After seeing Tomb Raider, I had to ask myself: Are there any good movies based on video games?
To date, I can think of these:
Super Mario Brothers
Street Fighter
Mortal Combat
Mortal Combat: Annihilation
Tomb Raider
Let’s hope that Final Fantasy breaks this trend of mediocrity.
<<Gets ready for a barrage of people defending Tomb Raider>>
Oh, and I’m not counting The Wizard or The Last Starfighter, movies based around playing video games.
Mortal Kombat (both of ‘em) did pretty well at the box office, even if, quality-wise, they were pretty rank. I think the reason video-game movies suck is because they never stay true to the game. That’s why I think Final Fantasy will be good… because it’s being made by the same friggin’ company as all the games!
By the by… you forgot to mention Wing Commander, which, by all accounts, was a true pooch-screw.
I’m still waithing for Pong! the Movie
You do not mention role playing games, but a few seasons ago an entire short TV series, “Kindred: The Embraced”, was done after a role playing game. It actually wasn’t bad. Word was that the Suits wanted to make it Melrose Place with Vampires, and it went down before it could really get rank. The few episodes they made stayed pretty close to the rules, and anything with Jeff Kober and Stacey Haiduk can only be so bad.
I’m don’t want to hijack pezwookiee’s thread, but…
Gah!
dlb, Kindred: The Embraced was Vampire: 90210. Mark Rein - Hagen * apologized* to the gaming community for it! The only thing good about it was the Prince.
What was wrong with it, how it was not true to the World of Darkness, how it disappointed people everywhere that had been waiting for it with great anticipation, is a whole other thread.
Sorry, video gamers. Carry on. 
I’m holding out hope for Final Fantasy, but every game-based movie I have seen so far has turned out to be a big steaming pile.
I didn’t mind Wing Commander so much. Of course I wasn’t expecting much because everyone I know who’d seen it went into fits of apoplexy trying to describe how bad it was. If you’re expecting Star Wars, you’re SOL, but if you want a dose of bad, mindless scifi on an empty afternoon, you could do worse.
Are you including anime? The formula seems to hold true there as well, IIRC. The Fatal Fury cartoons were bearable, Samurai Showdown was absolutely rank, Streetfighter was okay, Darkstalkers was okay, if rather weird…god, I have no life…
actually, me and my friends were expecting Star Wars, or at least, the Phantom Menace Trailer that was advertized in the paper as playing with Wing Commander, and we thought that would be better than Meet Joe Black. Of course, they didnt have the trailer, which caused the audiance to boo, and we degraded to open mockery of the movie.
And no one has mentioned the best VG movie ever, Double Dragon, with alyssa milano! She’s blonde! And when the Evil woman captures her, she says “Who’s the boss, now?” Oscar caliber perfomance there!
Okay, waitasec, waitasec, waitasec.
Some backstory: I’m not a big fan of the Final Fantasy games. I don’t have anything against them, I just never got into them. (With the exception of Final Fantasy: Tactics. I became the bomb diggety at that game. And I played Final Fantasy II pretty thoroughly on the SNES.)
So I heard about a Final Fantasy movie, and thought to myself, “Meh. So we’re going to have an animated movie about those gun-sword things and Cloud and chocobos of different color. I guess it’ll do pretty well in the Final Fantasy fanbase, but not for me.”
Then I saw the trailer, and didn’t see “Heal III” or “Bahamut” and not a single Chocobo. It even looked like a really good movie. It’s moved up to the top of my to-see list for summer movies … but why the hell is there a Final Fantasy appellation on it if it doesn’t have all the typical Final Fantasy stuff? I’m sure there’s a very valid reason for this - I’m not dumping on the movie - I’m just confused.
Help?
Tomb Raider is the best video-game-based movie ever made … but that’s only because the other ones were even worse.
The disappointing thing about the Tomb Raider movie is that IMO it really had the potential to be a breakthrough movie – the game premise was well-suited for a movie adaptation, just do an Indiana Jones riff with a female heroine. Unfortunately, the movie blew it with an incomprehensible plot, an unfunny script, and cinematography that looked like the reels got dropped in an industrial-strength Cuisinart.
