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It's a common rule of nature. Games based on
movies always suck, while movies based on games, also always suck. But
hey, we know where studios are coming from. If a game is making millions
and becoming a pop culture smash, then it's only fitting a movie would
have to be made. The problem is there's yet to be a good movie that's
been adapted from a great video game. Deny it all you want, but let's be
honest, even "Mortal Kombat," while cool, just wasn't faithful to the
game. It was PG-13, Shang Tsung was a younger man, and the movie is very
cheesy these days. Like everything pop culture related, fans simply will
not be able to agree on an idea for a movie, nor will they all enjoy
what the adaptation is, even if by some miracle it happens to be a
masterpiece of filmmaking, but these are the movies as they are, and all
of them are really bad. In honor of
the upcoming "Prince of Persia" and "Street Fighter" adaptations, we're
exploring the slew of bad video game movies, and what we wanted. Hey,
we're not going to pretend you've never seen this list before but we
just had to get our licks in before the next big screen adaptations on
film appears and possibly changes the way we think of video game movies.
Hey it could happen. It's got to happen sooner or later, doesn't it? And
hey, maybe you'll see a choice here that just may steam you up some. Let
us know what you think and which movies we should have included.
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Super Mario Brothers
Format: Live Action
1993
WHY IT SUCKED:
Dennis Hopper as King
Koopa! That makes so much sense. Who do you think of
when you hear the words King Koopa? Why Dennis
Hopper of course. And of course you have to turn
Luigi in to a Hispanic who is also twenty years
younger than the hero. This isn't Bob Hoskins or
John Leguizamo's finest hours. |
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I don't think
anyone expected "Super Mario Bros." to succeed,
realistically, but when it's Super Mario and his
brother Luigi, you still have to have hope that
it won't let us down. It did. And it was awful.
But there were some interesting devices added
that provided some logic to the film universe of
Mario. He and Luigi had super powered boots that
explained why they could jump so fast, Yoshi has
a brief appearance as a pet dinosaur with the
entire movie surrounding the dinosaur species,
and there were even the little bombs used as
weapons as you could do in some of the games.
But "Mario" had the right idea turning the story
in to an action comedy, it just couldn't break
out of the C grade camp and humor rut to allow
some good action to take place. Even if it had
to be terrible, there at least could have been
some kick ass fun out of it. But how seriously
could you take large bodies with dinosaur heads
and Dennis Hopper with bleached spikey hair,
anyway? Worse more, there's even an allusion to
a sequel in the closing scene. Ow.
REBOOT?
There are just some
things that can not be adapted in to a live
action format. Comics, books, and many times
even video games are best left to their medium
only and "Super Mario Bros" is the case in
point. Mario is a racial stereotype. He's an
Italian plumber who runs down pipes and has one
of the cheesiest accents we've ever heard. He's
named Mario for Pete's sake. Sorry, but there's
just no turning that in to a movie without
failing. An animated movie? There also wouldn't
be much point, as Mario isn't quite filled with
a sprawling story. Let it be.
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Street Fighter
Format: Live Action
1994
WHY IT SUCKED:
It's a game turned in to a movie turned in to a
game! How wacky! With adaptations there will always
be liberties taken, but it should liberties that
could benefit both crowds of the source material and
not just please the studios solely. The all American
military man Guile ended up being the main character
of the flick which made no sense unless they aimed
to appeal to the American market instead of Chun Li
who would be, I presume, more interesting to Asian
audiences. |
But that was
contradicted with the casting of Jean Claude Van
Damme, the man who played all American Guile
sporting a Belgian accent. Huh? This is Van
Damme at his all time low, the point where his
popularity had peaked and he was no longer the
action star of guilty pleasures we'd enjoyed
seeing. It should have been a piece of cake.
Chun Li has a score to settle with M. Bison,
meanwhile a group of soldiers led by Guile
infiltrate his crime syndicate. Sadly, it wasn't
that easy. Every single inch of "Street Fighter"
was absolutely awful and this film has gone down
as a truly painful example of why fighting games
have very little chances working as actual
movies with linear plots. Once again tossing in
every character they can, rather than sticking
to the original cast of the Street Fighter II
game, "Street Fighter" was cheesy, ridiculous,
featured some of the worst acting of all time
and even managed to waste Ming Na, a usually
strong actress who aced Chun-Li without much of
a hitch. The plot is there for "Street Fighter,"
they just didn't want to take advantage of it.
Instead we just got colorful characters fighting
each other, and shockingly, that's not what we
wanted. Also, there was never a street in this
movie.
REBOOT?
It is as we speak and so far the reaction to it
has been pretty terrible. The stills aren't
inspiring much optimism from me with Kristen
Kreuk playing the title character Chun Li. There
are about a million things wrong with that
sentence. As well there's Neil McDonough as M.
Bison which is a formula for failure in spite of
the man's talents. This reboot is proving to be
no better than Van Damme's effort.
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Double Dragon
Format: Live Action
1995
WHY IT SUCKED:
Like most other video game movies, the studios just
can't seem to find the potential in the story set in
the video game, so instead they turn it in to a dark
comedy. "Double Dragon" for instance went from a
cool revenge fighter to a darkly comedic camp fest
that failed in being anything resembling funny or
interesting.
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Cast an
inexplicable rising star like Mark Dacascos along
with the "It Boy" Scott Wolf and you have two
retards wearing colorful outfits that may as well
have preceded "Power Rangers" by a long shot.
