The success of ‘Super Mario Bros. The Movie’ goes beyond having managed to be the animated film with the best premiere in history, but rather confirms that Hollywood is taking the appropriate steps to correct a long tradition of catastrophic adaptations of famous video games. The trend started with ‘Rampage’, even though it took a creative direction from a simple concept like a Kaiju.
Now with ‘Sonic’ and the ‘The Last of Us’ series, the gamer world begins to give credit to the film industry when it turns video games into feature films or series. But it was not always like this, and until relatively recently there was not a single one of them that had convinced the parish. No need to read many reviews. Celluloid versions of video games had so far been, hopefully, mediocre fascimiles of his popular cartridge samples. If we want to check it, we only have to look at the thermometer on the Rotten Tomatoes page. No adaptation got past 50% positive reviews.
Although some of these films are not so bad, some are even so loud that they are singular by themselves, but the virtues that can be extracted from some of them does not free them from something that they all have in common: pissing off fans of the movie. original game. Many used the name as a brand and then filmed the first thing that came to mind. with cinematographers who looked like they came out of porn. Others brought together renowned actors and forgot about the scriptwriter. The budget was spent paying royalties to Konami to invest the small change in special effects. There are many reasons that turned these popular pieces of popular culture into miserable experiences for the viewer and humiliating displays for the actors and crew members.
it all started with ‘Super Mario Bros.‘ (1993) in which Nintendo’s most famous Italian plumbers starred in the first attempt to adapt the bit to celluloid. The result according to Bo Hopkins is “The worst thing I’ve ever done (…) the whole experience was a nightmare.” Featuring a ’90s-style dyed blonde Dennis Hopper-faced villain, the movie omitted a scene explaining that this was supposed to be a true story that the characters told the Nintendo executives, who would reinterpret it at will. She now has the cult of her, but for 30 years she has been very hated.
the first attempts
‘double dragon’ (1994) was the second attempt at adapting a video game in history and it is much worse than the first. More like a crappy ‘Power Rangers’ episode than the arcade in which the characters were beating criminals in the streets, it was very silly, funny, childish… it continued with the fashion of dyeing the bad guy with hydrogen peroxide. This also opened the way for the infamous ‘Street Fighter‘ (1994). We all wanted to see our favorite fighters made flesh and blood, but as they appeared on the screen the disappointment grew, from Ryu’s lackluster hadouken to that Blanka who looked like the 70s Hulk with a red-haired toy. Pain.
‘Mortal Kombat‘ (nineteen ninety five) It wasn’t as horrible as its second part, but watching Christopher Lambert try to be funny is vexatious enough to make you want to kill yourself with its shrill soundtrack. And fatalities were missing. The new adaptation has them, but it’s almost worse than this one. ‘Wing Commander’ (1999) It was proof that, sometimes, even with the creator himself directing, something similar to the game does not come out. SEGA’s mythical space simulator became a space opera for young people with the cast of ‘Scooby Doo’ overacting.
‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’ (2001) Had Angelina Jolie doing stunts and kicking ass, but it wasn’t enough. The action scenes are acceptable but it was still a copy of Indiana Jones with disconnected sequences attached with a safety pin. Typical forgettable fake vehicle. The new adaptation with Alicia Vikander is much more powerful. of the same year was ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’ (2001), which It doesn’t have a bad reputation among video game fans but for the average viewer it is a real lead. It’s the first movie made with photorealistic characters, but the result doesn’t differ much from infographic game intros of the time.
The twilight of the sacred cows
Although it has its fans ‘Resident Evil’ gave rise to a saga of action and embarrassment of others if we take into account the budgets that were handled. Its initial chapter is moderately salvageable and as a zombie movie it wasn’t entirely bad, because there weren’t 300 of them yet, but they threw away a script by George A. Romero faithful to the video game —which will have a documentary soon— to make an ode bakala to the crappy CGI It hasn’t been fixed yet. Despite the good intentions of ‘Welcome to Raccon City’ and the Netflix series, there is still no good adaptation.
Uwe Bol’s movies, from approximately 2004 to 2007, have done a lot to discredit film adaptations. From ‘House of the dead’, which included random shots from the original arcade to ‘Dragon Siege’, ‘Alone in the dark’ or ‘BloodRayne’ that inexplicably managed to be released in cinemas. Boll is guaranteed safe from disaster, and sUs movies are usually so bad that no, they’re not even funny. ‘Doom‘ (2005) fell badly at the time, but the truth is that As a B-series horror and action movie it’s pure fun, there’s blood and latex monsters in abundance in its unrated version. The infernal plot was missing but the sequence that recreates the typical first-person vision continues to work and the film is a better version of ‘Resident Evil’ than most adaptations.
The original ‘DOA: Dead or Alive’ (2006) is a journey of blow-up dolls made of bits in bikinis fighting, so you can’t ask for much from the movie that adapts it. Come on, more stuff for isolated teens interacting with themselves. However, that same year a notable exception appeared with ‘Silent Hill’ (2006)whose The first hour gets a good approximation to the unique atmosphere of the best horror video game in history. So far the script is not something spectacular but in the second half a gibberish of explanations of “end of phase” and infographic gore opens more similar to something from playstation 2 than it should.
Decade turn for the better
‘Hitman’ (2007) had one correct direction of Xavier Gens, but it did not free it from being a rather uncouth action movie with a colossal casting failure in its protagonist. There are different shades of blood, of Olga Kurylenko’s clothes and of idiocy. They tried to recast the character in ‘Hitman: Agent 47’, but there wasn’t much improvement. Nor is it very tolerable about ‘Max Payne’ (2008) that not only does it make almost no sense as an adaptation, it is that it barely has a minimum coherence as a narrative. Its lack of internal cohesion and scenes of hallucinations make a game with roots in film noir and John Woo almost surreal.
The turn of the decade offered no improvements and ‘Prince of Persia’ (2010) is probably the worst movie of the great Jake Gyllenhaal. The blue-eyed actor, here perfectly suited to play an Arab prince, couldn’t look weirder with that wig. All in all, it’s a valid adaptation and a correct adventure blockbuster, just like ‘Need for speed’ (2014), which is not a complete horror, but although it is not easy to make a plot with chicha from a car video game, it was not about making a bland sequel to ‘Fast and Furious’ by wasting the great Aaron Paul.
The future has been improving, or at least trying to and after the failed ‘Assassin’s Creed’ ‘Warcraft: The Origin’ (2016) has given way to others that have been more convincing, such as ‘Detective Pokemon’ and series like ‘Halo’, that has spectacular episodes or ‘The Witcher’. AND Although little is known, due to the animation style, we have real gems like ‘The Cuphead Show!’ and others highly undervalued such as the terrifying ‘Detention’, which has a spectacular film.
In Espinof | 4 of the best movies based on video games to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Disney+