Movies based on video games

Krillin

New member
We recently got a new Tomb Raider movie, Pikachu’s motion picture will be out next year, a Sonic the Hedgehog one is in the works and even Super Mario is apparently getting a reboot.
Since we’ve been getting big screen adaptations since way back when I’d like to ask you: what are you favorite game related movies (live-action or animation)? What about the worst ones?

My favorites:

Mortal Kombat (1995)
Fun, unpretentious and packed with cheesy one-liners and decent action scenes, Mortal Kombat was cool as hell back in the day. Let’s just forget about the sequel…

Street Fighter II - The Animated Movie (1994)
As a teen I watched the US version first and liked it a lot. Great action, characters were quite faithful to the original source material and the soundtrack was right up my alley (Alice in Chains, Korn, Silverchair…). Fast forward a couple of years, I finally watched the original Japanese version and it rocks!

Bottom of the barrel:

House of the Dead (2003)
One of the worst movies I ever watched, gaming or non-gaming related. Very poor acting, plot holes around every corner and a lot of stuff that just doesn’t make sense… I wonder if there was even a script for this. It was directed by Uwe Boll, who somehow managed to make a handful of awful movies about videogames.

Double Dragon (1994)
Bad acting, poor casting and bland story. Visually, it’s somewhat interesting (I usually like dystopian aesthetics) but at the end of the day it’s just another extremely poor adaptation. Not even Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 fame stands out in this movie.

Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Bob Hoskins as Mario is the only good thing about this movie since everything else was an utter mess: Mushroom Kingdom is set on a sci-fi dystopian world, Koopa is a humanoid, Daisy is a paleontologist whose ancestors were dinosaurs, Goombas look awful, Mario and Luigi don’t look like twins at all (more like father and son) and so on. I understand studios have to take some liberties and all but this was way too much. Honestly, there are worse movies based on games out there but Super Mario Bros. was such a departure from the original source that I just couldn’t stand it. What a disappointment this was back in the day…

Guilty pleasure

Street Fighter (1994)
Not good at all, tried too hard to show as many characters as possible, no hadouken and practically no special moves but I like it. Don’t know why actually, I just do…

Now that the wall of text is over: what about you, what’s your take on this kind of movies?
 
Some games just can't be well translated into movies. It's either that or it's a problem with the movie itself, not a lot effort went in or it's just made for a quick cash grab from fans.
Super Mario movie is getting a reboot Huh , oh boy...

I agree with your list Big Grin , my absolute favorites are Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II - The Animated Movie.
Others that i like: Silent Hill (first movie), Resident Evil (first movie only), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Warcraft.
The worst ones are Uwe Boll movies definitely.
After a failed attempt to crowdfund his movie Rampage 3: President Down, he uploaded this video to YouTube:
 
i love tomb raider with everything in my heart but the new movie NOOO Thankssss they ripped the supernatural element from it making it a bore to watch granted its a reboot/origin story and maybe they will build up to the supernatural but if you play the games ,watch the previous movies with jolie and read the tomb raider comics from top cow its a far cry to call that new movie tomb raider.

rant over sorry i just watch that movie a week ago and im still pissed waited so long for a new TR movie and got a turd.
sorry for hijacking the thread

but i always for the most part enjoy game based movies
 
Street Fighter The Movie is the best bad movie ever made. Bison in this flic is actually an awesome, albeit cartoony, villain!
This movie, MK, PoP and Warcraft are the best movie adaptations I've seen, imo.

I really disliked the following adaptations: Max Payne, Silent Hill, RE (starting from the second one). Off the top of my head I don't recall anything else, but there are definitely more than 3 adaptationa I did not like :V

Generally videogame adaptations are awful, but I remember a lot of nice anime series.

Virtua Fighter is not SFII level, but it is still a good action series to watch.

Talking about another capcom anime series here comes one of my favourite when I was younger: Darkstalkers. Unfortunately it is short, but if you are a fan of the games it's really nice to watch thanks to really good fight animations (from what I remember).

All the animated series from Tales of series are nice. In particular Tales of Destiny, Tales of Symphonia, and Tales of the Abyss.
 
