 Koozer says:
Don’t forget Michael ‘master of accents’ Cain!
04/12/2012 at 17:50 rapier17 says:
Doubt it, those are RAF wings on his jacket. He’ll probably be depicted slamming some unfortunate Luftwaffe pilots head into the canopy of his Spitfire Mk. XIV because “‘e was sayin’ bad things ’bout the King an’ the royal family.”
04/12/2012 at 08:31 Desmolas says:
Not sure if parody of war movies in general or actually a real war movie taking itself seriously…
04/12/2012 at 08:39 abandonhope says:
On the Saving Private Ryan-The Thin Red Line scale it looks… ah fuck it, it looks bad.
04/12/2012 at 08:40 bob. says:
Even the trailer fails to make the action seem any good. Doesn’t exactly make me look forward to the actual movie.
Also: it’s been a while since I played CoH but was there even any story in it apart from “you are fighting this battle of WW2″?
04/12/2012 at 08:48 Slinkyboy says:
Is it too offensive to make a game where you play on the nazi side? Not that I’m interested, just realized that nobody has made an FPS game where you play as nazis. We got a Vietnam war game where you play as the other side, but no nazis. Maybe it’s for the better.
04/12/2012 at 09:09 westyfield says:
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts has you playing as a Nazi during Operation Market Garden.
04/12/2012 at 17:43 pepper says:
I dont recall any games putting you in the shoes of a WWII german soldier singleplayer style. Plenty of MP FPS games that do though, Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty, Forgotten Hope 2 etc.
04/12/2012 at 23:00 LordEvilAlien says:
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
04/12/2012 at 08:49 Roz says:
Doesn’t even look worth pirating.
04/12/2012 at 08:51 -Spooky- says:
Dafuq? Watch HBO “Band of Brothers” and you have CoH in full effect. :)
04/12/2012 at 08:52 Schmudley says:
I reckon its possible this film already existed as a cheap, straight-to-DVD film with a different title, but THQ paid the producers to change the title so they could use it for COH 2 marketing. Which would mean its basically product placement.
That’s assuming it isn’t a hoax.
04/12/2012 at 09:00 yurusei says:
Thank goodness it doesn’t have the “Spielberg sepia” that’s been in most WW2 movies since Private Ryan.
04/12/2012 at 09:08 DanPryce says:
Neil McDonough ends up in so many World War II things, he must bring his own uniform in by now.
04/12/2012 at 09:08 Hoaxfish says:
85% of the film will be everyone following the orders of an unseen, but nearly psychic guy shouting at them over the radio.
“Guys! Guys! Go over there!”
“Now go over there!”
“Stop dying goddamnit!”
“Quickload!”
04/12/2012 at 14:00 Koozer says:
“go and hide in that buiding!”
“Dammit, not THAT building! Right, once you reach the top of the stairs, everyone run back out again and go next door!”
04/12/2012 at 09:12 Dave L. says:
This is left over from Danny Bilson’s big ‘transmedia’ deal with ‘Syfy’ (and further proof that he wasn’t really interested in making video games so much as developing properties he could pitch as films and retain creative control over), which brought us that other cinematic masterpiece ‘Red Faction: Origins.’
04/12/2012 at 09:50 Sacarathe says:
Every single clip comes from an existing movie, some from war films, some from films of comics. Am I to assume I have missed something, as I cannot believe that you all, nor the author cannot see this.
+ its not April.
04/12/2012 at 11:01 razgon says:
Well, other than you are completely wrong, I guess you arent missing anything.
http://www.ufofilmstudios.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90&Itemid=54#&panel1-2
04/12/2012 at 15:57 Sacarathe says:
Perhaps, but its highly suspicious.
04/12/2012 at 11:04 Scumbag says:
I swear the sniper at 30 seconds-ish was waving at the other sniper. Must be a trade thing, kinda like bus drivers that wave at each other.
04/12/2012 at 11:21 JoeFX69 says:
“Tom Sizemore of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down’s starring, and Neal McDonough from Band of Brothers is also on board.”
Why in the name of christs balls do these half baked Star Trek extras and bad gangster movie bubs get mentioned and Jurgen Prochnow doesnt?
04/12/2012 at 11:34 Phoibos Delphi says:
That´s because they don´t read Sutter Cane around here!
04/12/2012 at 16:38 ucfalumknight says:
Well played sir. Well played.
04/12/2012 at 11:47 Dudeist says:
1:42 what a shitty tank is this? This is weird World of Tanks? Wtf?
