10 AWESOME Movie Trailers (Then The Film Sucked)
6. Max Payne
The Trailer
Video game fans sure were starved of good film adaptations back in 2008, but there's little denying that the trailer for the Mark Wahlberg-starring Max Payne movie kicked all kinds of ass.
From the gorgeous visuals - including stunning glimpses of drug-induced demonic hallucinations - to the seemingly game-worthy action sequences, it basically ticked all the boxes for fans of the games.
And setting the trailer to Marilyn Manson's kick-ass tune "If I Was Your Vampire" sure didn't hurt.
The Film
The worst thing that can be said about Max Payne is that it's almost impossibly boring compared to the picture painted by the trailer.
Action occurs in only fitful bursts - an especially egregious sin for a Max Payne movie - while the narrative is dreadfully dull, Wahlberg isn't a particularly compelling Max, and Mila Kunis is woefully miscast as the femme fatale Mona Sax.
Ultimately all it's got going for it is Jonathan Sela's beautiful cinematography, and unsurprisingly Sela went on to bigger and better things afterwards by lensing John Wick, Deadpool 2, and most recently Bullet Train.
Perhaps the problem with adapting Max Payne is that the games themselves are so inherently indebted to gritty detective noir movie tropes that re-adapting that back into a film just makes it seem hokey and ersatz.
But the lame duck script, scarcity of action, and laughable casting categorically sealed its fate.