The Worst Video Game Movie Adaptations

Hollywood has never shied away from adapting works from other mediums as films. Even when motion pictures were jittery silent films, adaptations were as common as original screenplays. Consider Shakespeare; not only has every one of his plays been turned into a film, many repeatedly, but there are countless variations on his plots such as "West Side Story", "10 Things I Hate About You", and "O". Originality has never been the film business' strong suit.

Unfortunately, compared to novel and theater adaptations, video games have had a short and relatively poor track record. Part of the problem is that what is fun in a game (killing enemies thousands of times or jumping on platforms to collect coins) doesn't often translate to the big screen. Most recent adaptations ("Prince of Persia", "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li") have been at the very least critical failures and quite often commercial disappointments to boot. With so many poor products to chose from, it's hard to pick out the absolute worst, but here's a list of five video game adaptations that certainly deserve to be considered.

"Hitman" (2007): If you've ever seen the excellent television series "Justified", you know that star Timothy Olyphant can act. Not that you would realize that from watching "Hitman". In this Xavier Gens-directed flick based on the stealth video game, Olyphant shaves his head and doesn't do much beyond look wooden. There's not much of a script to speak of, so the movie shambles from action set-piece to chase to action set-piece. Ultimately the film needed to embrace its grittiness, but just fell flat. "Hitman" is the ultimate so-so video game adaptation.

Sample review: "There have been plenty of movies adapted from video games before, but 'Hitman' may be the first one that actually feels like a computer wrote and directed it." --Ty Burr, Boston Globe

"Street Fighter" (1994): Even back when "Street Fighter" was released, critics realized that this was a great low point for video game movies everywhere. Like lots of early 1990's films, the producers decided to go light and campy rather than acknowledge that the game is really about bloodsport. This was a bad idea.

Perhaps the worst thing about "Street Fighter" is it was a critical success (1), despite pretty much everyone disliking it with a fiery passion. Perhaps the worst feature of the film was that it marked the continued depths that Jean-Claude Van Damme was sinking to at the time, and was the last film Raúl Juliá appeared in.

Sample review: "What can you say when a video game is more exciting and entertaining than the big-budget feature film it inspires? Not much." --Richard Harrington, Washington Post

"Bloodrayne" (2005): "Bloodrayne" the video game was about a buxom half-vampire traveling the world putting stakes in bad guys. Also, Hitler was somehow involved. The task of bringing to the cinema this artistic masterpiece was Uwe Boll, whose video game adaptations could fill up this list by themselves. Most of his films were made thanks to a German law that promised tax write-offs for film investments--though why investors would pick Boll is beyond me (2). It's hard to pick which Boll film is his worst--getting on Rotten Tomatoes' list of 100 worst reviewed films of the decade repeatedly is, after all, an impressive feat (3)--but my money's on "Bloodrayne". The film has a number of bonified Hollywood actors thrown at the project (Ben Kingsley, Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez), most looking into the middle distance like they were imagining strangling their agents during filming. Tepid and senselessly bloody action drag this picture down even further.

Sample review: "As you might expect from any movie that begins with the promise of a ''special appearance by Billy Zane'' and features Meat Loaf Aday decked out in a Spinal Tap wig and writhing around with naked women, BloodRayne is ghastly-bad." --Greg Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly

"Doom" (2005): "Doom"'s missteps started by forgoing the plot of the shooter games and concocting a hilariously unscientific scientific explanation for everyone turning into hellish monsters. Beyond that, the movie was marred by bad decisions (having The Rock as anyone other than the protagonist, and a first-person action sequence) and the usual problems associated with a brainless action flick. Even when taking a game that primarily involves blowing up multitudes of demons, Hollywood just couldn't get it right.

Sample review: " 'Doom' (the movie) is a dreadful, hackneyed piece of cinema, a D-grade mess [...] It's unfathomable how many times Hollywood has struck out in attempts to convert popular video/computer games into movies. This is the kind of misfire that reinforces negative stereotypes." --James Berardinelli, Reelviews

"Super Mario Bros." (1993): It's only fitting that "Super Mario Bros.", the first video game adaptation, get the top spot--it set the trend of bad movies that has yet to be reversed or altered. Rattle off pretty much every trope from bad video game movies and it got its start here. Completely different plot than the game? Check (Mario and Luigi are plumbers sucked into an alternate dinosaur dimension.) Good actors in horrible roles? Check (Bob Hoskins called filming the picture "a (bleeping') nightmare"(4) and Dennis Hopper gets turned into slime at the end.) Pedestrian cinematography that doesn't do justice to the amount of money thrown at effects? Check. Like most video game movies, it was the ultimate triumph of style over substance that no one watched.

"If you're over the age of 5 and can believe that Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo are brothers--let alone Italian--the rest of the film's leaps of faith are child's play." --Lawrence Cohn, Variety

References
* (1) "Street Fighter (1994)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 10, 2010.
* (2) "The Awful Truth Behind the Worst Director In the World". CinemaBlend. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
* (3) "Worst of the Worst 2009: 50-41". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 11, 2010.
* (4) "The Method? Living it out? Cobblers!" The Guardian. Retrieved December 11, 2010.