Game-Based Movies: The Good and the Bad

The ones that fail and the ones that stay true to the game.

MMGN: Games often make great premises for movies due to their engaging stories and enthralling settings. Whether they are sci-fi, cyber punk, fantasy, or real world, a great movie adaptation captures the atmosphere of the game and stays close to its roots. We’ll start off with the bad movie adaptations, and then the good ones to show how it should be done.

[NovusTerminus]

W.T.F... Why is Resident Evil was on the good list, and Advent Children and Degeneration just got an honorable mention?

[ZombieAutopsy]

Most likely due to the fact that RE movies are some of the most successful Game to Movie adaptions yet(money wise).

MK shouldn't be an honorable mention on the bad list (MK:annihilation yea it should), yea it was cheesy but for the time it was a pretty good movie, and come on who can forget YOUR SOUL IS MINE.

[FiftyFourPointTwo]

I highly recommend watching Future Cops, a 1993 HongKong adaptation of Street Fighter. Very funny movie. One of my favorite movies when I was a kid.

Here's the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[CatGlue]

I thought RE was pretty well done... I love zombies, give me any game or movie with zombies in it, i will pay money for... maybe that's why.

[Jeannius]

Advent Children and Degeneration were obviously good because they were animated with the same characters.

[ABizzel1]

This was a horrible list. Everything on the bad list deserved to be there except Mortal Kombat, it was actually decent.

Everything o the good list was decent at best.

The only good video game movies were the good Honorable Mentions.

Silent Hill, Resident Evil: Degeneration, and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. They actually stayed true to the material and evoked the vision of the games the best. The sad part is that 2 of the 3 are CGI movies.

[ReservoirDog316]

Really though, the only one that actually held my attention and in retrospect was pretty good, was Hitman. Except for that sword fighting piece, it was an incredibly solid movie.

Better than those 3 on the good list too.

[Myze]

In my opinion there has NEVER been a really good video-game movie, ever. There have been some that are decent, and worth watching, but that does not mean they are really good.

Just because a video game movie stays true to the source and such, does not make it good. Video game stories often times work for a video game, but don't work for something like a movie. RE is a good example, the games are great (well, a lot of them are), and the story is really good in some of the games, but the movies are bare bones, nothing but action. Some of the movies' stories are taken from the video games (well, parts), but for a series like RE, it was more about the immersion than the actual story (same with Silent Hill, although it was better than the RE movies). At least the Silent Hill movie was a thriller/horror movie (not great, by any means though, but one worth watching). RE movies are little more than action movies with zombies.

I think the problem is, most of these lists are about movies that are "good" for the genre, which sorely lacks anything of high quality.

Mortal Kombat (only the first), Silent Hill, Advent Children, and Prince of Persia are the only movies I would consider worth watching. Most of them I would even consider very enjoyable, but not above "pretty good."

I'm not trying to sound snobbish, because "pretty good" is better than 90% of the crap that comes out in any genre, it's just that I'm waiting for that one video game movie that really helps the genre step into legitimacy and away from a "sub-genre" with cool special effects and a "sub-culture" demographic.

[Gaetano]

Advent Children wasn't that bad. You just need to REALLY know the FF story (if there is such a thing).

Super Mario Bros. is also the worst ever. Good list otherwise!

[Pilkingbod]

There's a few movies missing, but good list overall. It's good to revisit such god-awful films...

Now I await your 'Movie-based Games' list, in which the 'Bad' section will be overloaded.

[Jeannius]

I fear that Movie-based games list, are there any that are even good? =/

[Gaetano]

Goldeneye, G-Force, most games based off Pixar games, Terminator Salvation wasn't bad either.

[tom047]

I think goldeneye is the only one of those that cut it for me :P sweet article though, good work.

[ReservoirDog316]

LotR 2 and Spiderman 2. Some of my favorite games overall from last gen.

[Xfanboy]

http://www.youtube.com/user...

[Whoooop]

Game-based movies based articles... Enough already.

[Sam Fisher]

would be the resident evil shouldnt be there. its a good movie to watch, but a bad adaptation, atleast dragon ball and tekken stood with its story, they just threw sh!t in from the franchise with resident and made there own thing.

[Snowb420]

Dragonball shouldn't be there either I think. I never watched the movie myself, but I do believe that it is based on the show, not the games.

[Jeannius]

There are so many channels to Dragonball Z that it can be on any list really, the anime was based on the manga, the games were based on the anime, the movie was based on the show/games etc.

[ZombieAutopsy]

If you're talking about Dragonball Evolution then it didn't follow any of the DB stories at all. Damn near all DB fans pretty much hated the movie because it didn't really follow anything besides names.

