We’re not sure if you noticed, but making a video game movie is really hard. Hollywood has been trying their hardest to make it happen for decades now, but the closest they’ve gotten to succeeding is perhaps the Resident Evil series. The franchise hasn’t exactly exploded, but it’s at least done well enough to survive as a long-running series.

Perhaps the closest they actually got to mainstream success was with the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider films, which critics and fans kinda hated, despite the fact that it made some solid bank at the box office. As of this writing, the curse of the video game movie is still a very real thing, and even helped to fuel discussion in our recent Los Fanboys podcast episode.

However, there are apparently some folks in the business who were blissfully unaware of that curse. In this case, we’re talking about Rampage director Brad Peyton.

“There’s obviously a pressure to deliver on these things and to ground the movie and to deliver on spectacle and all that, but there also aren’t these expectations to what this character’s supposed to be or what this plot is supposed to be. I didn’t know about this quote-unquote ‘video game curse’ until about two weeks after I finished the movie. A lot of times, [studios] attempt to adapt games that have massive followings. … When you attempt to adapt something that has an incredibly deep plotline or character or something along those lines, you’re beholden to delivering something. And it’s really a difficult challenge because as a gamer, I know, I play as the hero. That’s an immersive medium, and so, it’s really hard to go up against something that pre-exists.”

If you’re like me, those comments to IGN are more than a little shocking. I’m not talking about his spot-on comments about the pressure behind it all, but his complete lack of awareness surrounding the video game curse. As someone who grew up wishing these films would live up to their video game counterparts (but was constantly disappointed), it was all too evident, but obviously, not everyone is in that world.

I’m actually pretty happy to hear about this, though. Hopefully, without that pressure hovering over his head, he was able to instinctively make something that delivers. Plus, no offense to Rampage, but it’s not like it’s well known for its incredible depth or likable characters. With that in mind, I can see this being one of those films that is more than able to stand up on its own merits.

Do you think it’s odd that Peyton had no idea about the video game movie curse? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: IGN