Bleagh.
Argh. I typed up this whole response last night at 1 in the morning and then now I type to retype it because it said the board was down for maintanence. But here goes:
Mario Bros: I caught a few minutes of this on TV. I was not impressed.
Street Fighter: Didn’t see it.
Mortal Kombat: It was okay. At the time that it came out, I was about 10 years old (and totally into the videogame series) so I was pretty psyched about it. I saw it a few days ago, though, and I was MSTing the whole way through it.
Mortal Kombat Annihilation: Horrible. The plot was basically “Hey! Look! It’s that guy from the videogame! Remember him? Oops, he’s dead now.” And the special effects were bad.
Tomb Raider: I was really surprised by this movie. I was expecting it to be another MK:A. But it actually had some really good special effects, and a somewhat interesting plot (for a videogame movie) It was good, despite at least 10 instances of blatant product placement (Plus it’s got boobies.) Not the best movie ever, but way better than I thought it would be.
Final Fantasy: Looks like it’s going to be all eye-candy, but with a totally cliché plot (“For years we’ve thought we were alone in the universe. This summer, we’ll wish we were.” yawn Been there, done that. Next!) I’m going to see it anyway, though; the graphics are the best computer generated graphics I’ve ever seen.
Pokémon: If the fact that nobody even remembered this movie until now is any clue: That movie sucked. I saw it on TV, and it was a bad as it sounded.
And what about TV shows? I know there was a show for Mario Bros. and possibly Mortal Kombat. And there were not one, not two, but three series’ based on Sonic the Hedgehog (Excluding the two animés.) Two of the shows really sucked, but the other I still regard as one of the best cartoons ever. ([sub]cough info here (site down?), RealVideo Downloads Here (1 2 3.)[/sub])
Street Fighter Alpha was pretty good, if a bit tedious (just a little too much brawling and not nearly enough plot).
Battle Arena Toshinden was good.
Mortal Kombat was…passable.
The rest I’d like to forget I ever took the time to watch. 
I paid $.50 to see Wing Commander, and I wanted my money back.
Ah, ah, ah… Pokemon was NOT a video-game movie. It was a TV show before it was a video game… the movie was just an extension of the show.
I disagree. I thought it was an excellent show. I bought the DVD(which has the one episode not shown on US television). I think it had a great deal of promise, and was very close to the game.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that Pokemon was a video game in Japan that got turned into a cartoon over there.
Marc
You know, MGibson, you may be right… the show is almost exactly like the video games, anyway. But even so, it’s Pokemon, so it shouldn’t be included in ANYTHING.
Mario Bros: Sucked
Street Fighter: Sucked - A sad end to Raul Julias career.
Double Dragon: Sucked
Mortal Kombat: Sucked, but not as bad
Mortal Kombat Annihilation: Never saw it
Wing Commander: Worst sci-fi movie ever
Tomb Raider: Indiana Jones/Mummy rip off with boobies
Final Fantasy: Looks interesting, but I though the game was about wizards and elves and stuff.
Pokémon: Little kids seem to like it.
I vaguely remember animated TV shows for Pac Man, Donky Kong/Mario Bros, Dragons Lair, and maybe a few others. They all sucked real bad.
Check out this article:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/features/0,12059,2779113-1,00.html
Games make crappy movies because, let’s face it, the stories are usually pretty simplistic, the characters are 1 dimensional, and the movies sticks to the game so much that anyone not familiar with the game can’t enjoy it.
Even a very cinematic game like Metal Geer Solid or Resident Evil would probably play like a B movie in the theaters.
Games are for playin’, not for movie makin’.
I disagree. Games have as many interesting, well-rounded characters as most movies seem to have (the games that HAVE characters, at least… in games like Doom and Quake, the character is YOU).
The problem is, as I’ve said, the makers of the movie do not stay true to the game. Let’s examine:
Super Mario Bros: Where the hell did they come up with this techno-gothic-punk world for the Mushroom Kingdom? Jump boots? Big yellow fungus? De-evolver? And since when did Bowser wear a friggin’ suit?
