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I was having this discussion with my wife the other day, and how often movies based on video game properties are almost universally awful (and most of them are financial flops as well).

Are there any films that came out of videogame franchises that have really been good?




My first thought was Detective Pikachu. But maybe Pokemon does not count because both the anime and videogames are the primary media for the series (and I know several young fans of the anime that don't actually play the video games). Deteictive Pikachu is probably more an adaptation of the anime series than the games (there are a lot of world building and story telling elements to pull from there).



But aside from Pokemon, have any of the videogame adaptations to film been really good? There are quite a lot of them that I haven't seen, so I'd like to know what you all think.


Edit: I should add the addendum that I am not looking for films that are "so bad they're good." While I definitely enjoy an absolute trainwreck, Street Fighter is still a terrible film (that is fun to watch).

A lot will depend on how you judge them - I like Double Dragon, the first Mortal Kombat, DOA: Dead or Alive and the Angelina Jolie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films.

Wing Commander is terrible.


(FYI - There's a Wikipedia Category for Live-action films based on video games, but it's incomplete and includes fan films)

Depends what you like and cosider "good"

I thought the following were excellent but you may not agree......

Rampage,
Resident Evil 1 and 2 (live action NOT the animated)
Dead or Alive
Mortal Combat 1st film

Lara Croft Tomb Raider -she was brilliant but the ending is a bit week

Mortal Kombat from the 90s is surprisingly fun and genre savy. It caught a lot of the humor of the original game.

Wreck it Ralph is the Roger Rabbit of video game films and really worth seeing. The sequel was generally OK.

And y'know after that I'm stuck. Doom, Street Fighter from the 90s, the white Chun-Li film, Pixels, all dreadful.




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Oh! Oh! Resident Evil, any of them, all fun!

Yep Wreck it Ralph films are great

The whole Resident Evil series for me.

Yes, they get increasingly dodgier, but none of them take a big ol’ Cleveland Steamer on the source.

First two are particulatly enjoyable. But then it kinda becomes its own thing, the very spirit of ‘inspired with’. Whatever peeps might think of those later results, I can respect them.

I came in here to say Mortal Kombat (the first movie).

If you like weird-bad or funny-bad movies, I recommend Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter 2 (with Raul Julia). Double Dragon, too, I guess.

Kung Fury is a crazy parody with a lot of video game elements, including a protracted side-scrolling Double Dragon-style fight scene. It was free on YouTube (and might still be). Definitely check out the Hasselhof music video that accompanies the movie.


However, for the best movie based on a game of any type, the answer is hands down Clue, based on the board game Clue/Cluedo. (I’m sure there was some half-assed computer version of the game, so technically it counts.) It has one of the all-time great comedy casts: Tim Curry, Madeleine Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Lesley Anne Warren, Martin Mull, Colleen Camp. I feel it takes at least two watchings to pick up most of the jokes, but the film flies by. Make sure you watch all three endings.

There's at least one good book based on a video game. Crysis legion.

I liked Doom!. Not going to say it’s high art, but was a fun watch and pretty true to the source.

To branch out a tad from the OP to include board games, Clue is a great movie-based-on-game.

Sonic the Hedgehog was amazingly not gak. It's a decent movie all around.

If we including baord games - Battleship is great fun and loads of extra points for managing to get the game mechanics into the film

Second Sonic. It really is surprisingly good!
Resident Evil is excellent.
Mortal Kombat is great.

Then you have a lot of movies that are great for.... various aspects of it.
If you come to Wing Commander just for the ships, it's good.
If you wanted just the atmosphere and setting, Silent Hill delivers.
If you watch Street Fighter just for Raul Julia, you will not be disappointed.
Karl Urban and the Rock are worth the price of admission for Doom (I know, not his best film- but way better than Scorpion King).

And though it isn't a movie- the Castlevania Netflix series is absolutely top notch entertainment based on a video game.

Ohh forget Silent Hill - that was great adaption.

No, there are no such movies that can be labeled as quality films, granted a few can be entertaining but none can hold a candle to anything that is not tied into games or comics. Honorable mention in the entertainment category goes to Silent Hill of all things, it actually made for a half-decent movie, even if the actors where less than pleasing to watch perform their trade.

 Nevelon wrote:
I liked Doom!. Not going to say it’s high art, but was a fun watch and pretty true to the source.

To branch out a tad from the OP to include board games, Clue is a great movie-based-on-game.

I'll throw in another one for Doom.

Its actualy not too terrible.

I think warcraft is the bottom of the pile.

Cant think of any others outside of Tomb Raider, silent hill and resident evil.

 Lance845 wrote:
Sonic the Hedgehog was amazingly not gak. It's a decent movie all around.

