The Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies
5. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
The first Mortal Kombat movie actually wasn’t that bad, given that it’s a piece of trash from the 90s. It pretty much sticks to the premise of the first few games and just has a lot of fistfights to determine the future of the world. The sequel, well, we’ve seen what happens when you try to inject a plot into video games. So, what made Mortal Kombat: Annihilation one of the worst video game movies of all time? Well, it tries too hard to be a better movie and it totally backfires. The worst part is that YouTube one upped everything about this movie years later with Mortal Kombat: Legacy. If you haven’t watched it, you definitely should. Hollywood executives probably should as well.
4. Street Fighter
Terrible acting, ridiculous storyline, and horrifying production design make Street Fighter the spot on this Worst Video Game Movies list where they all start to blur together in their awfulness. I’ve always been a big fan of the Street Fighter games. The movie(s), not so much. Sure, the animated film was fun, but the live-action one? Well, the epic final showdown featured Jean-Claude Van Damme as a good old American squaring off against Raul Julia (who you might remember as Gomez Addams in The Addams Family). The entire movie is an accidental caricature of all the worst possible parts of the 90s. It’s almost cartoonish… But not in a fun way, in an “oh god, make it stop” kind of way.
3. Wing Commander
Strangely enough, this one is actually the fault of the man who created the Wing Commander game series, Chris Roberts. That didn’t stop it from being one of the worst video game movies of all time and probably a nail in both the coffins on 90s super duo Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. The film had a minuscule budget which explains why it looks so awful. The effects alone are so embarrassing that they gave me secondhand shame watching it. That doesn’t excuse every other aspect of the movie, though. It uses every cliche in the book and stops just short of telling Freddie to “use the force.” If you haven’t seen Wing Commander yet, save yourself the heartache. At this point, there isn’t any merit at all to watching any of the remaining movies on this list.
2. Super Mario Bros
Oh man, this is one of the absolute pinnacles of bad video game movies. I mean, what drugs do you have to be on to cast Dennis Hopper as King Koopa? Supposedly, the film was plagued by re-writes and transformed into something completely different from the original script. I’m not sure what happened, but the result created a Kafka-esque nightmare version of the classic video-game. What really kills me is that it had Bob Hopkins and John Leguizamo in the lead roles, but somehow not a single joke lands. Honestly, the movie feels more like the adaptation of someone’s bad acid trip while playing Mario Bros, rather than of the game itself. Honestly, this is almost the worst video game movie ever made… Almost.
1. Double Dragon
Well, we managed to reach the worst video game movie of all time. It’s the tale of two brothers who use magical martial arts powers in the future to save their “girlfriend” from a shadow ninja warlord, played by Robert Patrick, in perhaps one of the worst examples of whitewashing ever (yes, worse than Prince of Persia). Everything about this movie feels off. From the fact that Scott Wolf and Mark Dacascos to the fact that an evil corporation is after a magical talisman to, well, just a character named Bo Abobo turned into a grotesque Stay Puft Marshmallow Man with super steroids. Double Dragon isn’t even so bad that it’s good. We’re not talking The Room bad or Samurai Cop bad. No, there is no excuse for anything in this movie. When it comes to video game movies, I have trouble believing anything can top this one. Well, maybe some of those Uwe Bol films.
I don’t know about you, but I need my brainwashed out after that one. There have been a lot of bad video game movies in the past, and there are probably still many more in the future. However, like many geeks out there, I’m still hoping that video game adaptations can take a hint from comic book movies and get their act together. I might keep my hopes low, but my optimism is high. What about you, though? What are some of your least favorite video game movies? More importantly, what are some of your favorite ones? Be sure to comment below what you think!