Movies - Level Design Inspiration

[Method]

I decided to start a topic where we, as a community, can post about movies which can inspire level designers.

I believe the following movies have a very strong atmopshere and showcase of the environments.

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ENGLISH
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Dark City
Blade Runner
Silent Hill
Batman
Brazil
Session 9
Underworld
Spawn
The Crow
Ghost Ship

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FOREIGN
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City of Lost Children
Immortal
Renaissance

Your turn...

-Method

[Hipshot]

Actually, there's so many that I can't mention all. Maybe there's just a few scenes that inspires, not the entire movie.

[Chi]

house of flying daggers, very nice scenery

[Pext]

cube

the same room over and over again; with traps.

[v1l3]

Like Hipshot mentioned about mapping based on a certain scene rather than the whole movie, these are some that are off of the top of my head:

2001:Space Odyssey
The Alienss Trilogy
AVP
Amityville Horror(The House)
Black Hole(The Ship w Skybox of the Black Hole)
The Cell
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Enter the Dragon
Event Horizon
Hero
Kill Bill
The Island
Minority Report
The Mummy
Pink Floyd:The Wall
Preditor 2(The Inside of the Ship at the End)
Stargate
StarTrek
Texas Chainsaw Massacre(w/Jessica Biel)
Tomb Raider
Time Machine
Troy

[wattro]

Doom (starring the Rock!)

[seremtan]

derek jarman's 'blue'

[pjw]

Dark City
Blade Runner
City of Lost Children

Those three immediately came to mind when I saw the thread title.

Another good movie with a hellava lot of amazing atmosphere and beautiful (in a dark way) sets is Angel Heart (<--Link).

Good idea for a thread.

[a13n]

cube

the same room over and over again; with traps.

Good point!
I've always been wondering how I can set up that culty atmosphere in q3.
Text scrolling @ intro is also cool.

[voodoochopstiks]

Koyaanisqatsi and its sequels.

[phantazm11]

Dark City
Blade Runner
City of Lost Children

Those three immediately came to mind when I saw the thread title.

Another good movie with a hellava lot of amazing atmosphere and beautiful (in a dark way) sets is Angel Heart (<--Link).

Good idea for a thread.

Angel Heart = great.

Enemy at the Gates
The Dark Crystal
Indiana Jones Trilogy

To name a few

[spookmineer]

cube

the same room over and over again; with traps.

There is at least one defrag map with this idea already. The point ofcourse to go through them as fast as possible.
Tried to find a link but I don't even know what the map name is...

[Lukin]

"Blade Runner" - once I made a Q3A level heavy inspired by this movie. With a zeppelin, huge neons, pouring rain, and so on. I think I released a beta somewhere, can't find it now. It was terrible map performance and gameplay wise anyway. But the movie... The Director's Cut is a masterpiece.

My list of movies that may inspire some:
Mad Max, Mad Max 2, Mad Max 3
Prestige
Batman Begins
V for Vendetta
The Terminator
Akira
Strange Days
Pi
Dune
Se7en

These are mostly a sci-fi movies. I'm not into fantasy that much, but I guess "300" and "LOTR" would be an obvious choices here. Another aspect of my list is that many of these films are based on a comics - and that's is a huge source of inspiration. There's almost infinite catalogue of worlds there that can be adapted to a video game levels. I'd mention a few masterpieces, like "Batman: Killing Joke" (art by Brian Bolland), "Batman: Arkham Asylum" (Dave McKean), "Incal" (Moebius), "Hans" (Rosinski), "Batman / Judge Dread: Judgement On Gotham", "Thorgal" (Rosinski) but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Whatever you'll take you can be sure you'll find some crazy ideas, that no one at Hollywood had a guts to even think about (but maybe that's good, seeing how bad "Immortel" adaptaion was :P). What also had to be said is that these comics often offer a great stories that also could be inspiring for a level designer - for some gameplay ideas, or for story and/or cutscenes. Of course the same goes for the movies, and it's not necessarry had to be an action packed sci-fi/fantasy movie to make your head buzzing with the ideas. Last week I've watched Red once again and immediately I started thinkin how to accost some of these emotions into the game. It seems impossible, but so challanging... Yeah, I think I'll make another SP level

[Method]

Lukin lives. Where have you been man? I'm still working on that texture pack. I own movie Pi, but tell me in what way does it inspire you as a mapper? I like Immotel btw.