Felneth said:
I really disliked the following adaptations: Max Payne, Silent Hill, RE (starting from the second one). Off the top of my head I don't recall anything else, but there are definitely more than 3 adaptationa I did not like :V
 
Liked the first Mortal Kombat Movie tbh...
it's sequel was awful
The Van Damme Street Fighter wasn't so bad
Silent Hill was pretty cool
it's sequel was meh...
the Doom Movie with Dwyane Johnson was a bit OK
RE movies was ok at first but went downhill on the later sequels
Mario was Ughh......
That Street Fighter with Kristen Kreuk as Chun-Li was Horrible.


I just hope the Monster Hunter Adaptation has some good moments, but I won't get my hopes up.

I really want a Street Fighter Live Action Movie about Ryu done right! :D
 
***Movies based on games that I Liked***
-------------
==TOP==
-------------
- Resident Evil 1 (2 =ok, but the rest aren't, they feel instead like parasite eve)
- Silent Hill 1
- Final Fantasy ACC [CG]
----------------------------
===GOOD===
----------------------------
- Hitman (Both)
- DOOM
- Street Fighter Assassin Fist 1 (Web/TV serie compiled into a movie)
- Kingsglaive FFXV [CG]
- Dantes Inferno [ANIME]
- Dead Space 1 [ANIME]
- MK1 + TV series
- Super Mario Bros / Zelda [Cartoons] (I was a child, when these came up)
--------------------
===WORST===
--------------------
- Super Mario Bros [The Motion Picture]
- Tomb Raider (all of them)
- Bloodrayne
- Dragon Ball Evolution (not from a video game but the worst of all movies ever made)
 
there making a sonic the hedgehog movie... and i saw the poster art i'm like OMFG it better not be live action....
 
Ooooh, totally forgot about the Tekken movie! I really liked it when it came out, it was a nice action movie :D
 
Only 2 I liked were Final Fantasy the Spirits within and Resident Evil Damnation both CG movies.
That's it nothing else.
 
one who try to make that movie is greedy bastard , and usualy a complete moron !
It is fine when you want to make a movie like Street Fighter, all you have to do is make a good fight scenes and trow a little related story tied to game , and you are fine.
But when you try to make a movie abaut main hero Plumber who eat mushrums in mushrom kingdom and has loys of mushroms friends and sidekicks , and his main oponents are turtles , that is pinacle of stupidity, you cant make a movie of that, and thats still have game roots , dont try it morons .
Oh , you still want to do it,because temptation is to great, you can get a lot of money from game fans ? Hope you will bancrupt with that movie then ,you greedy dumbass !
 
I know, thats why i said you cant make a movie of that, at least not a movie that isnt complete crap lol
 
Sonic the Hedgehog movie is going to be live-action and this is synopsis from IMDb: "A cop in rural town of Green Hills will help Sonic escape from the government who is looking to capture him"
 
i know the the jean claude movie double impact was supposed to be a double dragon movie, but they could acquire the licensing rights. Also while released BEFORE the game, there was a parasite eve movie....this i didnt ever know till yesterday.....holy f***. i knew it was a light novel(yes that is a book with words) but a manga and a movie too.

also i really like street fighter movie. sadly it was raul julia last film. he past away after production. he was an amazing actor. AND i hate the resident evil live action american movies, the CGI were good though.

Also there is a gyakuten saiban live action movie, its release in japan only but it is a movie based on a game...and the lots of anime/cartoons based on video games. oh my god there are so many list.

and last but not least BATTLESHIP based on bored game er i mean board game. i do mean bored movie. so terrible and lack of more liam neeson was a major reason critics disliked it.
 
The problem with most movies based on video games is that they try to ground the characters and stories in some form of reality, and change a lot of the source to fit what they think will put butts in seats at the theatre, which is where they fuck up all the time. Instead of changing things to make it more suitable for larger audiences, lean the fuck into the source material and make it as close to what it's based on! Duke could be a damn fun action movie if done right! DOA could have been great as well! Mortal Kombat is probably to best video game adapted movie, and it's only ok, in my opinion. The Resident Evil franchise could have been spectacular, but no, they changed so much and focused on an original character and made it action based, and not slower paced with horror as the main focus.

Just my two cents.
 
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