Worst video game to movie adaptations

[nemesiswontdie]

That movie ended for me when Johnny Cage died.

That movie ended when it wasn't Bridgette Wilson who played as Sonya.

The worrying thing is that Sub Zero and Sub Zero's brother do pretty much the same thing, Sindel and Kitara pretty much do the same thing and Johnny Cage does die...it was actually worryingly true to the games in ways.

Yeah true. It was stupid when they brought back Scorpion (which is saying something because Scorpion and Reptile are my favorite MK characters) because he died in the first movie as well.

[Mr_Zombie]

The worrying thing is that Sub Zero and Sub Zero's brother do pretty much the same thing, Sindel and Kitara pretty much do the same thing and Johnny Cage does die...it was actually worryingly true to the games in ways.

I don't remember the whole Kitana-Sindel storyline, but the story about Sub-Zero, his brother and Scorpion (not to mention between the new Sub-Zero and Lin Kuei and the whole plot with turning ninjas into cyborgs) was a little more complicated. The biggest problem with the movie was that they wanted to put as many characters there as they could, and thus there was no real storyline, just a series of: a new character appears, a fight scene, that new character either dies or joins main heroes;

[Carnivol]

- Doom (what? Evil is determined by DNA? Fuck that, I want my hellspawn!)
- Super Mario Bros. (FULL of FAIL, except for Bob Hoskins)
- Street Fighter (oh man... Where to start with this one).

Doom: I remember laughing out loud in the cinema when they said it was all caused by an extra chromosome... Commonly, when casually talking about having an extra chromosome like they did in that movie, you're usually talking about what's commonly referred to as downs syndrome.
(I suspect Event Horizon's rumored Doom origin is why Doom ended up trying to be Aliens meets Evil Dead or something.)

SMB: For some reason, I absolutely love the absurdity of that movie. + Bob Hoskins as Super Mario; f-yeah! (And Dennis Hopper as Koopa )

SF: There are everlasting ghost stories about how the script for the movie was initially a G.I. Joe script... certainly explains a lot about the general setup of the movie and its narrative...

If RE was handled by same team as the Biohazard 4D Executer video it would of be great the only decent re film in my books, shame they didn't work on degeneration instead we got fucked up lip-sync, dodgey animations and a numb Leon.

I doubt the 4D Executor team would've been able to make a full length movie. I hardly managed to stomach my way through Executor, so I fear for how 1h30m of similar-ish stuff would've ended up.

As for Degeneration lip-sync; Fire up the JP audio track, for some absurd reason, the Lip-sync seems to be mainly tweaked towards the JP speech track (I'd probably suspiciously point fingers at Sony Pictures. It really seems like a typical production thing they'd come up with, especially seeing as RE has been English as it gets all the way.)

The only one I've ever heard anything positive about is Postal.

What is the difference between a duck?



Anyway, I put my money on Legend of Chun-Li as the worst game movie. It must be really bad, or at least somewhat heavily broken, as I haven't seen it yet!

[Rombie]

Funny this topic comes up, I'm working on a blog post right now about the history of videogame adaptions and why they've failed.

The one scene from MK2 I remember above all is the fight between (the new) Sonya and Mileena which basically ends up as mud wrestling and they both get covered. And then Sonya after winning catches up to the rest of the good guys but her clothes are back to freshly clean.

The guy who played Johnny Cage didn't want to do a sequel and only agreed to it if his character was killed off at the start, which is why that happens.

The whole movie reminds me of a bad TV show. Ironically there was a Mortal Kombat TV series which was actually quite good. It had Kristanna Loken in it ironically too, considering she's ended up in a few of Uwe Boll's videogame shitfests.

It's definitely the worst of the "successful" films, then Mario Bros, but I think Boll's stuff is definitely the worst of all films in the genre - if you can call it that.

In case anyone is interested, here is the list of the most to least successful live action videogame films until now according to Box Office Mojo (first total is US, second is international - ranked by US):

1. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (aka. Tomb Raider) (2001) - $131,168,070 / $274,703,340
2. Mortal Kombat (1995) - $70,454,098 / $122,195,920
3. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life (2003) - $65,660,196 / $156,505,388
4. Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004) - $51,201,453 / $129,394,835
5. Resident Evil Extinction (2007) - $50,648,679 / $147,717,833
6. Silent Hill (2006) - $46,982,632 / $97,607,453
7. Max Payne (2008) - $40,689,393 / $85,416,905
8. Resident Evil (2002) - $40,119,709 / $102,441,078
9. Hitman (2007) - $39,687,694 / $99,965,792
10. Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997) - $35,927,406 / $51,376,861
11. Street Fighter (1994) - $33,423,521 / $99,423,521
12. Doom (2005) - $28,212,337 / $55,987,321
13. Super Mario Bros. (1993) - $20,915,465 / n/a
14. Wing Commander (1999) - $11,578,059 / n/a
15. House of the Dead (2003) - $10,249,719 / $13,818,181
16. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) - $8,742,261 / $12,707,250
17. Alone In The Dark (2005) - $5,178,569 / $10,442,808
18. In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) - $4,775,656 / $13,097,915
19. BloodRayne (2005) - $2,405,420 / $3,650,275
20. Double Dragon (1994) - $2,341,309 / n/a
21. D.O.A. - Dead Or Alive (2006) - $480,813 / $7,500,497
22. Postal (2007) - n/a (Never Officially Released Wide in the US, 21 screens only) / $146,741
23. Far Cry - $0 (Never Officially Released in the US) / n/a

[Darkmoon]

