Just seen the new Max Payne movie trailer and was glad to see it includes, slow motion, guns, his dead family and some winged creatures that "swoop over the battlefield"?.

I have only played the first 5 or so levels of Max Payne and i don't recall these Valkyries. I also have it on good authority that said beasties don't feature in the sequel either.

So am i missing something, or do movie studios now just take the box art as an original text and then make it up as they please?

It's a bit confusing on the old Valkyrie front. When I saw the first trailer, I assumed that the Valkyries were just a cool new way of showing bullet-time, and most likely were some sort of symbolic reference to the drug 'Valkyr' or whatever it was called. The new trailer, however, shows the Valkyries being a bit more 'hands on' than your standard symbolic hallucination. The end result is I'm not quite sure what to make of it all.

There certainly weren't any flying beasties in either of the Max Payne games.

Actually, a lot of the minor plot details in the first Max Payne are related to Norse mythology.

For example:

That's why I was a little peeved when I saw those, at what I first though were angels. Then I realised they had just given up on subtlety and just animated the valkyries instead. Skk.

I believed the Valkyries are the result of lots of painkillers and whiskey. But having seen the trailer again i am not so sure, it might be some religious shizzle

I always assumed they were just doing a side effect of the drug,"Valkyr" As I thought I remembered writings on the walls from the junkies talking about the Valkyries.

Max Payne has a number of dream sequences throughout the game, i assume the Valkyries are simply a more elaborate portrayal thereof.

I'm not against deviation from the games, as a direct translation would end up falling flat compared to other Noir thrillers.

Nothing I've heard about the film so far has actually mentioned the Valkyr drug.
And if I remember correctly it's one of the key parts of the game?