Back when the media landscape was simpler and videogames still young, aka the 80ies, gamers could only dream of movies or TV shows that were based on their favorite pastime. According to Wikipedia, the Super Mario Bros movie from 1993 was indeed the first foray into such territory which is not surprising given Nintendo’s market leadership at the time. I have vague memories of that title which range from initial excitement to recoiling in horror. Not a great start for videogame movies.
What followed were two decades of fairly terrible or just plain boring adaptions, with the odd watcheable flick like Tomb Raider in between. In fact, I don’t recall anything big until the much debated Warcraft movie by Duncan Jones came out in 2016. While not perfect, I enjoyed Warcraft; watching many of our beloved settings come to life on screen was fun. There were some great characters especially among the Orcs (Durotan, Orgrim, Gul’dan) and the CGI was fabulous. I also enjoyed the humor and lighter moments despite the grim plot. Medivh was silly and Garona poorly written, yet nothing I couldn’t forgive.
While Duncan Jones probably didn’t do himself any favors starting off a WoW trilogy with the Orcs origin story (personally I believe they should’ve focused on Lordareon and the Arthas arc), I was horribly disappointed to learn the sequels got canceled over US box office numbers. Warcraft did great globally and still ranks as the third highest grossing videogame movie of all time to date, making almost $440Mio on a $160Mio budget. I would have loved to see Thrall’s story continue but alas, it was not to be.
Despite all this, videogame adaptions have been going through a renaissance of late. Maybe this is due to cultural lag and videogames finally becoming mainstream in the western market, or maybe other successful movie franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones paved the way for bigger overall investment in “all that geek stuff”. Whatever it is, it’s nice to see some videogame IPs finally getting proper screen treatment, with titles like the new Super Mario Bros from 2023 reaching an insane worldwide gross of $1.36Bn. Redemption, Nintendo!
I thought the new Mario movie was surprisingly okay, with the understanding that I am hardly its target audience. On a more personal note there have been some disappointments (looking at you, Witcher!) but also a few series I have thoroughly enjoyed:
- Castlevania, minus season 3
- Arcane, with an upcoming season 2 this November
- Fallout, also see this post
- The Last of Us, to be continued in 2025
It’s no surprise that animated series are doing well in this regard. There’s also a symptomatic absence of actual movies among my list, although I still intend to watch Sonic and Assasin’s Creed at some point. As for recent titles like the horribly rated Borderlands or upcoming Minecraft movie, they are a hard pass (maybe it’s Jack Black’s fault). I guess that just leaves me waiting for the other shows and whatever surprise the future may yet hold in store for us. Videogames aren’t going anywhere so I assume neither will the screen adaptions good or bad.
Wikipedia has a list and it’s not as long as I expected. I actually saw the Super Mario movie at the cinema on release, not because I wanted to but because one of the kids did. i remember absolutely nothing about it.
One that I would recommend is Pokemon Detective Pikachu from 2019. I watched that on a streaming platform and thought it was pretty good. I haven’t seen the Sonic movie from the year after but i seem to remember that getting soid reviews from mainstream film reviewers.
Yea apparently Sonic is quite good now, after they reworked the character’s look.
I’m not a big Pokémon person but I’ll have a look when it comes around!
I thought that Warcraft only did well in China. I knew it bombed here in the States, but I thought it did barely better in Europe.
Game adaptations of any sort haven’t gone over well in general, and it took Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings for Fantasy to finally have a breakthrough where people finally took the genre seriously.
It’s kind of funny to look back on it now, but the best place for Fantasy, Science Fiction, and even video games is on the small screen. If you want to tell a good burner of a story without trying to limit it to 2-3 hours, the small screen is the way to go. I used to think that Lord of the Rings could only be told as a mini-series, and while the movies proved me wrong, I will stand by that by saying that the extended edition of each of the trilogy are very much the length of 2-part mini-series.
This is pretty much the reason why all of my favorites are TV shows. I think it goes for everything else too, I rarely watch films these days compared to series and I can’t recall the last time I went to the cinema! I am interested in the new Beetlejuice though, so that might get me pulled back this December.
And we owe Peter Jackson soso much when it comes to mainstreaming Fantasy for sure. I would say Harry Potter too made an impact.
Yes, Harry Potter did as well (and so did the first X-Men movie back in 2000-ish) but Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies actually got respect from the highbrow cinema folks. Return of the King finally broke through and got the full sweep at the Oscars, something that would have been inconceivable even as late as 2000.