10 Video Game Movies That Wouldn’t Definitely Suck
If Hollywood put in just a bit of effort, these films would turn out great.
With a Just Cause movie being announced earlier this month (featuring Game of Thrones star and Aquaman Jason Momoa), it looks like Hollywood is still confident in adapting video games into movies, despite their pretty dismal record of getting them right.
For some reason, directors can’t take popular video games and turn them into half-decent films – somewhere along the line a producer or executive always has to make a convoluted change that ruins everything.
The problem appears to lie with trying to take a video game, an interactive medium, and turning it into a linear viewing experience. A video game is often remembered and enjoyed for its gameplay mechanics and art style, which are difficult to adapt and condense into a 2 hour film. For example, the first person perspective during the corridor scene in the Doom film was fun, but that one minute sequence was the pretty much the only thing that even resembled the source material.
Fortunately, with modern games putting a bigger focus on compelling and mature stories, it should get easier to recreate video games into movie form. Story-driven games like Uncharted and The Last of Us are getting the movie treatment in the near future, so it looks like Hollywood is headed in the right direction at least.
10. Mafia 3
Mafia 3 was met with fairly mixed reviews when it was released last year. Whilst some reviewers saw it as a solid open world title, others felt it was underwhelming and empty. However, what nearly everyone agreed was how great the story was - a black Vietnam veteran uniting the gangs of a New Orleans inspired city to take down the Italian Mob.
A revenge story set against the backdrop of gang violence, swinging music and cultural racism would appeal to a wide range of movie-goers. Mob films like the Godfather and Goodfellas have always done well, so a racially-charged mob film set in the 1960s with a black protagonist would certainly stand out from this crowd. The game’s documentary-style cutscenes that jump from the 60s to the present day would also help the film present a different take on the genre.
Also, with the game having very few side missions or activities outside the main story, the producers wouldn’t have to worry about getting distracted from the core plot – they could simply present the story of Mafia 3 without having to tack on random aspects of the gameplay just to make it seem like a video game movie.