Key Takeaways
- Most of the past video game film adaptations have neglected to respect the source material.
- Faithful adaptations like Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City have failed due to pacing issues.
- The “Doom” and “Monster Hunter” movies suffered because they strayed too far from the original gameplay.
Video games and movies have been adapting each other’s IP since the beginning. While games jumped at the chance to bring big titles like Star Wars to home consoles, it took a while for original games to be adapted for the big screen for the first time. In both cases, the translation from one medium to the other wasn’t smooth. In fact, some of the worst games and movies are due to adaptations. And yet, we keep trying every year. Thankfully, we’re starting to see more hits than flops in both movies and games.
It took a long time for video game movies to become more than just a way to cash in on popular franchises. Many of these movies felt like the directors looked at the game’s box art and built the story from there. Now that gamers themselves are making the movies and letting the original creators help out, we may be entering a golden age of game adaptations. That said, there have been some big flops in the past from which upcoming projects like the Borderlands movie could take some lessons. These are the worst video game adaptations I’ve found that completely ignored the source material.
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1 Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
In my restless dreams, I watch that movie
I am a defender of the original Silent Hill. It’s not one of the best film adaptations now, but it ranked highly at the time. It certainly had a lot of problems, including the insulting decision to replace Harry with Rose as the main character, but it also had its moments where it captured the atmosphere of Silent Hill well. Revelation is the torture you’ll encounter in any Silent Hill visit. It has zero respect for the lore, characters, monsters, and most importantly, the viewer. It has weak jump scares, no atmosphere, and fundamentally misunderstands what Silent Hill is. Not only is it the worst video game movie, it may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
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2 Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Beating a corpse
Why does Resident Evil have so many film adaptations out of all franchises? The original film series was Resident Evil in name only, so Welcome to Raccoon City promised to be faithful to the story. Unfortunately, they tried to cram both the first two games into one movie. This resulted in too many characters having to do too much in too little time. The movie doesn’t have time to be scared, and that’s kind of the point of Resident Evil. It feels like they’re just trying to get from one point to the next, dropping a bit of fan service and trying not to notice how flimsy the characters are with the fast pacing. By trying to be more faithful, they end up not doing either Resident Evil game justice, which ends up feeling bad.
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3 Doom
Will not rip or tear
Doom has been a foolhardy endeavor since the beginning. This was before the 2016 reboot added a bit of lore, but even now, there’s no point in making a movie based on Doom. It’s Doom! You know, the game where you run through mazes and kill demons while heavy metal music blares. The movie version of Doom has to create characters and scenarios where monsters show up on Mars, and all of them are boring. The marines are all monotonous and cliché, and the whole premise about genetic experiments creating monsters is mind-boggling. Even the BFG looks lame. Not to mention the FPS parts. Sorry, Rock, but even you can’t save this.
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Four Monster Hunter
They made it otherworldly
Like Doom, Monster Hunter is all about gameplay. There’s room for story development, but nobody plays these games for the plot. We just want to fight giant monsters and collect their parts to craft new weapons. There was a way the movie could have been a little cooler by focusing on a group of hunters tracking a Rathalos or something, but Monster Hunter went in a completely different direction, with a story about a group of soldiers in the desert who get transported through a portal into the world of Monster Hunter. And yes, it only gets worse from there. The costumes and action all look cheap and nothing happens from start to finish.
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Five Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Save time
If there’s one thing the film adaptation of Prince of Persia got right, it’s the Prince. Spoiler alert, Jake Gyllenhaal is far from Middle Eastern. No offense to him as an actor, but this was not a role he should have been offered. Casting aside, the film itself doesn’t feel like a Prince of Persia film, it feels like a run-of-the-mill action adventure film with weak CGI. It feels like a watered-down, off-brand Prince of Persia that’s ashamed to be based on a game. Sure, there are some cool parkour scenes, but that’s about all the good stuff there is.
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