While 1985’s Clue is a remarkably funny and engaging movie, perhaps what is most intriguing about it is encapsulated in its single-word title: the fact that this movie is derived from a classic board game. Despite its recognizability, Clue is not a natural choice for adaptation to the screen—it has little narrative or role-playing capacity, and the mystery it presents is quite literally randomized and must be deduced by trial-and-error (and thus, would be unsatisfying by most metrics). However, in a world where pirate theme park rides spawn beloved movie franchises, it isn’t too surprising that Clue was as successful as it was—but it can illustrate the adaptational differences between games and film, and the affordances and drawbacks mysteries face in either medium.
Clue naturally has much in common with its source material, from the names of its protagonists, the weapons they use, and even the broad layout of the mansion itself. The setting and premise are also borrowed from the board game— the Clue movie is a locked-house murder mystery set in a sprawling mansion, which must be investigated to discover who the murderer was. Unalike the board game, however, the movie’s characters have personalities and backstories (while some editions of Clue include backstory, there is no role-playing element and no incentive for players to utilize or even take note of this information), as well as motives. There are also multiple murders which take place in the movie, while in the game, the players are tasked with solving only one. What’s more, the inclusion of a motive also sheds light on one of the more strange (and perhaps unintended) narrative elements of Clue as a game—the identity of the killer.
In Clue, the killer is randomly selected from the pool of playable characters at the beginning of the game. Unlike social deduction games like Werewolf or Mafia or a certain other unnamed game, the killer does not have the objective of tricking the other players—in fact, the killer does not know they are the killer, and still wins the game by proving themselves guilty. Happening to be the murderer has no bearing on your role from a gameplay perspective, but this dissonant experience erodes possibilities for role-play and narrative (for how can one role-play if they do not even know they are the killer?) In the Clue movie, however, each killer is aware of their own actions and is attempting to deceive the other investigators.
This is, I believe, the single biggest difference between the focuses of a ludic-forward medium like a board game and a narrative-forward medium like a film, and the widest adaptational gap between the two properties. The Clue movie had to create a killer with a motive and knowledge of their actions, because this is expected for a narrative to unfold (and without the interactivity of a board game, a compelling story is necessary for the audience’s investment). S. S. Van Dine writes in Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories that “the culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story”, and that “the motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal.” Similarly, Rodell writes in Mystery Fiction: Theory and Technique that “clues to the basic character traits are clues to motive… (and) indicate the suspect’s probable attitude toward the victim… it is from the actions and words of the suspects, and their behavior toward other characters in the story, that the detective and the reader deduce the probability of motive in the suspect.” In a board game, the why doesn’t necessarily matter in the same way that backstories can be ignored—the gameplay is engaging enough. Players of Clue will be occupied by strategy—observing other players, planning their movements, and marking their sheet. This is enough internal motivation for a game to be engaging, as every player wants to win. A typical movie, however, does not have the benefit of interactivity (as a form of engagement) or the desire to win as internal motivation—it must produce characters an audience wants to watch, who are characterized by motivated action.
Ultimately, Clue the movie takes on a comedic and parodic tone to mirror that of the original game. While the subject matter of the board game is not inherently farcical, its lack of narrative stakes and punny naming conventions (such as the victim being named Mr. Boddy) are what make it into a casual family board game despite the grisly murder involved. Once broken down, Clue is a deeply illogical experience—it is a game where a murderer can win by proving themselves guilty, where a group of people trapped in a house with a murderer have the all the necessary information to deduce who it was but refuse to share what they know until prompted by an incorrect guess, and where those people can only guess at a room being involved if they’re standing in the room itself. This last point is even the source of one of the movie’s comedic moments, where the butler Wadsworth rushes from each room to the other while explaining how the murders took place, with the pointless movement mirroring a strange convention of the board game.
However, the strangeness of these circumstances are not immediately apparent in the game itself—when I played the game with our classmates last week, despite having many new players, they did not seem alarmed by these bizarre limitations, only remaking upon them after the fact. During the game itself, they were as natural as the convention of only being able to purchase property you are standing on. This tonal discrepancy is a defining difference between film and board games—board games are assumed to be inherently abstract and somewhat ridiculous. If one questions why a dog can purchase a boardwalk property, or what Sorry is even supposed to represent, they are admonished for ruining the fun. While board games certainly can tell compelling stories, they are most often played for the ludic elements themselves, and are assumed to be light-hearted experiences. Film, however, is markedly different. Particularly in live-action, the capacity for pristine visuals (as opposed to theater, where the stage and its effects are always clearly visible, or novels, which have no visuals and rely on imagination) provoke a sense of internal consistency and an attempt at realism. Similarly, the conventions of film that permit visual closeness (such as the close-up) create a sense of subtlety that is not possible in theater, where performances must reach the back row. Therefore, the same genre conventions accepted in a board game would seem ludicrous and distracting in a medium such as film. Clue, therefore, both had to be a comedy, foregrounding its own ridiculousness and embracing the strange qualities of the game it originated from, and had to create realized, motivated characters to compensate for the lack of interaction.
By Nicole
Intermittent Mechanism 