I don't remember the whole Kitana-Sindel storyline, but the story about Sub-Zero, his brother and Scorpion (not to mention between the new Sub-Zero and Lin Kuei and the whole plot with turning ninjas into cyborgs) was a little more complicated. The biggest problem with the movie was that they wanted to put as many characters there as they could, and thus there was no real storyline, just a series of: a new character appears, a fight scene, that new character either dies or joins main heroes;

Oh, it was still a shit film. It just amused me becaue it did get a lot of story points correct, labeit very cliff notes and, well, shit. I mean, there is something a lot more epic about two members of different ninja clans battling, one sending the other to hell, the dead one becomming a hellspawn and rising from the depths to get revenge on the first one because he's been tricked into believing that his clan was all murdered by him, killing him and returning to the grave...only to find out he's alive in another tournament but finding it's actually his brother who isn't the same brand of evil while the now dead version is corrupted by hell into a walking shadow and manages to take control of his former friend who is now a smokin' cyborg than, 'lol, yeah, that was my brother.'

...I really, really like Mortal Kombat, hence why the last game got on my nerves. No plot for all those characters.

[aris13]

The guy who played Johnny Cage didn't want to do a sequel and only agreed to it if his character was killed off at the start, which is why that happens.

The whole movie reminds me of a bad TV show. Ironically there was a Mortal Kombat TV series which was actually quite good.

Actually Linden Ashby who potrayed Johnny Cage in MK1 didn't appear in the sequel so I'm thinking that he didn't want to do the sequel in the first place. Ironically later in 2003 he agreed to appear as Cage in the now scrapped film MK3evastasion along with Robin Shou (Liu Kang) and Chistopher Lampert. Warner Brothers are planning a reboot at this point.

And yes the TV show called Conquest was good and included some of the greatest choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen.

[Beanovsky Durst]

I suspect Event Horizon's rumored Doom origin is why Doom ended up trying to be Aliens meets Evil Dead or something.

Exactly. In my mind, Event Horizon is the real Doom movie... Which is kind of bizarre since is directed by, you know, Paul WS Anderson LOL.

[nemesiswontdie]

Actually Linden Ashby who potrayed Johnny Cage in MK1 didn't appear in the sequel so I'm thinking that he didn't want to do the sequel in the first place. Ironically later in 2003 he agreed to appear as Cage in the now scrapped film MK3evastasion along with Robin Shou (Liu Kang) and Chistopher Lampert. Warner Brothers are planning a reboot at this point.

And yes the TV show called Conquest was good and included some of the greatest choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen.

I remember watching Spike Tv god knows how long ago and every commercial break they did a minute long interview and the girl who played as Sonya from the 2nd MK movie said they were working on a 3rd MK movie which actually got me excited lol. I'm hoping for that reboot.

[CODE_umb87]

And yes the TV show called Conquest was good and included some of the greatest choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDMfKve4Log

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HbNLiR1trY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzqzNfriEwU&feature=related

You would think that they'd do a little better with the fight scenes in Conquest since there had already been two major motion picture films.

[Rombie]

^ Ahaha... that fight I mentioned earlier from the second film is even sillier than I remembered it. Grabbing that link.

Conquest's fights were okay, but it was the whole package which made it a surprisingly decent show. That said most of the time I saw it was like 2 or 3am in the morning when I would be coming home drunk and it would be on so my memory could be hazier than I recall. The few times I saw it sober though it seemed as good.

Actually Linden Ashby who potrayed Johnny Cage in MK1 didn't appear in the sequel so I'm thinking that he didn't want to do the sequel in the first place. Ironically later in 2003 he agreed to appear as Cage in the now scrapped film MK3evastasion along with Robin Shou (Liu Kang) and Chistopher Lampert. Warner Brothers are planning a reboot at this point.

Oh yeah, I forgot it was a different actor even it seems. LOL. Looked it up and you were correct. For some reason my memory still thinks it was the same guy.

Worth noting, Dennis Hopper died yesterday. RIP King Koopa... lol (at that, not his death). (Edit - should have checked the Celeb deaths thread)

[Gideon Quinn]

The guy who played Johnny Cage didn't want to do a sequel and only agreed to it if his character was killed off at the start, which is why that happens.

Actually, it was an entirely different actor playing Johnny Cage in that movie.

[Rombie]

^ Thanks for telling me something I already know. Aris said this already and I made a comment about in the post right above the one you just wrote if you look.

[K-Mart]

I thought that quite a few were done good as movies, as films, they usually blow. Silent Hill is the GOD of movie adaptations. It wasn't amazing in any shape, form or fashion, but it stayed true to the series, contrary to most others, namely Street Fighter, which was just a huge brawl.

For the worst, I'd have to say Dead Or Alive was quite botchy. They couldn't even keep the fighting styles of the original characters, and by LORD they even screwed up the genders! But heck, I'm a sucker for Kevin Nash. His biceps give me the vapors.

[riderkid]

im amazed wing commander sucked, i thought it wasn't that bad actually

[Carnivol]

I guess with Wing Commander, Chris Roberts and Freddie Prinze Jr. proved that even if you have the original franchise director writing and directing the movie, you don't necessarily get an amazingly ZOMG OMG BEST ADAPTION EVER!!1! or maybe you do... it's just that without the gameplay portion; It's missing the key part of a game... the gameplay. I never loved Wing Commander for its ZOMG CUTSCENES and HOLY SHIT STORY, but rather the fact that you had awesome space sim missions and your success ratio in the missions + choices during cutscenes actually MEANT something. You were in control!