04/12/2012 at 12:01 Karlix says:
Actually that seems to be a T-34 with a custom turret as far as I can tell. I don’ t know if the Germans used a turret like that but if I recall correctly they were known to modify and use captured enemy tanks…
04/12/2012 at 12:09 Dudeist says:
Definitely not like this, I’m sure :D
04/12/2012 at 15:25 Commander_Zeus says:
They could be going for parodying the terrible war films of the 60s/’70s, where they used post-war tanks mocked up to look ever so slightly like Shermans, but not nearly enough that you couldn’t tell it was an M60, and the Germans uniformly used American half-tracks with swastikas painted on. (Battle of the Bulge, Raid on Rommel)
04/12/2012 at 17:48 pepper says:
Its a T34-85 including the turret. You can see the cast metal turret below the bunch of boxy looking plates. I think they just bolted those on to make it look P4/3 ish(boxy high angled turrets).
No T34 has been deployed on the western front, or not any that I have heard of.
04/12/2012 at 11:58 Didden says:
What… what just happened… *checks universe is still… there*
04/12/2012 at 12:06 pretty fiendish says:
I can’t believe no-one’s thought of making a WW2 film before now. You’d think there would be loads of them, but luckily we now have this to fill the niche. You never know, it might even spawn a whole genre of generic copycat films.
04/12/2012 at 12:08 Rensdyr says:
I didn’t know there were women in CoH
04/12/2012 at 12:29 diebroken says:
“So yeah, Company of Heroes is getting a movie. One that’s significantly more existent than those of World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Wolfenstein, and many, many others, no less. ”
Hey! S.S. Doomtrooper is a sort of Wolfenstein-eque movie… XD
04/12/2012 at 14:34 -Spooky- says:
Iron Sky :D
04/12/2012 at 14:39 Medicine says:
And here I thought I was the only one in the world who’d suffered through the PS1-rendered CGI ‘magic’ of the Doomtrooper. Sci-Fi originals at 2.a.m on a Monday morning were the best, most awful things.
04/12/2012 at 12:58 Aldyramon says:
maybe they just really wanted the name “Company of Heroes” for the movie and THQ was happy about the money they got.
04/12/2012 at 15:51 The Random One says:
Hollywood’s usual M.O. is: Hey, we have a nice warmovie/historical/sci-fi/paranormal script. Do we have movie rights to any IP roughly in the same genre so we can shoehorn it in and wash our hands if the movie bombs?
So you’re probably very, very right.
04/12/2012 at 16:10 SavageCore says:
Such a shame. Just hope we don’t see ingame items for everyone that purchases this on DVD or similar, want to avoid like the plague…
04/12/2012 at 13:19 kimadactyl says:
I hope there’s lots of scenes of tank traffic jams on bridges!
04/12/2012 at 13:32 welverin says:
“the game’s brand of top-down contemplaction doesn’t exactly make for the best big screen material.”
To that I say: Battleship.
04/12/2012 at 13:45 TsunamiWombat says:
To that I say: case in point
04/12/2012 at 14:44 Zarf says:
Am I the only one who really, really wants to see TANKS EVERYWHERE?
04/12/2012 at 17:01 Mr-Link says:
You can! it is probably going to be called battle of kursk documentary.
04/12/2012 at 15:42 The Random One says:
WARMOVIE
This will probably label me as a pariah here on RPS, but I’m so unfamiliar with CoH that when I see that acronym I think it’s a FPS, like CoD or MoH. I don’t think I’ll be watching that movie.
04/12/2012 at 16:10 Wednesday says:
Go play it, it’s very good.
Also I believe it’s free now.
04/12/2012 at 16:39 ucfalumknight says:
Is The Asylum the studio producing this schlock? A straight to SyFy movie?
04/12/2012 at 17:04 FhnuZoag says:
I look forward to finally knowing who Conrad (him of the untied laces) is.
04/12/2012 at 17:10 Mr-Link says:
Is there a way that we can know for sure that this movie is anyway related to THQ and CoH the game in anything other than the name? Maybe they just picked the same name randomly?
I am in the mode for WW2 movies these days so I suppose I wouldn’t mind yet another one, but why oh why does it have to involve some silly what-if Hollywood garbage. Why not just tell one of the bizzilion real life stories…..something like this gem:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343703/
04/12/2012 at 17:49 pepper says:
I wonder, the name in the trailer doesnt even have the same style as the letters do have with the game.
05/12/2012 at 03:04 AgentBJ09 says:
I’m skeptical. That’s all I can be at this point. Maybe that will change once I play CoH again.
06/12/2012 at 09:08 SkittleDiddler says:
Fun fact: Tom Sizemore likes to hire prostitutes to shove objects up his ass and record it on video for posterity.