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Literature
"Video games don't have the greatest track record when it comes to being transformed into film...even when financially successful, these films tend to be vilified by the very fans they're seeking to attract.''
— Owen Williams, invoking/discussing this trope in the article about a possible film version of Halo, in Simon Braund's The Greatest Movies You'll Never See
Web Comics
In a World… where video games to film adaptations suck ass, this movie will totally fall beyond your expectations. And then some more.
Web Original
It's truer to the feel of the games than most novel-based movies are to the original novel. Time and care was spent on that. Then, since the games have no characterization, or any plot much above the level of "get all the bits", they pasted together an inconsistent load of old garbage in twenty minutes and hoped the SFX would carry it. They don't.
Hollywood doesn't make good video game movies for the same reason General Motors doesn't make motorized unicycles: they're stupid ideas, there's very little money in it and they aren't very good at making their regular product to begin with.
Rule number one in making a movie about Street Fighter is to take the characters and have them fight. Rule number two shouldn't have to exist, but if it did, it would be filling the time between fights with musical training montages or musical montages of shorter fights. Ignoring these simple rules I just invented ten years after they made it, Street Fighter was so desperate to keep a fight from breaking out they went so far as to turn Dhalsim into a lab technician and Chun Li, E. Honda, and Balrog into telejournalists.
I’m not even going to go into how the movie is nothing like the game because that would be shooting fish in a barrel. I’m talking about cliches that were old 40 years ago and plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through. The “mystery”, if you could call it that, doesn’t exactly need Sherlock Holmes to solve. Larry Holmes could solve it.
Tails: So what did you think of the movie?
Sonic: I mean, sure it had some flaws but honestly it was pretty good. And I'm not talking "pretty good for a video game movie good", I'm talking "good-good", Beastmaster good!
[...]
Sonic: All in all, it was a good kids movie and I'm glad the adult fans got what they wanted. Which caused a bunch of VFX artists to work insane hours only to get laid off and have the studio shut down once the movie was finished.
Tails: Hope it was worth it.
Sonic: I mean, sure it had some flaws but honestly it was pretty good. And I'm not talking "pretty good for a video game movie good", I'm talking "good-good", Beastmaster good!
[...]
Sonic: All in all, it was a good kids movie and I'm glad the adult fans got what they wanted. Which caused a bunch of VFX artists to work insane hours only to get laid off and have the studio shut down once the movie was finished.
Tails: Hope it was worth it.
— Dorkly Originals parody review of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Web Video
"CHRIST, is that the Silent Hill movie on VHS?! Don't watch dat. No no no no no. Don't watch dat. Don't wa—"
[cut to TV room, James hangs his head in a suicidal depression]
"He watched it."
[cut to TV room, James hangs his head in a suicidal depression]
"He watched it."
"If Super Mario Bros. was the first nail in the coffin of movies based on video games, then Wing Commander was the last, because—believe me—nobody ever took video game movies seriously after this complete and utter ruination of gaming's best original sci-fi saga. They shoulda just saved themselves a heap of trouble and put some kid's Let's Play of Wing Commander IV in theaters. Woulda made a lot more money."
"The answer really is simple: What is the best video game movie? It hasn't been made yet."
— Joshua Ovenshire, Best & Worst Video Game Movies
"Wasn't the original plot of Double Dragon 'Someone punches a chick in the stomach and two guys have to go rescue her'? What, was that story just too complex for the writers to figure out?"
The créme of the crap in Uwe Boll's abysmal resumé, a film so bad the worst part comes before the camera even starts running. For a film that is called Alone In The Dark, barely ever is anyone alone at any given time. What constitutes "horror" in this film is turning the light switches on and off again, as well as casting Tara Reid as a scientist. This film is the very reason we list Uwe Boll as the #1 Worst Director in Hollywood.
How did anyone think this was the way to do a Mario movie? Yeah, you can't exactly have a guy hopping on mushrooms and running on platforms and call it a movie; well, I guess that's the plot of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but still, I think if you start from there and then brainstorm, the first thing I would tackle is how Mario knows how to hit all those secret power-up blocks. It would be EPIC, I tell you!
[...]That's a big part of why movie versions of video games struggle so much. Frequently, the narrative of the game is inseparable from it's structural and mechanical ambitions, and when you rip those things out to get a purely cinematic experience out of it, you're left holding something that is decidedly less impressive and engaging than when you started out with.
"Translating interactive stories to non-interactive media is notoriously difficult, and almost everyone fucks it up, but Pokémon made all the money that one time, and anime has never stopped trying since."
I think you shoulda dropped Hollywood as an option!
When even Angelina gave you up for adoption!
When even Angelina gave you up for adoption!