Just bought special edition of The City of Lost Children (one of my favorite movies) and Spawn.

-Method

[maz0r]

Noone mentioned Metropolis? What a shame!

[broar]

derek jarman's 'blue'

Stevie Wonders shades.

Let´s fight the mainstream:

Alice - Jan Svankmayer
Tetsuo the Iron Man - Shinya Tsukamoto
Liquid Sky - Slava Tsukerman
Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky
Eraserhead - David Lynch
Element of Crime - Lars Von Trier
Sylvester Countdown - Oscar Roehler
Night of the living dead - Goerge A. Romero
el Topo - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Jacobs Ladder - Adrian Lyne

[Magnus]

In the mouth of madness
Event Horizon
The Black Hole
Star wars films
Star Trek films
Sphere
Doom(That one is kind of a quandry. What came first the chcken or the egg.)
Starship Troopers
Resident Evil films(I know; obvious )
Silent Hill(I know; again obvious)
Hellraiser films
House on Haunted Hill
The Haunting
Underworld films
Vanhelsing
Princess Bride
Never Ending Story
Legend
Labrinth
The Dark Crystal
Mirror Mask
Futureworld
Ghosts of Mars
Adrenalin
Fortress
Day After Tomorrow
The Thing
Preditor films
A l i e n films
A l i e n V Preditor
Toomb Raider films
Raiers of The Lost Ark films
Clash of the Titans
The Mummy films
Scorpion King
Stargate
Immortal
Dark City
Metropoils
Trminator films
Mad Max films
Battlefeild Earth
The Island
Logans Run
Judge Dread
The Fifth Element
Armageddon
The Cave
The Descent

I will think of a few more later.

EDIT: Just noticed that a few of the ones I listed are already listed above. I'm not about to go back and pick through it though.

[dnky]

LOTR for sure, or anything that features fantasy/gothic architecture. I love the lighting of the beacon sequence in Return of the Kiing so much.
Not into scifi at all really.
Other influences...hmm, the Third Man, or any other film noir.

[Yannoche]

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FOREIGN
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City of Lost Children
Immortal
Renaissance

(All the designated foreign films here, are french. )

Imho these have good architectures too:
Vidocq
LXG
Riddick's Chronicles

[Method]

Yea, foreign section contains only French movies for now. It's just I believe European architecture is one of the best because it's style varies.

-Method

[Yannoche]

@Method: give a try to 'Vidocq' even if it has weaknesses in realisation (Depardieu doing some kung-fu moves...) the atmosphere and sets are great. The director is Pitof the guy in charge of sfx on 'City of Lost Children'.

[Method]

Yannoche: I rented it and gonna watch it tonight.

-Method

[Lukin]

Lukin lives. Where have you been man? I'm still working on that texture pack. I own movie Pi, but tell me in what way does it inspire you as a mapper? I like Immotel btw.

Hehe, I don't have time much time for mapping recently. Every time I think I'll have a few days to make anything in radiant something more important pops up.

Regarding Pi - well, this giant machine in the main hero's flat was somewhat inspiring to me. I never made a level out of it though, but I thought about it once, with "Doom 3" in mind. If I recall correctly I was experimenting with a high contrast, black-and-white textures and with some "cel shading" to catch the feeling (the latter was more influenced by "Sin City" than "Pi" though). Also, the soundtrack is a good background to work with.

[Method]

Lukin: I see what you mean. Lukin's a ladies man now, I mean what else can be more important than making a map?? On a serious note, I thought you were listing movies that inspired you from environmental point of view.

Yannoche: Watched Vidocq last night. It was an ok moive, had a few interesting areas such as attic and that mask guy's hideout. Not my favorite style, but still a good movie. I'm more of a Dark City, City of Lost Children, Blade Runner kind of guy.

-Method

[Yannoche]

You're pretty fast Method, tahks for taking the time anyway.