Game for a laugh ... Michael Ironside and Grace Park 'star' in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Look, it's him off Scanners and her off Battlestar Galactica!
If they look bored it's because they've done it before. Michael Ironside is a veteran of half a dozen videogames, most famously as the voice of Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell series (unfortunately he's too old to play the character in the forthcoming movie). Grace Park shows up here in her second digital outing, playing a GDI commander in the new EA smash, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Then again, they are under attack by the evil armies of NOD - so nerves are understandably frayed.
Having to face an enemy named after a type of mattress is only one of the reasons big stars don't do videogames that often. And the ones that do probably won't be listing it on their CV. Marlon Brando and Raul Julia's last screen appearances were in less than classic video games (The Godfather and StreetFighter: the Movie, respectively). Do you think they wanted to be remembered that way? Too bad - digital likeness rights are forever, dude!
The trouble with appearing in videogames is that there is little time for back story or exposition or realistic characters or interesting plots ... and frankly it doesn't matter that much. The object is to add some teeny element of atmosphere before the mouse-orchestrated mayhem begins. It could be Judy Dench delivering Shakespeare in the nude and most people would still automatically skip the cut scene. OK, bad example perhaps.
However, videogames do present a gravy train for Hollywood wannabees. Some have made careers out of it (Rhona Mitra and Nell McAndrew both started out as Lara Croft), others retreat to ROM once the movie roles dry up. In the nineties Mark Hamill appeared in a whole string of hammy Wing Commander games. More recently, as production values improved, more credible names have come and gone: Vin Diesel (who even founded his own games studio), Bruce Willis, Pierce Brosnan. For a time David Bowie both appeared in and developed his own games. The fact that few people now remember Omikron: The Nomad Soul or the Interactive Bafta it won says it all.
So, they do it for the money, right? That has to be it. Which begs a question: are there any stars or studios who would not prostitute their talents in a videogame if the money was right? Here are the ones I'd pay to see:
Driving Miss Daisy (PS3) To his eternal credit, Morgan Freeman hasn't yet done a videogame. So let's have a Dukes of Hazzard-style affair, racing round the Deep South scoring extra points for slamming Jessica Tandy into the windscreen during handbrake turns.
Ghandi (Mobile phones) In this unique voice-activated gaming experience we've arranged for Kingsley to do Mahatma in the style of Sexy Beast. "The British Empire will be leaving fucking India on Tuesday - yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Schindler's List (Nintendo Wii) Naturally, Ralph Fiennes shooting people with a Wii controller would have to be in there somewhere.
The Passion of the Christ (XB360) Transformed into a first person shoot-em-up, Jesus finally gets the Uzi he was denied by Mel Gibson in the movie. Thrill as he mows down waves of advancing Sadducees, but watch out for the Barabbas mothership which is a bugger to bring down.
Any more suggestions?