[Jeannius]

@ZombieAtopsy - it deserves to be put on the "bad" list then!

[albel_nox]

I like the Resident Evil movies and the first Mortal Kombat movie a lot. At the other end of the spectrum Alone in the Dark and The Legend of Chun Li are two of the worst movies I have seen in my life. Also how did Prince of Persia get on the good list?

[Quagmire]

because it was good

[JaeKuro]

Just watched the Tekken movie yesterday and I can honestly say it should be second on the list of horrible game adaptations right after Street Fighter and followed by Dead or Alive. If you were a fan of the series you will want to shank the person that wrote the story for the movie. It can't even be called a real adaptation because it only depicts certain characters (not actually personalities or backgrounds) and a few minor details of the game's story. One question I wondered the entire movie was how Kazuya and Heihichi could actually sit in a room without trying to kill each other and why wasn't Lee in this movie?

But I digress, these movies will never truly satisfy us because we hold them on a high par next to the games. It's not a bad thing at all but producers, directors, movie casters, and etc. don't realize how much we would kill for a GOOD game-to-movie adaptation. Until they do, all of this movies will be pretty shitty and half assed to us. The only reason Tomb Raider was decent was because there isn't much to fuck up there. Find a busty female that can do fairly okay acting, give her a gun, and throw her in some ruins with some ancient evil artifact and there you go.

[Katana Yamato]

There's good in Game-Based movies?

If so, where's the good movie based on a game? Cause i definitely don't see it on that list.

Also they needed to include the King of Fighters movie.

[N4BmpS]

I actually Liked "the Spirits Within" I just watched it actually. I also respect the RE movies (I wouldn't say those were based 100% on the games, more like inspired), I'm sure a lot of people would disagree.

[SolidMGSnake]

is missing in the good list

[Jeannius]

It's a honourable mention.

[yewles1]

Street Fighter Legacy beats them all.

[Xgeneration]

what about 'doom' .did any one knew about that

[skyblue14213]

I think the silent hill movie was very good and more than worth an honorable mention as it stayed true to its roots, It played the balancing act of pleasing the fans(I am a core fan of the franchise since the beginning) of the franchise while pleasing non-fans of the franchise and/or have not played the games yet(that is something that is not easily accomplished), it did not stray to far from the source material though my only minor complaint is that the person that played cybil did not look no where near the video game character cybil. The first mortal kombat movie was good and some of the acting in it was good too, mk annihilation I thought was bad though.

The resident evil movies were decent: the first one was good, the second one was borderline ok/bad and the one that played Jill Valentine did a horrible job portraying Jill Valentine(Rebbecca, Claire, and Jill are among some of my favorite female video game characters), the third movie actually surprised me as I was not expecting much from it since I heard bad reviews about the movie and imo I thought was actually pretty good after watching, degeneration was good especially considering that I picked it up brand new on sale for $5 + tax not too long after it came out(THANK YOU GOD). tomb raider was alright, I did not fully watch the tomb raider 2 movie yet but plan to.

The doom movie was dis-appointing except for the first person shooter segment, it did stick to the video game source material on a basic level but the movie itself under delivered and turned out to be way less than expected, any one that is a fan of the doom series like me knows what I am talking about, for example: the series is known for lots of action, monsters, a scary and dark atmosphere etc... well the movie stuck to the source material on the most basic level but did not deliver much of it(if any)as the things that I previously mentioned. I have not seen the prince of persia movie yet but I heard it is good so I plan on seeing it in the future aswell.

[tigertron]

Silent Hill and the Tomb Raider movies are the best imo. However, the Resident Evil films are good, just aslong as you don't think of them as Resident Evil. It a guilty pleasure of mine.

I just watched Afterlife, its a decent film however it has loads of plotholes and they did mess up Wesker and Chris. The 3D was excellent though so I do recommend it if you liked watching the previous films.

[Wrecker]

I think it's best if the film industry left video games alone.

[skyblue14213]

Not necessarily, I think it is just a matter of the right people(that are video game fans of course) to direct video game adaptions. I mean how hard is it to keep true to a video game story and then expand on it in a way that wont drift away from what made a video game franchise so popular in the first place. The best example would be the movie silent hill, it was a good video game adaption movie and it stayed true to it's franchises roots and did not alienate non video game fans from enjoying the movie. I believe the reason why it was good is because some or one of the main people involved in making the film were fan(s) of the video game series at one point. It all comes down to how much passion someone has in making a film about a particular story or subject that determines if the film will be good or not. And in this day and age passion for making movies is very much lacking and now it is all about money which is sad especially considering that never really use to be that way until about 10 or 15 years ago, of course there are exceptions.