Kevin Kelly, a contributor to Joystiq, i09 and countless other weblogs, will be weighing in on the intersection between film and video games every Thursday here on SpoutBlog. This is his introductory column; please welcome Kevin, ask him personal questions, shower him with flattery and/or rip apart his argument in the comments.

If you’d been holding onto a game controller or sitting deep in a multiplex somewhere a few weeks ago, you might have felt the shuddering groan of millions of video game and movie fans everywhere when the press release dropped the news: Brett Ratner is going to start making movies based on Activision’s cadre of video games. Maybe the Uwe Boll career path of making extremely bad movie adaptations of video games still appeals to him. It’s not clear what project will be first up, but given the fact that Ratner’s films have somehow made millions of dollars, it’ll probably be something fairly popular. Don’t rule out Brett Ratner Presents: Brett Ratner’s Guitar Hero: The Movie just yet.

It’s just another sign of the movie industry struggling to play catch-up with the gaming industry, which is currently leaving filmed entertainment in the dust. The Entertainment Software Association announced earlier this year that the gaming industry made just over $18 billion in 2007, which is more that double what the movie industry raked in. ESA CEO Michael Gallagher said, “On average, an astonishing 9 games were sold every second of every day of the year.” In a day and age when games can cost $60 at retail (with special editions costing closer to a hundred bucks), that’s a pretty amazing figure.

However, for all the money the gaming industry is sucking in, that hasn’t translated very well into the movie realm. Just try and think of a good movie that’s been based on a video game. Give up? Properties ranging from Super Mario Bros. to Doom have made the jump to the screen, and they’ve all failed to wow viewers. Don’t think I’m counting out the “so bad it’s sort of good” terribleness that was Street Fighter: The Movie, either. Raul Julia and Jean Claude van Damme together in one film? It’s a wonder the universe didn’t implode somehow. Films like Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, and Silent Hill have managed to keep their heads above water by making money, but they’ve been critically lambasted.

Likewise, it’s also hard to think of a movie that’s had a decent video game adaptation. It’s not a good sign when only two games come up in discussions about this very same topic: Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 in 1997, and oddly enough The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, in 2004. You’d expect the high water marks to come less than seven years apart. In fact, in a recent meeting with developers from Activision, they mentioned more than once how Goldeneye set the goal for what they wanted to achieve with multiplayer levels and an experience that wasn’t just a rehash of the movie. Eleven years after the fact and producers are still hoping to be as good as or better than an old James Bond game?

Part of the problem is the dissonance in development times. You can rush a film from development to the screen in less than a year, and that doesn’t always mean it’ll be a terrible film. However, when you rush a video game into development the end result almost always suffers. Just take a look at Enter the Matrix 2003 if you need further proof. You would think a huge game based on one of the most successful movie franchises in recent years would have some serious development muscle behind it. However, to say it was received “poorly” would be understating the case. It ended up on GameSpot’s list of Most Disappointing Games of 2004 alongside the Star Wars Galaxies massive multiplayer online game. That’s two huge movie properties turned into two lackluster games.

Enter the Matrix is a game that perfectly underscores the rift between Hollywood and gaming. Developers of this title were given unprecedented access to the two Matrix sequels while they were in production, and the game featured cutscenes (animated or live-action scenes where the gamer doesn’t play and the story moves forward) that were written and directed by the Wachowskis. They used the same actors from the movies, and in many cases further expanded upon and explained some of the murky ideas in the movies. Unfortunately the end result was a crappy video game with extremely good-looking cutscenes.

In another effort to grab some of those gaming dollars, Hollywood is going to try another tact by making movies about the gaming industry. Just last week it was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company is working on a biopic called Atari about the heady days of video games back in the 1970s, based on Nolan Bushnell’s life and the company he co-founded. DiCaprio will be playing Bushnell, and it’ll be filled with polyester suits and sideburns. It’s not clear if they’ll be able to achieve the high cheese factor of 1983’s Joysticks (see above), but we can still dream. Until that day comes, Hollywood and video games keep pressing “continue” to try and reach the next level where movies and games actually get it right.