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Video Game Adaptations in Hollywood are nothing new. For decades Hollywood studios have been trying to crack the code on popular video game franchises into blockbuster hits. Though time and time again, Video Game Adaptations have failed at every turn. Luckily recent releases like The Last of Us and Fallout have proven that progress is being made at translating these stories to film. Does the success of The Last of Us and Fallout prove Hollywood is finally figuring things out?
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When you think of video game adaptations, do you think of horrifically bad effects
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cartoony action, and generally unwatchable trash? Until very recently, you definitely didn't think
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of prestige movies and TV shows. And yet, that's exactly what modern game adaptations are being
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billed as. So how did we go from this to this? And what makes the current crop of adaptations
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so much better than their predecessors. The first video game adaptation to come out of Hollywood
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was 1993's Super Mario Bros. Wait, I'm pizza here, may I help you
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King Koopa here. Oh, yes, sir. I'd like the Koopa special. In the 80s, Japan brought gaming to the big screen
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with two animated projects, but neither one found its way overseas. So it was up to the live-action Mario Bros
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to introduce the concept to the Western masses. Unfortunately, it wasn't up to the task
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The story wasn't substantive enough to merit its hour and 44-minute runtime
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It struggled to nail down an appropriate tone, and the hiring of Blade Runner art director David L. Snyder
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as the production designer added a dark and gritty aesthetic to the whole affair that just seemed completely counterintuitive
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to anyone who's ever mashed the buttons of a Nintendo controller. If it weren't for Mario and Luigi's iconic color schemes
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it would be virtually impossible to know it was supposed to be a Mario movie at all
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When it was originally released, it seemed like a failed experiment that was just trying to cash in
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on the growing popularity of gaming in the mainstream, a misguided mistake that wouldn't be repeated
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despite the film itself ending with a campy post-credits cliffhanger. I must say, we have a very exciting proposal
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A video game based on your many adventures. What would you call it
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The Super Koopa Cousins. Years before the Avengers would popularize the trope
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However, the promise of more adventures of the Super Mario Bros would never come to be because the film failed to recoup its budget at the box office
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A popular video game, it's called Super Mario Brothers and it doesn't work at all
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I also can't figure out exactly what age group this movie was made for
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But as it turned out, Super Mario Bros. was only the first in a long line of bad movies
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Throughout the 90s and early 2000s waves of bafflingly terrible adaptations were being churned out of the Hollywood machine at a breakneck pace Come on you cons Oh yes I can While some found more financial success than Super Mario Bros none of them could escape the ire of critics and audiences
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Similar complaints about thin plots, tonal issues, and disconnection from the source material
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were levied against titles like Double Dragon, the Resident Evil series, and Silent Hill
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And that's to say nothing of the purposely low-budget cynical cash grabs
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like Street Fighter, Legend of Chun-Li, Dead or Alive, or House of the Dead
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The creative heads behind these projects seemed to be actively fighting against the properties they were adapting
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unsure of who their audience was, what they wanted, and why they liked the games in the first place
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Meanwhile, as computer-generated imagery became more commonplace, over-ambitious animators started to produce some of the most nightmarish effects ever put on screen
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To put it mildly, it was a bad time to be a fan of video games or movies
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On the small screen, video game adaptations were mostly relegated to animated kid shows
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And while Street Fighter and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog weren't offensively bad, they weren't good either
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The only reason these projects were put into production was simple. There was money to be made somewhere
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Regardless of quality, budget, or creative enthusiasm, the companies supplying the investments were aware that these intellectual properties had built-in fan bases
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that could be milked for returns, or at least that's what they thought at the time
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As the years went on, seemingly every attempt at launching a franchise
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building a unique story, or even just making something vaguely passable was thwarted by a
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curse that could make even the most ardent skeptic a devout believer. Fans didn't have to look any
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further than the one-two punch of the short-lived Mortal Kombat TV series Mortal Kombat Conquest
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and Tack and the Power of Juju, to definitely prove there would never be a good video game
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adaptation. And yet, here we are living in a future that disproves what was once a widely held belief
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There's not just one exception to the rule, but rather a growing stable of high-quality and skillfully made video game adaptations
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The modern stories that have found their way to the screen are tangible evidence that with the right approach