Really? That is actually very surprising to me. It looked so much like Gak, even after they revised their Sonic character design.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
My first thought was Detective Pikachu. But maybe Pokemon does not count because both the anime and videogames are the primary media for the series (and I know several young fans of the anime that don't actually play the video games). Deteictive Pikachu is probably more an adaptation of the anime series than the games (there are a lot of world building and story telling elements to pull from there).

Detective Pikachu is based on the Detective Pikachu 3DS game.

I think warcraft is the bottom of the pile.

I agree it's terrible, but if you think it's bottom you've never heard of Uwe Boll

Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2: The animated movie, the Jolie Tomb Raiders, the first live action Resident Evil and Warcraft. Not seen them but clips from both Pikachu and Sonic look promising. Doom, while sadly not based on the 90s games, was a still a fun film.

 Mr Morden wrote:
If we including baord games - Battleship is great fun and loads of extra points for managing to get the game mechanics into the film

Battleship is dumb A F but.... quite entertaining and fun, also.

 Azreal13 wrote:

I think warcraft is the bottom of the pile.

I agree it's terrible, but if you think it's bottom you've never heard of Uwe Boll

I can confirm I have not. And I ahve not heard of the game either.

Might check it out. Me and the mrs are currently in a spate of watching terrible movies. Last film watched was zombeavers...

Im trying to get sharknado next

Also an honerable mention I completely forgot is Final Fantasy Advent children.
as a huge fan of that particular game I though it fit very well. Even if ultimately FF7 remake is essentially FF7 advent children the game..

Uwe Boll is not an "it" (well...) so much as a "who."

A director who almost made it a specialism to licence video games for the purposes of movie making. I believe he has on occasion been mooted as the worst director of all time.

The Bloodrayne movies are him, as are the In The Name Of The King series. But I'm sure he's done more (and worse.)


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Oh, and Alone In The Dark (how could I forget!) that currently rocks a stellar 2.4 on IMDB.

Apparently a Far Cry movie too, the mind boggles.

This might sound weird, but I find the Sewer Shark cut scenes perfectly capture the feeling of a low budget 80’s movie. I’d rather rewatch Sewer Shark than most video game movies.

I quite enjoyed Silent Hill, although a second view a few years later I just found it boring.

Resident Evil was okay-ish.

Max Payne is pretty decent, for the visuals alone if nothing else.

And for what it's worth, I saw Mario Bros. as a kid and liked it. It's on Netflix now, but I dread to watch it again

I think the best computer game film so far is actually Prince of Persia; it’s no Oscar winner, but it’s good fun and, more importantly, it actually uses the core game mechanic as a key plot point.

My off the cuff was Resident Evil, and Doom (the first... Doom Annihilation barely holds together as a series of shots on similar locations)

I think I liked Bloodrayne. I probably liked Max Payne.

I very much enjoyed Castlevania on Netflix, more than the actual game.


Hardcore Henry is basically a prequel to the first Fallout game...? You wake up in a vault, protagonist doesn't speak, super mutants, robots, you wake up with Amnesia, a little bit of bounce-bounce, jiggle-jiggle for the funsies. Small guns is your primary skill.

Wreck It Ralph is a masterpiece, and its sequel is also a very good movie. It's not a real adaptation from a videogame though.

I like Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Tomb Raider (2018). Street Fighter actually works as a funny B-movie. Resident Evil 2 was kinda meh, but I still appreciated.

I didn't like Assassin Creed, Doom, Hitman (2007), both Jolie's Tomb Raiders, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Need for speed, Prince of Persia, Resident Evil 3-6, Warcraft.

Absolutely hated Alone in the dark, Bloodrayne, House of the dead, Rampage, In the name of the king, Super Mario Bros.

Among those movies that I have seen my favorite is definitely Tomb Raider (2018) and the worst is Along in the dark.

The only games I've played extensively among those titles are Max Payne, Hitman and Bloodrayne. I did some games with Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Doom when I was a child.

Going with generally no

But going to my fallback of, does it have distracting visuals? Then the RE franchise and new Tomb Raider are passable timesinks

The RE films are awful... They're basically the fast and furious franchise, but with zombies, not cars... Don't both do the same trick of a submarine coming from an ice cap as well?

I don't actually know why I continued to watch any of them after the first film.

Ready Player One, whilst not based on a single game, and having many faults, it is fairly entertaining.

Tenuous links for Tron (blockade) and Wargames (computerised tic-tak-toe) :p

 Azreal13 wrote:
A director who almost made it a specialism to licence video games for the purposes of movie making. I believe he has on occasion been mooted as the worst director of all time.

The tax loopholes he was exploiting required his movies to tank, and he needed marketable names/licences to reach the cash threshold for the tax evasion.