Sometimes, they’re REALLY REALLY bad - cough assassin’s creed cough pixels cough cough
- so for this list, we’re going to try to focus on films that were actually pretty decently
made.
But there are some nostalgia filled entries on this list that are more so memorable for
being a vague piece of your childhood and or gaming history that didn’t quite live
up to the original master piece it was shadowing.
10 Super Mario Bros Let’s start off this list with addressing
that nostalgia I just mentioned.
A campy classic in the form of Super Mario Bros. It’s got all the cheesy things that
a video game to movie adaptation requires - real life ‘sort of’ explanations as
to why the characters you love are now roaming around in the 3 dimensional reality we call
home.
Yoshi is an actual raptor.
Mario and Luigi straight up go on an adventure into the sewers.
And then Bowser.
Holy hell Bowser.
9 Need for Speed Based off of the Need for Speed series by
EA games, this 2014 film - not to be confused with the 203 one that was based off a comic
- stars Aaron Paul and Dominic Cooper.
Aaron Paul is a street raced named Tobey Marshall who embarks on a cross country race to avenge
his friend’s death.
As is the trend you’ll soon spot with many of the films on this list, Need for Speed
wasn’t really critically acclaimed.
With one critic even going as far to call it a glorified commercial for the 2015 Ford
Mustang.
8 Tron: Legacy While some think this film wasn’t all too
great, you can’t deny it didn’t have some pretty impressive special effects.
AND THAT SOUNDTRACK.
COME ON.
So good.
And we’re talking the 2010 Tron, which is actually a sequel to the 1982 Tron.
So, if you’re wondering why Tron is on this list, it’s because it’s actually heavily
inspired by Pong.
The early arcade video game.
After the 1982 film came out, a whole franchise was spawned, also leading to games that would
have quite the influence on the style of the 2010 film years later.
Also, worth noting, you can put Olivia Wilde in anything and immediately make it better
because of it.
Just saying.
7 Hitman Based off of the Rockstar game of the same
name, this 2007 film stars Timothy Elephant as agent 47, and despite not being a critical
masterpiece, it was actually a financial success, earning 99 million against its 24 million
dollar budget.
Not too shabby.
Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, commenting, I quote “Hitman stands right
on the threshold between video games and art.
On the wrong side of the threshold, but still, give it credit.”
6 Mortal Combat This 1995 loosely based adaptation is one
of the films on this list that did pretty well for itself, box office wise.
Earning an estimated $122 million worldwide, it was number one at the box office for a
while, and to date is the fifth highest grossing video game adaptation released in the US as
of September 2016.
Critics commented how it was notably free of blood and gore, and that the film, despite
having a vague narrative, was so action packed that it almost perfectly suited the game.
And if you do pay attention to it’s attempt at a plot, well, you can see why it’s a
cult classic these days.
5 Warcraft One of the more recent films on our list,
this film was actually announced back in 2006, but didn’t get into production until much
later, with its release date being June 10th of 2016.
In terms of it’s narrative, it follows the first encounters of humans and orcs, and while
some really enjoyed the film, many felt it fell victim to it’s heavy use of CGI.
Others felt that the CGI orcs were the best part of the movie, with the opinion that they
actually had depth compared to their human counterparts.
Zing.
4 Doom The original Doom game didn’t really have
a plot.
Or at least a complex narrative, rather.
So one can see how this 2005 film would bee more inclined to based itself off of Doom
3 rather than it’s 1993 predecessor.
Starring Carl Urban and Dwayne the rock Johnson, Doom was a box office bomb, grossing only
56 million world wide, four million short of it’s 60 million dollar budget.
Set in 2046, the film follows marines who answer a distress call from a research facility
on Mars.
While the film wasn’t oscar material, it does have one fantastic scene that’s an
homage to the game, filmed in a first person perspective to represent the game’s FPS
point of view.
3 Silent Hill Based off of the Silent Hill game series,
this 2006 starred Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean.
It took five years for filmmakers to get the rights from Konami, with director Christophe
Gans even sending a video to the developer, articulating his adoration of the video games
and his desire to do them justice on the big screen.
Despite getting a lot of heat for subpar dialogue, a messy plot and a lengthly run time, the
film did score points for it’s chilly cinematography, production design and over all style, and
pulled in almost $100 million worldwide.
The film follows a woman who brings her adopted daughter to the town of Silent Hill, where
she gets into a car accident upon arriving.
Her daughter goes missing, and as she tries to discover where she is, she uncovers not
only her daughter’s past connection to the town, but also a local cult.
2 Lara Croft Tomb Raider With star power like Angelina Jolie, it’s
easy to see why these 2001 and 2003 films were big blockbuster hits.
Jolie fit into that fantasy Lara Croft oh so easily, and while the franchise - from
the latest games and the new upcoming film set for 2018 - are now steering the character
into a more relatable coming of age narrative and less of a tit-tacular one, these two adaptations
did do a good job of encompassing certain elements of the game that were a crucial part
to Lara Croft’s overall history.
1 Resident Evil film franchise Now, I know it may seem a bit unfair to bulk
all of the Resident Evil films into one number.
But, this isn’t a list of the top 10 resident evil movies, now is it?
Arguably the most successful game to cinema transition, the franchise boasts a total of
6 films with talked of a reboot currently in development.
While it’s of popular opinion that the last three films were, well, questionable in quality,
many fans felt that as far as cinematic adaptations go, the films did a very good job at translating
the story and terror that makes the Resident Evil games so loveable and compelling.
I know there’s a lot of films we didn’t touch on, so if you guys want a part two,
let us know in those comments.
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you go.
Don’t wanna go?
Well, we have a ton of other lists you can check out if your heart desires.
But for now, I’ve been Kelly Paoli and this has been top 10 gaming.
I’ll catch you all in the next one!
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