Street Fighter: The main character was RYU, to begin with (at least, he was in the original SF). And the story existed for the sole purpose of moving you from one fight to the other… in fact, most people played through the game thinking that there WAS no plot (there technically was… surprised?)
Double Dragon: Don’t remember it, so I won’t comment. I have no doubts that my theory stands true with this one, though.
Mortal Kombat (both of 'em): Again, the basic premise of the games was to move from one fight to the other. And it was too corny and cheesy to make up for the lack of interesting story and/or characters.
Wing Commander: Since when did the Tiger’s Claw look like a giant Space Submarine? Since when did the thing split in half to launch fighters? Since when did the Kilrathi look like wet-furred space leeches? Not a SINGLE element from the original games made it into the movie… heck, if they just kept the starships and starfighters looking the same as they did in the game, this movie might’ve had SOME entertainment value.
Tomb Raider: They tried too much in one movie. They tried to pack in all the games into one movie. They tried to rely on Angelina Jolie’s star power to carry the movie. They tried… but as Yoda says, there IS no try.
Final Fantasy: It’s being made by Square, so I have high hopes for it (they’ll stay true to the series, hot dammit!). And, msmith, the settings of the games varied wildly. As it went along, it incorporated more and more technology into it… hell, FF7 was a VERY science-ficion-esque world.
Pokemon: Damn the whole series to hell.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Hastur *
**
This should be another thread or an email discussion, but what the hell.
Hauster started it.
I wrote a review for the local gaming magazine but I can’t find it at the moment, so these are off the top of my head.
As long as you seperated the game from the series, the show was cool (I had the hots for Julian Luna as played by the late Mark Franken). Because the only way it was close to the rules was in the clan stereotypes, some of the Disiplines they showed and the political scene. The show did open with a near perfect “stake him and leave him for the dawn” moment that was promising, but, alas, that was ruined when we find out later that the black cop is a Kindred, walking about merrily as you please in the morning sun.
-everyone had the same disciplines except the Assaimite and Nosferatu. We can tell the clans apart because they dress different.
-The Nos are supposed to be hideously ugly. Camille was the only one that was even remotely oogy. Daedelus was bald. That’s supposed to be ugly? Maybe to the Melrose Place crowd.
-the only time we see fangs is in Julian’s fight with Camille and that’s after and because Daedelus gives Julian some of his own blood to give him his powers for the fight. No. Less than a Blood Point of his blood isn’t going to give Julian extra powers and all Kindred have fangs, not just the Nos.
-Lily claims Seduction is a Toreador Clan gift. Piffle. Anyone with the points to spend on the Ability has it.
-When did the Nos gain Blood Rituals? Those are Tremere exclusives.
-When did Assimites start taking women? Middle Eastern assassin clan has no female members (at least, not when the show was aired. Damned 3rd Edition …). They also aren’t shape shifters of the magnitude Eddie described or, hell, at all.
-Brujah has the Prince’s niece forcibly embraced and then tries to kill the Prince. But the Prince isn’t *allowed * by the Council to do anything because “it’s a personal vendetta”. Sorry, no. Mr. Brujah embraced without permisssion and attempted to assassinate the Prince. Blood Huntable offenses and the Prince is judge, jury, and executioner in their cities.
-Wolf Claws has been turned into a Wolf Claw that everybody has. Lame, lame, lame.
-After the 90210 Kindred fed, * they could go out in the sun!* Hel-lo.
-When a Kindred is embraced all their body fluids are replaced with blood. All. Of. Them. But, oh look, there’s Alexandra after a night of rousing passion with her mortal boyfriend on lily white sheets. In the sun. They did include blood tears from Sasha, which was cool. Too bad they only did it once.
The last two episodes are the best, which is where it started showing promise. They had a different writer and director from the rest of the series. Unfortunately, any promise was squashed by the network when it cancelled it. They compromised too much and Rein-Hagen’s target audince (the gamers) was not the same as Spelling’s. The show was doomed from the beginning when Rein-Hagan had to accept Aaron “Love Boat” Spelling as a producer to get the show on the air and Spelling was trying to sell it to the *Melrose Place / 90210 * crowd.
If the man responsible for Vampire feels the need to apoligize to V:tM fans and players, the show does not measure up.