From Video Games to Movies
When seeing the cinematic incarnation of a novel, the reaction of the book's fans usually range from manifested disappointment to a total embargo. How does the average gamer react to the movie adaption of his/her (who are we kidding, there aren't many hers here) favorite video game?
Those book readers do have a point; they fantasize about a handsome stranger for several hundred pages and end up seeing Hugh Grant. Even though video games leave you with little to imagine, the audience of video games remains hard to satisfy. One question (at least) has to be asked: is there any movie based on a video game which is actually better then the video game itself? Let's look at some examples of movies based on video games.
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. was the first movie adaption of a video game in movie history. The video game that made it to the Guinness book of World Records as the best selling video games of all times, turned into a movie flop in 1993. Despite its box office failure (haven't yet to return even half of its production costs), the harsh criticism from the dedicated gamers and the embarrassment that the film Super Mario Bros. caused to its cast, it didn't stop Hollywood screenwriters from seeking inspiration in video games.
Even on paper, the concept of turning Super Mario Bros. into a film (and casting English actor Bob Hoskins as Mario and Dennis Hopper as a tyrant of a semi-evolved dinosaurs' race) doesn't look so promising. The execution, at least according to the critics and the audience), looked even worse. The film Super Mario Bros. had a loose connection to the original video game and even a looser connection with any coherent story line.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within had broken some records of its own. On top of being the first movie to feature computer generated animation instead of actual players, it was one of the greatest financial losses in film history. Nevertheless, it wasn't widely criticized as the previously reviewed Super Mario, and some film critics even found it worth viewing.
Perhaps the fact that the movie and the video game share the same director, Japanese game producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, helped in the acceptation of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within among the game fans and critics alike. Since the movie wasn't particularly based on any of the video games in the Final Fantasy series, there were no complaints on loose connection to the source of inspiration. On the other hand, it was agreed that if the video game wasn't directly referenced at the movie title, The Spirits Within would have been appreciated for its technology innovation and would not have to suffer from the inevitable comparison with the original video game.
Doom
The popular first person shooter game had a film adaption of its own. Not surprisingly, Doom the movie, didn't gain any critical success; its star, The Rock, who played the role of the blindly faithful leader of the marines team, was even nominated Worst Actor in the 2005 Razzies Awards (but eventually lost it to Rob Schneider). Fans of the Doom series of video games weren't too thrilled of the movie either.
However, unlike its genre contemporaries, Doom didn't turned out to be a commercial failure, but the other way around. Doom has reached the number one box office in the US and together with the incomes from foreign box office; it almost covered the costs of the production (not including the sales of the unrated DVD version).
Doom's triumph at the box office - especially in contradiction with its failure to meet any cinematic standards- shows that the video game fans are not necessarily the target audience of the big screen version. Apparently, high budget action/science fiction/horror films have their followers.
Summary
The three examples brought above don't answer the question: is there a video game movie that doesn't suck? Well, Final Fantasy had some supporters amongst the film critics community; some say that Angelina Jolie did a good job making Tomb Raider movies tolerable. Either way, once turning a video game into a movie became a common screenwriters' block solution, you can expect to see more of them on the movie screen or at the nearest Blockbuster and you can do nothing but claiming passionately that the video game is so much better than the movie.
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