I watched a bit of the new Mario Bros film and didn't make it very far into it before I was bored and switched it off. I think a lot of this is because I am not a child and you need more than flashy colors to keep me interested. The silliness will appeal to a lot of people but it just wasn't what I was looking for.
I had a thought in my mind while I was contemplating turning it off about how I don't really know about many video game films that did well even if the game they were based on was extremely popular and well, why is that?
I have some theories but let's look at some of the films that were made that while they probably made some money, most people agreed that they were not very good.
World of Warcraft is extremely successful and a huge cash cow for Blizzard. IT seems as though they have a built in guaranteed audience for this one and that paid off for them. It had a massive $160 million budget and from what little I watched of it I thought they were going to lose their asses on this one. Yet thanks to the primarily Chinese Asian market, they ended up pulling in nearly $450 million globally. Once you subtract the marketing costs this was likely over $100 million in profit for the producers. Great, right? Well not exactly. Almost the entirety of the press hated this movie and one funny article I read is entitled "Warcraft’ Movie Is Openly Hostile to Non-Nerds."
I didn't think that was the case, but I did find it boring. From my experience playing the RTS versions of this game the Orcs don't really have much of a voice but they did in this film and that was kind of off-putting to me. It was clear that this was a CGI fest and those normally go over well in China because they enjoy that sort of stuff, but their own studios don't have the capital to pull it off.
Of all video game franchises that I have been a fan of, Final Fantasy was likely my favorite... well, until the past 5 years or so. As a kid this was my favorite. But then I saw this movie and couldn't even make it all the way through. It was just bad.
In fact, I can't really think of any videogame adaptation that truly appealed to me and I have been told that I need to watch the Sonic the Hedgehog ones because Jim Carey is outstanding in his role of whatever the bad guy's name is in that one. Dr. Robotnik? Is that right? Whatever. I'm sure there is a paper-thin story there with Jim making it entertaining.
The fact remains though that most video games turned movies are a very risky endeavor for the studios. There are 3 or 4 that managed to break 7/10 on popular lists such as the rotten tomatoes one here but outside of that most of the "top films" are rated as pretty mediocre. By the time you get to number 10 most highly rated film on this list we are looking at barely 5/10.
So why is it that almost zero good movies can be made out of very successful video games? I have a theory and that is because there is no way that a single film can possibly encapsulate the decades of lore that the creators of these video games have spent so much time building. If they were to try to do so it would take a ton of movies and then we are dealing with the fact that outside of rare instances, it is actually quite necessary for the main characters of these games to be killed off while the game is going on. If we think, for example, about the hundreds of characters that have been in Final Fantasy games over the years, how on earth are we going to so much as choose a main character? This is compounded by the fact that in many of the RPG games on this list, the name of the main character is chosen by the player.
Resident Evil has likely gone on the longest and I did quite enjoy the first one and it seems as though most other people did as well. But, and this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, the titles got progressively worse as time went by. I can only presume they were profitable enough for them to continue to make them. Nobody is ever going to accuse these of being extremely well-made films though and they seem to exist simply so Milla Jovovich can continue to have a job. The TV series with the Resident Evil name might be one of the worst things to ever be put on a screen and it was abandoned after a single season.
When I look at the games that I have really enjoyed it is kind of a wonder to me that nobody has ever attempted to make a "Metroid" movie. If they could make that dark and not necessarily for kids I think that could be very good. If the upcoming Zelda movie does well perhaps that will be the next one they look at making. I just hope they don't royally screw it up because these beloved characters and franchises are normally going to have extremely fickle fans who aren't going to be pleased no matter what is released.
I don't think more adult game adaptations can be financial successes. When you look at the list of highest rated game adaptations they are almost exclusively cutesy games like Mario, Angry Birds (how did they make a series of films about that?) and Sonic. Anything a bit edgy that could take on a dark theme just gets reviewed into the ground. Silent Hill apparently made the fans happy, but confused general audiences and I can get on board with that, I never understood the games either.