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games actually make for great movies and television. But what is the right approach, and how different is it, really, from what we were doing in the past
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After all, we still have our standard kids' fare in Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog, and the recent animated Super Mario Bros. movie
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They certainly not going to win Oscars but they don have to They children films with compelling lead characters and they funny Hey I told you I get your pet turtle Not bad mustache
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Something doesn't have to be prestige to be good, but there is greatness to be found if you go looking
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and these projects have something their earlier counterparts didn't, an understanding of the games and their fans
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Detective Pikachu allowed audiences to lose themselves in the awe-inspiring world of Pokemon
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Sonic the Hedgehog gave us the wacky, fast-talking hero we'd come to love after they fixed his design
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Uh, meow? And the Super Mario Bros. movie was every bit as vibrant and fun as the games it's based on
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with Jack Black especially bringing joy to the screen with his portrayal of Bowser
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I'll be sacrificing them in your honor. Lower the prisoners! For once, gamers could look up at the screen and actually feel like they were immersed in the same worlds they had been playing in for decades
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That's where the magic lies, and it's the key ingredient in the most successful adaptations we've seen so far
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The Last of Us TV show went to great pains to bring the chilling atmosphere and sense of hopelessness from the games into live action
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going as far as to recreate some scenes shot for shot while still stretching their legs and telling news stories in an effort to deepen the world and its characters
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A lot of that is thanks to Craig Mason, who had just come off the critically acclaimed Chernobyl series, and his close working relationship with Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann, who was involved in every step of the process while producing the TV show
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In many of the behind-the-scenes interviews for The Last of Us, the creative heads of the project talk about how often they would try to come up with something new and ultimately return to what was already in the game
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When should we deviate and when should we come back? If it's kind of the same or worse, we stay where the game is
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If it's better, we deviate. Essentially, if it ain't broke, don't fix it
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That acceptance of the source material and the understanding that it's deserving of respect
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makes a huge difference when it comes to the finished product. Together with a reverence for both television and gaming as mediums
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Mason and Druckmann managed to create an adaptation that felt like home to many fans
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The same can be said for the freshly released Fallout TV show, which doesn follow any specific in story but still manages to bring the look and feel of the games to the audiences in perfect detail The ramshackle towns makeshift weapons power armor and mutant creatures all feel as though
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they were ripped straight from the wasteland. And more still, Fallout somehow manages to balance the
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serious anti-war messaging with the goofy humor of being chomped on by a monster while 50s music
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players over your Pip-Boy. Once again, this is because the creators, Geneva Robertson-Dwarrett
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and Graham Wagner, worked with game devs, fans, and non-fans alike to create something that spoke
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to their audience, catered to long-time players, and still left room for newcomers to enjoy. And
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while, yes, those two examples are the prestige projects that anyone, regardless of their
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connections to an underlying game, can appreciate, it goes further than that. Look at Cyberpunk
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Edgerunners, Arcane, or Netflix's Castlevania show. All stellar examples of an animated show
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that has a unique voice, compelling characters, and is pushing the medium in distinct and exciting
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ways. What it comes down to is that these are passionate creators, often with ties to the
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franchises they're adapting, who actually care about their projects. That's a far cry from the
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cash-motivated cynicism of the 90s and early 2000s, and a far cry from Far Cry, the awful 2008 movie
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based on the game. This new crop of film industry executives might even be fans themselves. And we
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can't ignore the power effect fans have had on these new adaptations. The internet is a 24-7
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running poll where people can voice their opinions on how their favorite characters or franchises
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should be adapted. If it weren't for them, we'd still have a Sonic with human teeth. This shouldn't
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be a controversial statement, but video games are worthy of respect. They're an art form unto itself
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They're a complex hybrid of moving images, game design, and artistic expression. But now that
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the industry has reached previously inconceivable heights of success, it's undeniable to the outside
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world. It's predicted that Grand Theft Auto 6 releasing in 2025 is going to pull in 1.15 billion
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dollars in its first five days of release. Ultimately, the video game adaptation horizon
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looks bright. Crossing the threshold between an inherently interactive and immersive medium into
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a passive one isn't easy, but there are multiple new projects which present a shimmering vista of
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potential. And who knows, maybe we'll actually get a good Mortal Kombat movie one day
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