Last week I took a break from films to talk a bit about games. What better way, then, to transition back to films than to discuss a topic that has haunted the dreams of gamers since 1993. An idea that appears to be more failure-prone than a drainless urinal or a serrated shaving blade. Yes folks, I am of course talking about the game-to-movie adaptation.
In the aforementioned year of 1993, a movie bombed so hard that J. Robert Oppenheimer literally became death. This was a film that shat so violently on its source material that it really should have seen the doctor about it, or at least taken some Immodium (that’s a diarrhoea medicine if you’re unaware. It’s a diarrhoea joke. DIARRHOEA). It would forever soil (continuing the joke) the reputation of the video game movie, making fans cry themselves to dehydration with every mention of ‘Dinohattan’. Starring Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper, both of whom later regretted ever being involved, this stain was Super Mario Brothers, and it was a stinker (recurring joke complete).
Swapping the iconic Mushroom Kingdom of the Mario games with a metropolis populated by dinosaurs and dino-humans will forever remain as one of the most questionable, unexpected and downright stupid decisions that have ever been made. In addition to this, beloved characters are fucked up beyond belief. The iconic and villainous dragon-tortoise-thing Bowser is just Hopper with a pointy tongue and a wacky hairdo (seriously), the cute Yoshi is a baby t-rex that gets stabbed (seriously) and everyone’s favourite mushroom-headed fella Toad is a guitarist who gets turned into a Goomba, which in turn are not mushroom monsters but dim-witted, big-bodied, tiny-headed, humanoid lizards (WTF SRSLY??). The film’s tagline is ‘This Ain’t No Game!’. No shit.
Anyway, Super Mario Brothers set the *cough* standard for video game movies, a world in which failures abound, the biggest and ugliest of which is a vile demon named Uwe Boll(ocks). One year later, Street Fighter was made, a film which, for some ungodly reason, chose to give the part of an extremely American character to the Belgian Jean-Claude Ham Flan. Good job, guys.
Upon brief inspection, these adaptations seem cursed to forever disappoint legions of loyal game franchise fans. All is not damned, however. Some game-to-movie transitions actually do come out mediocre or better and some, such as the now 5-film Resident Evil series have achieved considerable mainstream success. It is on this note that I leave the wasteland of anguish behind and tell you a bit about my five favourite examples. The champagne among the piss, if you will (though to me they both taste the same).
Get ready… Fight. (more…)
The Word of Tom 