Historically, video games make terrible movies. Why is this and why doesn’t this mean it’s ‘Game Over’ for the video-game adaptation?
Video games do not make good movie adaptations. Everyone knows that. Although, as Fallout has shown just this week (catch it on Amazon Prime), video games do seem to make cool TV shows. Over the last few years we’ve enjoyed The Witcher, Halo and The Last of Us, all of which have crossed-over from the usual gamer crowd to become mainstream successes. In this way, they’re bucking that trend, and the adaptation industry finally looks to be levelling up its game. Those are TV shows, though. Cut to the big screen and video to game adaptations, such as 2022’s Uncharted, failed big time with the fans and didn’t really trouble the high scores at the box office.
So, why isn’t it Game Over for video game adaptations?
Well, video games and movies have lots in common, they employ a lot of the same story-telling techniques, they’re successful in a lot of the same genres; hell, they even employ a lot of the same actors. So it’s hard to understand how a classic game like Uncharted can fall off a cliff in its big screen adaptation. After all, comic adaptations work. Book adaptations work. Why is it so hard to successfully adapt video games?
When we get to the video game films that are just great movies, such as Tron (1982), Wreck-it-Ralph (2012), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Ready Player One (2018) we find an interesting phenomena… Whilst they have the imagery and energy of gamification in every scene, they aren’t based on specific properties.
2023 – When films got game
Last year, the makers of Gran Turismo thought they’d try something audacious and, instead of adapting the game into a film, they made the film about players of the game applying their skills in the real world. Nope, that didn’t work, either – the film barely broke even at the box office.
At the same time, the adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s did serious money, earning almost $300 million on a modest $20 million budget. But that was aided by riding the wave of low-budget, high-concept horror movies that are ruling the box office these days and, let’s be honest, a lot of the audience for that film didn’t even know it was based on a game.
Last year’s animated adaptation of Super Mario Bros. was a success by any standard – bringing in over a $1.3 billion worldwide. That’s three times as much as the next most successful video game adaptation. So, finally, they proved that it can be done.
Ironically, the long quest for box office high scores began 30 years before, with the first Super Mario Bros. movie.
Here’s the history of terrible computer-screen to movie-screen adaptations: the 10 worst movies based on video games. Ever.
Super Mario Bros (1993)
Mario was the first video-game superstar, so it’s only right that he be the subject of Hollywood’s first live action video-game adaptation. Nintendo decided they wanted the film to be all gritty and noir, just like the games aren’t.
So, much to game-players’ surprise, the film turned out to be a weird, nightmarish, alternate-reality, dinosaury fever dream. With plumbers. That makes no more sense now than it did then.
Street Fighter (1994)
What’s not to love? You’ve got JCVD showing-off his kick-boxing schtick; but single-handedly carrying the film on his padded-shoulders is award-winning serious actor Raúl Juliá, playing the scenery-chewing, swivel-eyed madman, Bison. He made the film because his kids wanted him to. Thanks, kids.
Mortal Kombat (1995)
Admit it; you love that preposterously propulsive theme song. This film made a much more successful fist of it than either Super Mario or Street Fighter had, in that it elbowed character and sub-plot and just gathered the combatants, then let them rumble. To be fair, the animatronic four-armed Goro still works well, 25 years on; he’s certainly more convincing than Raden’s wig.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Believe it or not, this was a hit. It was, for a while, the most financially successful video game adaptation. They tried to create a story to stitch together all of Lara Croft’s tomb raiding, and added a poignant back-story to give Lara some life issues to deal with. The result was a film featuring a lot of people talking, when we really just want to see her jumping off things. And Chris Barrie? Really?
Resident Evil (2002)
Having spawned no fewer than five sequels, whilst earning well-over $1 billion, this makes writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson the big boss of video game adaptations. Not only has he overseen this series, but he also made Mortal Kombat and the Death Race series, as well as Alien vs. Predator. While those last two weren’t directly taken from games, their levelling-up structure strongly suggested they were inspired by games.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
And the film which knocked Lara Croft off the video-game-movie top-spot was this. Film Producer Jerry Bruckheimer was convinced he could weave his Pirates of the Caribbean spell again. That was a film no-one expected, based on a theme park ride, yet it made pots of money and turned Johnny Depp into a mega-star. But Prince of Persia lacked the charm and the humour of that film and mixed in elements from Aladdin, Lord of the Rings and Kingdom of Heaven, which left it little room to establish a personality of its own.
Need for Speed (2014)
This film fills you with the need… The need to watch Cannonball Run (1981) instead. The game is all about tricking-out a car and driving it fast. The film spends time developing characters and motivation and not driving. It, therefore, comes across as a Fast and Furious wannabe, with go-slower stripes.
Assassin’s Creed (2016)
This film tried so hard to create a link between the world of the time-travelling Animus and the real world. They wove so many plot threads, in fact, that the stories got wrapped around each other and throttled the life out of the film. Michael Fassbender was totally committed to his role, giving it the same steely-eyed straight-faced determination he has brought to every role from Magneto to Macbeth. Problem was, the film desperately needs a little levity to help it fly. Watching it all the way through takes a real leap of faith.
WarCraft: The Beginning (2016)
Back in the day, there were 12 million people spending literally years immersed in this MMORPG. It’s by far the most popular video game of its type. But, whilst there’s no shortage of characters and an infinite amount of ground to cover, Azeroth was never big on story. So, when the film tried to shoe-horn nuanced character motivation and plot, alongside its admittedly impressive CGI mo-cap performances… It just left people pining for Lord of the Rings and proper high fantasy.
Rampage (2018)
Last, but not least, we have a film which many people didn’t even realise was based on a game, despite it having existed from 1986 through to 2006. Borrowing as heavily from King Kong as it does from Donkey Kong, the movie features Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as some surreal hybrid of Indiana Jones and David Attenborough facing off against a trio of really random monsters. It shouldn’t work, it really shouldn’t.
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