Apparently taking its cue from the short lived
animated series, "Double Dragon" was absolutely
drowned in black comedy, B movie special effects,
typical nineties industrial fashion, and Alyssa
Milano in probably the worst hairdo we've ever seen
in a film. "Double Dragon" could have been a dark
revenge thriller with a martial arts twist about two
young fighters avenging Billy's girlfriend while
trying to kick ass through the futuristic wasteland.
Instead we got a man in a blond flat top and a
really fat monster. What fun.
REBOOT?
A dark thriller set amidst the apocalyptic
wasteland with Billy and Jimmy fighting to save
Billy's girlfriend while realizing their
prophecy could make for some great movie going
entertainment, as well as an excellent action
thriller in the vein of "Children of Men."
Except with much more kicking and punching.
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Mortal Kombat/MK: Annihilation
1995, 1997
Format: Live Action
WHY IT SUCKED:
Don't lie, you still get goose bumps when Sub-Zero
and Scorpion come out from behind Shang Tsung on the
boat, don't you? I do too. Hell my brother and I
almost started screaming for joy when they appeared,
but then it... it became worse. Disappointing but
not out of character, director Anderson turns
"Mortal Kombat" in to a kid affair for the entire
family, but granting us some edge at times. The sad
thing is that the game simply wasn't too marketable
to children, thus in order for the audience to enjoy
it, Anderson should have given it a hard R with some
gore or at least one fatality that didn't cop
out. Scorpion shot his flames in vain, Scorpion
froze people without blood shed, and Blade never
blew her kiss. Though inserting gore in to a flick
doesn't automatically make it good, it certainly
could have helped. Bad animatronics filled the
screen along with terrible writing, awful action
sequences, and a finale that just screamed idiocy. |
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Goro, one of the biggest and most well known
characters of the series looked absolutely
terrible, with horrific animation mixed with a
body suit that looked hideous even in 1995;
though Anderson and co. was able to capture
characters like Kano, Cage, Kang, Scorpion,
Reptile, and Sub-Zero, there's really nothing
else redeeming about this mess. Come on, the
whole time Scorpion was shooting his spear, you
honestly weren't thinking "When is he going to
hook someone with it, already?!" He never does.
PG-13 rating you know. Now, let us speak of the
abomination known as "Annihilation." This should
have been an excellent sequel, I mean the first
flick had us begging for a humongous showdown
between the forces of evil and Earth's fighters.
Then why did this stink so badly? Because New
Line took to the approach that led to the
successful but universally hated "Batman and
Robin": When there's no story, fill the screen
with recognizable characters and let fans do the
work. If you didn't think this movie could get
any worse, you have to enjoy how they kill off
Johnny Cage in the first ten minutes alone.
Being such a likable character in the first
film, it's pretty ridiculous to see him taken
down so quickly. In his place we're given the
quasi-Subzero aka his brother, a slew of lame
villains adapted from actually entertaining
menaces in the video game and of course Jax, the
cyborg armed black stereotype who fought baddies
with a fist thumping and a catchy one liner fit
for a blaxploitation flick. "Annihilation," as
everyone knows, is awful.
REBOOT?
For years there have been rumors of a reboot
with a new studio picking up the franchise to
completely start from scratch or to continue
after Annihilation reclaiming what people
enjoyed about the first movie. But I think it'd
be best to slap on an R rating, give us some
great horror action and make "Mortal Kombat" a
damn bad ass restart. I want to see Scorpion
spear someone for fuck sake.
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Final Fantasy
Format: Animated
2001
WHY IT SUCKED:
The animation was amazing. The technology
breathtaking. The voice acting superb. The landscape
design immaculate. The movie boring as piss. For
months and months I could vividly remember all sorts
of ads and magazine articles exploring the deepest
of molecules in character Aki Ross's hair, as well
as the shockingly life like motion capture tech that
allowed this animated movie to come to pass. And it
flopped. |
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And then
you had to wonder why they didn't cast actual
actors. Not that it would have made much of a
difference anyway, since as far as we know, the
"Final Fantasy" games never involved reincarnated
monsters, ghosts of demons, and mysticism steeped in
strong Buddhist undertones. What emerges from "The
Spirits Within" is a lot of extrapolation, plenty of
dialogue, and action that goes nowhere all with a
villain that's basically non-existent and only
symbolic rather than menacing. While I'm not always
a fan of villains that are evil for the sake of
being evil, in this case, it wouldn't have hurt. Why
else introduce a rag tag group of soldiers in the
vein of "Aliens" only to have them fight one
dimensional soul sucking phantoms? I mean, it's not
the worst movie ever made, but with all the fuss
about the animation, they couldn't have provided a
better story? I'm not sure who the hell this movie
was appealing to, but it wasn't kids, it wasn't
adults, and it certainly wasn't the fans of the game
franchise. That's for damn sure.
REBOOT?
There was a sequel on DVD that stuck truer to
the games than "The Spirits Within" did. But as
for a reboot of some kind? I think Hollywood has
all but given up on animated movies that appeal
to adults. Let it be, let it be. I don't think I
really want to see animated characters with
humongous swords and motorcycles racking up
points and collecting gold. I never much liked
the "Final Fantasy" series anyway, so I'm firmly
against another movie from the game. |
Head on over to
Level 2 of "Video Game Movies that Should Have Rocked"
>>
-
Felix Vasquez Jr.
9/4/08
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