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Hello everyone! One topic I don't see much discussion here in the Geek Media section is movies based on video games. I bring this topic up because I recently saw the Uncharted movie and was absolutely blown away by it! So many things just felt right (I say that as a huge fan of the games); the kinds of action were right, the characters were pretty good, and there were plenty of winks and nods to various things in the games. Overall a very good adaptation of a video game franchise to a movie, and I hope to God we get more of these.

Another video game movie I liked was Sonic the Hedgehog. Thank God they redesigned the character to look more like the character from the games; the abomination they started with would have ruined it! I'm pretty excited for the sequel that's coming out in a month or two.

So anyways, what are everyone else's opinions on video game-based movies? What are some of your favorites?

We are seeing a sort of resurgence of video game inspired media. And alot of their success than fr before is an understanding of using the games as a loose framework rather than a story to retell(I'm looking at you resident evil)
Cuphead for example takes alot from the game but follows none of the structure. Making it an episodic show about 2 brothers.
Same for Castlevania, loose framework of the bellojts vs alucard.

I like alot of them:

*The Resident Evil films (live action not animated) - especially the first ones - were great - different to the game but good - unlike the awful animated ones (IMO)
* Never played Monster Hunter but liked the adaption.
* Angelina Joli just WAS Lara Croft, Tomb Raider but the plot was not as good - the recent film was ok i guess but just not Lara for me - however I suppose its more like the recent games which i don't like.
* I tried to watch Castlevania and could not get past the few episodes.
* Original Mortal Combat and Dead or Alive films were great fun.
* Silent Hill capatured the spirit of the game very well for me
* Rampage again was great fun as was
* Prince of Persia

Except for Monster Hunter - I played all these games - usually when they first came out

My main complaint for Monster Hunter was the dumb thing of sending modern military into it instead of just staying within its own setting.

But yeah, get away from Uwe Boll and video game movies really aren’t any worse than other movies.

Double Dragon is a great bit of cheese, as it Street Fighter.

I've lost track of how many Tomb Raider and Resident Evil films there actually are...

I actually thought the first Hitman movie was pretty good, not so much the sequel.

Loved the Resident Evil Movies with Milla, hated the new one.

Prince of Persia wasn't bad.

I think both Silent Hill movies were very well done but I would love to see the original, all female, edit of the first movie.

I think the biggest stinker for me was Alone in the Dark - terrible adaptation.

A lot of the time the film's aren't good because the people making the film simply don't understand the game's appeal. So the better film's are those that get "it" or pay homage to "it".

Both Ready Player One and Free Guy aren't based on a title, but they show an appreciation for the media and so are good to watch. The original Tomb Raiders got away with it because Lara Croft was a rip-off of Indiana Jones so the route from film-game-film wasn't hard to understand.

One of my favourite translations is Detective Pikachu. Everything about that film feels good, and there's never a fourth wall break of the "we know this is stupid, just bear with us" kind (this was made easier for the director as Reynolds was only a voice, so they didn't have to hold him back from mugging to the camera all the time). They appreciated the material and respected the audience to fall into the fantasy.

I enjoyed Doom. Clicked most of the boxes for being a movie adaptation and giving the feel of the game, and was fun to watch.

Uwe Boll has a lot to answer for, its true...

House of the Dead... yerg...

I also enjoyed Doom with Karl Urban. They had a lot going for them, given that doom is more of a setting than having any real narrative

The Street Fighter anime from ages ago is quite fun.

I've only started Netflix's Arcane series, but the animation is really nicely done. I don't know anything about the League of Legends world, but the series looks great.

 Nevelon wrote:
I enjoyed Doom. Clicked most of the boxes for being a movie adaptation and giving the feel of the game, and was fun to watch.

The perhaps two minute video game sequence from a first person shooter perspective was hilarious.

The rest of the movie...not so much.

 Henry wrote:
A lot of the time the film's aren't good because the people making the film simply don't understand the game's appeal. So the better film's are those that get "it" or pay homage to "it".

The new Jumanji's can be added to that list to a degree.

The behind the scenes on these things are always kind of interesting. A lot of the times its budget. Like 90% of the time the modern settings are late changes when they realize they don't have the budget for interesting locations so it all gets shot in a warehouse and the surrounding alleyways, often with reused costumes and props. There's definitely a lot of times when no one really has faith in it and just wants to make money off the name recognition, so they just get someone cheap who isn't invested in a good adaptation but is willing to make something for as little as possible (or exploit a tax credit). There's a few like Mario Bros. that are the result of giving things over to people who just wanted to make their own thing and didn't care what they had to mangle to make it. Then again, a lot of those early games just didn't have enough focused plot to make that work. I mean.... it would be pretty hard to write a story about Mario slaughtering the people of the Mushroom Kingdom who had all been turned into bricks to see if there was money inside them.

As for the films I like.... meh? I think the best of the bunch is probably Rampage. Detective Pikachu is also quite good.

Castlevania and Arcane as both phenomenal, just not movies.

The rest can be charitively assigned a "so bad its good" label based on your nostalgia or inebriation.

Haven't seen Uncharted or Sonic yet, but both look to be average films that by definition are some of the best of this notably disappointing genre.

 LunarSol wrote:

The new Jumanji's can be added to that list to a degree.

And I'm adding Wreck It Ralph too. A movie based on a game that never existed and I love it.

The original Mortal Kombat was so much better than it had any right to be. Especially in terms of video game adaptions from the same period and the awfulness of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation only served to emphasize how good MK1 was for what it was.

I still have a soft spot for Street Fighter. Raul Julia's performance alone is worth it.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I still have a soft spot for Street Fighter. Raul Julia's performance alone is worth it.

For me….it was a Tuesday.

He is of course leaning on James Earl Jones’ Thulsa Doom a bit there. Which is no bad thing.

I still enjoy the Jovovich Resi movies. They’re silly, and not for one second so they pretend otherwise. And quite a bit of it is just outright enjoyable.

I second the Street Fighter appreciation. It's firmly in the "so bad it's good" category for me, along with the first Mortal Kombat movie (I like SF better though). And yes, Raul Julia was the best in that movie, but the movie as a whole has lots of fun moments. Zangief yelling, "Quick, change the channel!" when he sees the truck approaching on the TV always makes me crack up!

Similarly to how Raul Julia really made Street Fighter good, I really think Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik really made the Sonic the Hedgehog movie so much better. His over-the-top performance is probably the best thing about that movie and a big part of why I like it so much.

Another video game movie I really liked was Ratchet & Clank, but in hindsight I can easily see why it didn't do very well. If you aren't a fan of the games, you wouldn't care for the movie, as it has a lot of callbacks and references to things in the games, and a similar type of humor. Compare this with Uncharted; as I mentioned in my OP, it also had a lot of those kind of references, but it could easily be enjoyed as just a fun action/adventure movie even if you've never seen or played the games.