Video Games Are Revolutionizing Filmmaking: The Rise of Player Perspectives

Video games have a long history of referencing, homaging, and sometimes plainly ripping off films. Without the cinematic influences of Scarface, Starship Troopers, and The Matrix, we wouldn’t have games like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and Max Payne.

However, just as many game developers grew up watching action films and crime dramas, many up-and-coming filmmakers are drawing inspiration from the video games of their childhoods. While there are plenty of movies themed around or directly based on video games, gaming’s influence on cinema is far more expansive. You may not have realized it yet, but video games are beginning to rewrite the rules of filmmaking.

Camera Angles Define the Visual Style of Film

If you watch enough movies, you might start to recognize the many framing techniques and camera angles that filmmakers love to reuse. Even if you don’t pay attention to those details, you’ve probably heard terms like “dutch angles”, “cut-ins”, and “wide shots” being used in discussions about movies. These tried-and-true techniques have become hallmarks of filmmaking for a reason, and they’ve been used to convey emotions, invoke fear, heighten drama, intensify action, and ultimately engross you in the worlds and characters found on the other side of the screen.

Other visual mediums like television series and music videos tend to follow the same techniques, but video games have always been the notable exception. Even in games that throw players into cinema-inspired scenarios—or licensed movie games that have players re-enacting entire scenes from iconic films—the perspectives used by video games are completely different from any form of entertainment.

Whereas war films Saving Private Ryan showcase battlefields through wideshots of artillery fire and close-ups centering on the faces of shellshocked soldiers, games like series like Call of Duty and Battlefield often depict war from the eyes of soldiers on the frontlines. Likewise, the street races and car chases in films like The Fast and the Furious and Baby Driver are presented through a multitude of different camera angles, while games like Need for Speed and Grand Theft Auto present similar scenes through a consistent third-person perspective.

These differences give each medium their own distinctive visual identity. Video games didn’t invent the first-person camera—it’s been used in entertainment since Alfred Hitcock’s Spellbound from 1945—yet it’s now widely recognized as a staple of shooters and horror games.

Likewise, most video game cutscenes intentionally emulate the visual style of movies by reusing the same camera techniques commonly found in films. Even with photorealistic graphics, the camera angle determines when a game looks like a movie, and when it looks like any other video game. Although we’ve seen some games attempt to cross this line with more cinematic-styled presentations, movies are starting to take notes from the iconic perspectives of gaming.

Movies Are Adopting the Player Perspective

The idea of a movie recreating the look and feel of a video game isn’t exactly new. If there’s anything people remember about the 2005 film adaptation of Doom—besides being terrible for most of its runtime—it’s the brief scene when the movie suddenly switches to a first-person perspective for a bloody shootout that feels ripped straight out of Doom 3. It’s chaotic, gory, visceral, and everything else that a Doom adaptation should be, but it only lasts for this one scene. There’s a lot wrong with the Doom movie, but its biggest mistake is that the rest of the movie didn’t look like this:

Besides being a well-directed action scene in its own right, Doom‘s first-person sequence made a strong impression by showcasing something that few other movies had done before: bringing the visual identity of video games to cinema. The first-person camera gives the scene a claustrophobic atmosphere while allowing the action to move at an exhilaratingly fast pace. The limited perspective means you never see the monsters until they enter the main character’s field of vision. But with mutants dying left and right while the camera constantly whips around to show the next setpiece, there’s never a moment where the action stops being wonderfully frantic and pulse-poundingly aggressive.

Unfortunately, aside from other video game adaptations and video game-themed movies like Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Gamer, there weren’t many other films that took advantage of gaming’s unique presentation. It wasn’t until the past decade that we’ve seen more filmmakers give this idea a second shot.

One of the earliest recent examples was Hardcore Henry, an action movie that takes Doom‘s five minutes of first-person greatness and turns it into a feature-length film. Filmed entirely from a first-person perspective, Hardcore Henry presents the story of a mute cyborg named Henry on his quest to save his wife from an army of heavily armed mercenaries. It’s a generic story, but Hardcore Henry uses its mindless simplicity to indulge in equally mindless violence.

Car chases, sniper duels, fist fights, and even childhood flashbacks are all shown from Henry’s eyes. Hardcore Henry wears its video game influence on its sleeve, even parodying gaming tropes like mute protagonists and infinite respawns with some hilarious gags. But even if you don’t care about games, Hardcore Henry is worth experiencing just for the nonstop, in-your-face action that few other movies can match.

Of course, action games aren’t the only genre with a distinctive presentation. The recent animated comedy, Boys Go to Jupiter, taps into the isometric perspective of retro PC games like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon to deliver an absurdist coming-of-age story. Compared to the up-close camera angles seen in many other dramas, Boys Go to Jupiter shows its colorful world through a zoomed-out view, giving just as much attention to the backdrops of its vibrant Floridian setting as it lends to the main cast.

