Several classic video games have been made into movies in recent years, including successful conversions such as the Resident Evil franchise and the Lara Croft films, regardless of whether Angelina Jolie or Alicia Vikander were in the title role. Not every video game foray into Hollywood has been so popular, however, as the universally panned Warcraft movie of 2006 demonstrated.
Take a look at the Call of Duty series, on the other hand, and it is clear that Hollywood has had an influence on the settings, storylines, and even characters contained within the different versions of the epic first-person shooter game.
Museum Bonus Mission - Night At The Museum
Call of Duty is played from the point of view of a soldier, fighting in conflicts from World War II to the modern-day, so it is hardly surprising that a lot of war movies feature on this list. What is more unexpected is that Ben Stiller’s spooky action-comedy A Night at the Museum would have been an influence on the game’s designers, but the inspiration for the Museum bonus mission at the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which exhibits of characters from the game come to life.
Helicopter Rescue - Black Hawk Down
Directed by Ridley Scott, the 2001 film Black Hawk Down is one of the best modern war movies. It tells the true story of a 1993 attack by US forces on a Somali warlord who was standing in the way of a peaceful resolution to the country’s civil war. His soldiers managed to down two helicopters, and the movie dramatically portrayed the desperate fight to survive – a plot which also features in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, though the name of the city in the game has been changed from Mogadishu, the real site of the 1993 battle, to the fictional Bakaara.
Russian Roulette - The Deer Hunter
Call of Duty: Black Ops has some pretty dark moments, but they don’t come much darker than the Payback mission in the first Black Ops game when characters Mason and Woods are forced to recreate the iconic Russian Roulette scene from the 1978 film The Deer Hunter.
The movie starred Robert De Niro as a solider in the Vietnam War, and the Russian Roulette scene in the film caused a controversy at the time of its release – not least because method actor De Niro insisted on having a live bullet in the gun during filming to heighten the tension!
Storming The Normandy Beaches - Saving Private Ryan
The storming of the Normandy beaches on what became known as D-Day has featured in dozens of war movies over the years, but it was the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan which first brought home the true horror of the assault to movie audiences – and Call of Duty: WW2 borrows heavily from the film for its opening scenes. World at War, set in the Pacific Theater of the same conflict, even has an achievement badge called “Saved Private Ryan” which gamers earn for saving a fellow soldier from burning to death.
Prison infiltration ops - The Rock
Prison infiltrations and break-outs are sprinkled liberally throughout the various Call of Duty games, and it is clear from the fact that the employ some of the same tricks that at least one of the designers was a big fan of The Rock, the 1996 film starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery about a team who has to break into Alcatraz. In Modern Warfare 2, the scene in the Gulag’s shower room was inspired by the movie, with the two rooms even looking almost identical.
US Soldiers Take Revenge On Captors - Rambo: First Blood Part II
Call of Duty used the plot of Rambo: First Blood II in their first Black Ops game, which saw Mason and Woods take bloody and violent revenge against the Vietnamese and Soviet soldiers who had been keeping them prisoner.
This was essentially the same storyline of First Blood II which saw John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, return to Vietnam to search for a group of POWs who had been left behind, only to go all, well, Rambo on them and mount a one-man rescue mission.
Mountaineering Action Sequences – Cliffhanger
Somebody at Infinity Ward, the game's developer that first came up with the Call of Duty concept, is a big Sly Stallone fan, as they also borrowed heavily from another of his movies, Cliffhanger when creating one of their video game installments. In Modern Warfare 2, the third mission is even called Cliffhanger, and takes place in a mountainous setting that looks very similar to the movie, and also features some of the same dramatic stunts – including Stallone’s (stunt man’s) final iconic jump across the chasm.
Stalingrad Sniper - Enemy At The Gates
The 2001 film Enemy at the Gates was set around the Battle of Stalingrad which took place between August 1942 and February 1943 as German forces put the city and its people under. Snipers were employed by both sides, and the movie focuses on the increasingly personal battle between two sharpshooters on opposite sides. Call of Duty pretty much copied the opening scenes of the movie for the Stalingrad mission from their first game, in which Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law) and his fellow soldiers cross the Volga under heavy fire.
Vietnam Operation - Apocalypse Now
Black Ops had missions that were set during the Vietnam War, and some of them have borrowed heavily from the classic war movie, Apocalypse Now. They didn’t use the actual storyline of the film, which was itself based on an 1899 book by Joseph Conrad, but anyone who has seen Apocalypse Now and played any of these games would recognize scenes and settings, particularly the river patrol boats which feature heavily in both.
Russian Invasion Of The US - Red Dawn
Call of Duty’s creators pay tribute to the cult 80s movie Red Dawn in their Modern Warfare 2 game. The film pits the Wolverines, a group of plucky high school students, against Russian forces who have invaded the US. While the good guys in Call of Duty are more heavily armed than the youngsters in the movie, the plot is essentially the same, and the mission is even called “Wolverines.” Red Dawn was remade in 2012, with the studio going as far as describing the film as a “live action Call of Duty.”