The Top 10 Best Video Game Movies
“Good” is Relative When it Comes to Video Game Movies
Why are video game movies so bad? It’s like Hollywood isn’t even trying when it comes to making them. Meanwhile, comic book movies and novel adaptations tend to be pretty good for the most part. So what is it that makes video games so difficult to translate onto the big screen? Is it the larger than life storylines? The epic worlds they create? Maybe it’s that they take the power away from the player. Whatever reason it is, Hollywood has been trying for years to make a successful adaptation and has failed miserably each time.
Well, that’s not exactly true. There have been some decent video game movies out there. Decent being a relative term when most of the competition is from the likes of Uwe Bol. Still, there have certainly been some valiant attempts in the past. While they might not be the movies that geeks wanted, they weren’t total abominations. Heck, some of them were actually pretty fun. That’s why I decided that it was time to honor the video game movies that didn’t suck. It wasn’t easy shifting through all those awful flicks, but I managed to pull some things of value from the wreckage that is that genre. Here’s hoping that more movies get to join this list in the future. In the meantime though, sit back and enjoy!
10. Hitman
Let’s ease into this list starting with one of the few video game movies that actually got a reboot. History has show us though that more often than not, the original is far superior to the reboot. It stars Timothy Olyphant as the cunning and ruthless Agent 47, a contract killer who stops at nothing when it comes to taking out his target. His callous and cold-blooded nature doesn’t last for long though once he meets Olga Kurylenko, and soon he’s in for the fight of his life. Yeah, it’s a bit cliche and it’s not exactly high art. However, Hitman was actually a fun movie to sit through. It’s got gunfights, explosions, and a cast that can deliver their lines without making you wince. Sometimes, that’s really all you need for a fun time at theaters. While Hitman might not be what we call a “good film” it’s actually one of the best video game movies out there.
9. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Actors do the craziest things after winning Oscars, and Angelina Jolie decided to do Laura Croft: Tomb Raider. Now, just to be clear this isn’t the new, tough as nails, gritty Lara Croft that we’re seeing these days in the games. This was the over-endowed, sex symbol that also happened to go on adventures from time to time. Hey, I’m not saying that Lara isn’t an iconic game character, but she wasn’t really the most fleshed-out character in her early years. Still, the casting of Angelina Jolie brought a bit of class to the role (this was before her tabloid escapades) and she actually managed to do some justice to the character (the early one at least). As far as video game movies go, this one wasn’t half bad. It was only about half good though, but hey beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to these sorts of things.
8. Rampage
It’s a well-known fact that Dwayne Johnson makes everything better, especially video game movies. Rampage didn’t have the most complex plot to build off of since the game is basically monsters trying to see who can cause the most collateral damage in a city, but that just meant that it really didn’t have high expectations, to begin with. That proves to be the films saving grace as it clears the hurdle in order to appear on this list. The film follows a primatologist, who is, of course, a former Special Forces soldier (he is played by “The Rock” after all), as he tries to get back his big gorilla that was exposed to a strange chemical that’s causing him to grow out of control Just to make sure it’s not exactly like King Kong, Rampage also throws in a giant mutant wolf and a giant mutant gator to do battle with Johnson and his gorilla buddy.
7. Mortal Kombat
I’ll just be blunt and say up front, nothing beats the youtube series Mortal Kombat: Legacy. That being said, the first Mortal Kombat movie succeeded because it stuck to what made the games so popular. There is no complex plot, no liberties taken with characters, not even that much when it comes to dialogue. Mortal Kombat took a bunch of eccentric characters and simply throw them together into a martial arts tournament. That’s what fans of the game wanted to see, and that’s exactly what they got. A lot of future video game movies could learn a lot from this by sticking to the basics of what makes a specific game popular. Of course, not all fighting games have translated to film quite as well as this once, but here’s hoping that changes in the near future. It’s one of my favorite genres after all.
6. Resident Evil
The Resident Evil franchise has had some hits and some misses. Towards the end of the films, things started to get a little too over the top, but then again so did the games. Filled with mutant zombie creatures, plenty of wire-fu, and a protagonist who is so overpowered it doesn’t even seem fair, the Resident Evil movies were far from good, but they were fun. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll stick to the first film for this list. However, most of the sequels managed to at least capture most of the elements that made it such an enjoyable adaptation. It might not be the most difficult fight to wind up at the top when it comes to video game movies, but at least we’ve got a clear winner. Thankfully, this long-running series has come to an end, but give it a year or two and I’m sure we’ll see a reboot in the works. Fingers crossed that it can find a place on this list too.