Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Dead or Alive, and The House of the Dead… These are some of the worst films in cinema history and they all happen to be based on video games. Coincidence? No… It is just really hard to turn a video game, which is incredibly interactive, into a static and linear two-hour movie. The best video-game movies (VGMs) are the ones that share very little with their source material outside of title and general story.
Think about the first Resident Evil… It was a great action-zombie flick, but it was a terrible adaptation of the game. It’s not just us in the audience that notices how difficult it is to make a VGM, some filmmakers are speaking out about the projects too. Shawn Levy, who is currently working on Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds, was once attached to Sony’s Uncharted. He spent two years of his life on that project only to leave it. In an interview with Empire, Levy was asked about making VGMs:
“They have proven near-impossible to get right. I myself spent two years working on Uncharted. There’s something very scary about trying to do a literal transposing of an experience that audiences can already get in the game.”
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I agree with him. I would be freaking out if I were asked to write or direct a VGM. Not just because of the difficulty, but the backlash you’ll get if it’s not good. What this writer doesn’t understand is why Hollywood keeps going to the video game well. We’re expecting many VGMs over the next two years including Uncharted, Mortal Kombat, Monster Hunter, and Sonic the Hedgehog. However, most VGMs don’t do well and are often hated by fans and critics alike. Detective Pikachu has the highest rating of any VGM on Rotten Tomatoes, 68%. The highest-grossing VGMs have yet to break $500 million, Detective Pikachu is the highest-grossing with $431 million worldwide, but a paltry $144 million domestically.
There is hope though, and that hope is streaming services. One of the biggest problems with VGMs is how much time it takes to properly build the world and develop the characters, and movies just don’t have enough time. Streaming services have all the time in the world though. While The Witcher is being based on the books, it’s still a good experiment for making a series out of a game instead of a film. Do you remember the Mortal Kombat web series? That was way better than the movies wasn’t it? So why did Warner Bros. decide to do a film instead of a series on HBO Max?
So many games could make a great series with six to eight episodes. That’s six to eight hours to tell a story instead of two. Also, why does it always have to be live-action? The Castlevania anime on Netflix is one of the best, if not the best, video game adaptation ever. Devil May Cry is getting that treatment on Netlfix and Final Fantasy is heading for a live-action series. So, like I said there is hope.
Why do you think VGMs are hard to make? What video games would you like to see be made into a movie or streaming series? Let us know in the comments below!
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SOURCE: Empire
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