In fixed locales, the isometric camera makes the world feel spacious yet simultaneously enclosed, as if there’s more to see beyond the limits of the camera’s borders. When the film moves to winding paths and open roads, the camera switches roles, making the world feel vast and boundless with backdrops that seem to stretch on forever. For a movie that touches on the anxieties of growing up and stepping out into the real world, it’s a brilliant visual touch that makes many scenes feel simultaneously nostalgic and somewhat melancholic. Combined with director Julian Glanders signature claymation-inspired art style, Boys Go to Jupiter often feels like seeing a homemade diorama come to life and expanded into its own stunning world.

Why Video Game Perspectives Are Back in Fashion

Back when Doom was released in theaters, video games were still not a widely loved hobby. Don’t get me wrong, they were far from being niche by that point, but gaming wasn’t as popular as it is today. So when audiences saw Doom in theaters, only a select portion of moviegoers fully appreciated the first-person action scene’s homage to the original games. Gaming simply wasn’t big enough for filmmakers to justify putting time and effort into experimental shots and unconventional perspectives that wouldn’t make sense to the majority of viewers.

In the years since, video games have exploded in popularity, bringing in players of all ages and demographics—including the creators behind your favorite movies. Now, with more people familiar with gaming conventions and tropes, filmmakers can experiment with video game-inspired perspectives without alienating most of their audience. However, it’s not just about understanding the influences behind these unconventional camera angles; some recent movies use your familiarity with video games to give their scenes a uniquely visceral feeling.

One of the most memorable fight scenes from John Wick: Chapter 4 suddenly shifts from the film’s close-quarters camerawork into a top-down perspective reminiscent of shooters like Hotline Miami and The Hong Kong Massacre. In contrast to the up-close action seen throughout the rest of the series, this sequence sees the camera pan over the fight, following both Wick and an army of assailants as they navigate through an abandoned mansion, leading to a high-stakes shoot-out with gunfire going off from every direction.

At some points, the camera covers multiple rooms, allowing you to see the armed attackers as they fire through walls or attempt to flank Wick. Other moments zoom-in on specific rooms, adding a claustrophobic feeling to the firefight as more assassins suddenly burst in through doors or open fire from around corners. Throughout the entire scene, the camera constantly moves forward, never letting the action slow down while always showing the trail of bodies and bullet-holes that follows.

Chapter 4‘s mansion shootout is an extreme departure from the John Wick series’ usual fight scenes, yet it surprisingly maintains the pulse-pounding action and stylized brutality that the franchise is famous for. There are a few different reasons for this, ranging from director Chad Stahelski’s consistently amazing action cinematography to the heavy emphasis on environmental carnage, to the scene compensating for its lack of visible bloodshed with Wick’s Dragon’s Breath shotgun setting his enemies ablaze in spectacularly explosive fashion.

However, the scene is at its best if you’ve played any of the games that inspired it. Chapter 4 perfectly recreates Hotline Miami‘s tense challenge of narrowly avoiding gunfire, seeing attackers approaching from the other side of a wall, or having a split-second to react when an enemy unexpectedly enters the room. Despite pulling the camera further from the action, the manor scene’s familiar player perspective will feel more intimate, more nerve-wracking, and a lot more exhilarating to fans of its video game inspirations.

The 2018 sci-fi action-horror film Upgrade achieves a similar effect with its cinematography, but it intentionally elicits the complete opposite feeling in its fight scenes. For context, the movie follows Grey, an ordinary mechanic who is left paralyzed after he and his wife are attacked by a mysterious group of gunmen. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as later events will reveal), he is implanted with an experimental AI-controlled chip known as STEM, which restores his motor functions while gaining full control of his body. With his restored movement, Grey sets out to get revenge on the men who paralyzed him and murdered his wife.

Like many revenge films, Upgrade is full of fight scenes, but Grey himself is not a fighter. Instead, most action scenes see STEM taking control of Grey’s body and enacting his vengeance with machine-like precision, and it’s in these scenes that Upgrade‘s video-game influences shine through. When STEM is controlling Grey, the camera fixes on his body and movements, closely tracking his punches and tilting back along with his dodges. The movie alternates between third-person perspectives and side-views during these fight scenes, but the attention remains locked on Grey. If you’ve ever played any melee-focused brawlers like Sifu or God Hand, the film’s protagonist-centered perspectives will seem very familiar.

But just like Grey, you—the viewer—are a passive participant to STEM’s brutality. Without a controller in your hand, these camera movements feel abrupt, jerky, and often disorienting. Thanks to this creative camerawork—as well as Logan Marshall-Green’s amazing performance as Grey—Upgrade perfectly captures the unique feeling of seeing an action game from the perspective of an avatar, and not the player.

Perspective Has Power in Movies and Games

In video games, these camera techniques exist out of necessity, giving players a consistent and reliable view of their character and the surrounding game world. But for movies, the unconventional perspectives popularized by gaming have much more potential than filmmakers have already shown. The zoomed-out views of isometric cameras allow environments to say more than can be found in the script, while first and third-person perspectives limit the camera in ways that can add more tension and excitement to action scenes. Sometimes, a video game-esque camera can tap into the same sense of immersion that you experience while the controller is in your hands.

There aren’t many movies that take advantage of gaming’s player perspectives, but with video games growing more popular with each passing year, that might change in the future. Video games have already proven that they can have a positive influence on cinema in more ways than one, so hopefully more filmmakers will start bringing their love of gaming to the big screen.