Rise of video game adaptations: The game has just begun

With the success of The Super Mario Bros.Movie and The Last of Us, we take a look at how video game adaptations went from being guaranteed flops to creating the biggest buzz in the industry
Rise of video game adaptations: The game has just begun

Inarguably, at this point in history, the final step in the journey of any fiction is to be etched in the cultural memory through cinema. A short story, a play, or a novel, will reach its biggest amplification in the zeitgeist when adapted into films. Filmmakers are always on the lookout for stories from other popular art forms to adapt. However, the film industry has been dealing with a conundrum on that front for the past three decades. Video games, a rapidly growing art form, replete with great stories and beloved characters, have somehow become the most difficult thing to adapt into films.

For years, Hollywood has been grappling with the mystery of why video game adaptations failed to work. While attempts like the Resident Evil film series and the Lara Croft films were successful at the box office, they were never critically acclaimed. Other attempts like Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, Max Payne, Hitman, and Need for Speed, failed to replicate even a fraction of their respective video game’s successes. However, video games have never been more coveted by Hollywood than they are now. With the critical and commercial success of HBO’s The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it is hard to ignore the emergence of a brand new wave. If that isn’t enough, the number of upcoming video game adaptations only asserts that fact. The list includes adaptations of incredibly famous video game IPs like Borderlands, Minecraft, Bioshock, Pac-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Fallout. Has the curse of video game adaptations been finally lifted? What is the story behind this change? Every story has a beginning and so it goes with video games as well.

And the beginning happens to be the year 1993, a crucial year for the video games industry as the first-ever live-action adaptation of a video game, Super Mario Bros, hit the screens on May 28. The film opened to abysmal reviews, became a box office bomb, and usually tops every ‘worst films ever made’ list. Almost exactly thirty years later, in April 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie registers the biggest-ever opening for an animated film, dethroning Frozen II. What changed? While it is hard to attribute clear reasons for any film’s success, let us indulge in some conspiracy theory-grade speculations based on observable differences between these two films. The 1993 film was majorly criticised for not being faithful to its source material while the 2023 film was lauded—among other things— for faithfully recreating the mushroom kingdom from the game, dropping franchise references all through the film, and featuring almost all the famous characters from the Mario franchise. However, the biggest difference is the fact that Mario’s parent company, Nintendo, was directly involved with the production of the 2023 film.

Statistics indicate that the COVID lockdowns contributed heavily to the rise of gamers, there was a sharp increase in video game sales during March 2020. Gamers were reported to have spent 45 per cent more time playing video games during the first few weeks of the COVID lockdowns. While not directly related, it is worth noting that HBO had greenlit The Last Of Us series towards the end of that year. HBO’s The Last Of Us is co-created by Neil Druckmann along with Chernobyl-fame Craig Manzin. Druckmann is also the co-creator of the video game. While you take a look at all the previous video game adaptations that failed to hit the mark, an overarching pattern seems to emerge. All these films show a dire lack of respect for their source material, as shown by the lack of faithfulness to the story and characters from the video game. A clear attempt to exploit just the name of the brand with no understanding of why the video games worked could be clearly seen in films like Hitman, Max Payne, Assassin’s Creed, and Prince of Persia. The storylines from the video games are discarded, the characters bear no resemblance to their game counterparts, and the aesthetics are muted and toned down for commercial value and budgetary constraints.

However, this worrying trend is expected to be absent in the upcoming adaptations for the simple fact that these projects are helmed by makers who seem to understand the medium they are adapting from. Jonathan Nolan, who is adapting the post-apocalyptic video game series Fallout for Prime Video, seems to be a gamer himself. In a statement, he said, “Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time. Each chapter of this insanely imaginative story has cost us countless hours we could have spent with family and friends. So we’re incredibly excited to partner with Todd Howard and the rest of the brilliant lunatics at Bethesda to bring this massive, subversive, and darkly funny universe to life with Amazon Studios.”

On the other hand, Chad Stahelski, the director of the John Wick series, is making a feature film adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima. Stahelski is hopeful about his upcoming film and attributes a part of his confidence to the success of The Last Of Us. He said, “Ghost of Tsushima has got an amazing story. It’s the anti-samurai samurai movie. It’s got great thematics. We have a lot of push on that and a lot of interest because The Last of Us is pushing that. Yes, the curse of video game-to-movie is kind of lifted. It can be done. You’ve just got to give it love and attention.” As Stahelski said, it all boils down to love and attention, and any show of love cannot be devoid of respect and understanding.

As seen through examples from the past and recent successes, the video game adaptations that respect the source material seem to fare better than those that don’t. While these indications have no actual bearing on the future, every sign points to a healthy influx of great stories from video games to films.

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