From Consoles to Hollywood - The Bad
July 12th 2008 23:33
Category: C
The Super Mario Brothers Movie portrayed Mario looking as Mario, Luigi looking as someone going through puberty, and Bowser as a gay fashion designer. Could it get any worse?
Click Here For: From Consoles to Hollywood – The Journey Begins.
Click Here For: From Consoles to Hollywood – The Good.
When it has been announced that a video game is about to be turned into a movie, fans around the world get excited knowing the games they love to play – or loved to play as a kid – were going to be turned into a live action movie. We all wonder for years as the movie is being film how it is going to turn out. We wonder who is going to play our favourite characters, if they are going to look the same as they are in the game and what things are they going to add.
As the film nears we start to get some little sneak previews of footage and photos. Some of the things revealed to us we’re happy with – they look and seem like the actual game. Others… well… they look like the same thing but that’s about it. As fans we can only hope that the directors don’t screw things up. I mean, how hard is it to screw up something so simple as a video game? The script is basically written already and they don’t need to do anything but recreate the game to a movie. It’s not hard, right?
Unfortunately it seems that some people in this world don’t understand how to do some so simple right. Video games are like movies but the only different is that in video games, we control the action. So how hard is it really to screw up a movie? Very easily it seems. Today we’ll be taking a look at the video games that turned into bad movies – no I am not talking about the terrible ones I am referring to those that were based on the video game to a degree… then just changed everything around to make everyone hate it.
Super Mario Brothers.
Everyone knows the jingle and everyone know that short fat little Italian man who wears red overalls, but does everyone remember the movie? The game involved one playing as Mario who traveled through world after world in search to save the Princess, held captive by the evil King Bowser (or King Koopa as he was called). Super Mario Bros was an insanely popular video game and it still continues to drive the Nintendo Company today. When a movie was announced in the early 1990s I was freaking happy to gear the good news… or so I thought.
Instead of getting something similar to the cartoons I used to watch on the TV, I got some dark and twisted version of the Super Mario Bros. They had Mario who was a plumber and his brother Luigi, who didn’t have a mustache, but it was cool. They had their red and green colours and it was their aim to rescue the Princess… who wasn’t from the Mushroom Kingdom but from some alternate reality world! Remember the Koopas? Forget them we got these dinosaur-like muscle head goons and as for King Koopa, he wasn’t even a dinosaur! There was Yoshi but he looked like he was going to rip someone’s face off.
The movie bombed and was slammed by both movie critics and video game fans. While keeping the same elements of the video game and the same characters – despite some having different looks – the majority of the movie was pretty crap. In all seriousness, the biggest mistake they made was actually thinking a Super Mario Bros live action movie was going to work. It was good for a little while but I can’t watch it a second time now and not think how much it sucks.
Ermac, Sindel, Rain & Sheeva - Just four of the ninety-six Mortal Kombat characters that appears for about nintey seconds in the movie.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
Last week I mentioned how the first Mortal Kombat movie was a pretty good film in that it was heavily based around the concept of the first Mortal Kombat. It was a good movie so when they announced a second Mortal Kombat movie, I was pretty excited. When the second Mortal Kombat movie came out however I wasn’t excited, I was very disappointed.
The first Mortal Kombat movie was based on the first Mortal Kombat game, fair enough. The second Mortal Kombat squeezed in the next four games that followed. There were characters all over the damn place that I couldn’t keep it. It’s like “Hey I’m Meleena!” DEAD! “Yo it’s me Cyrax!” DEAD! “I’m Nightwolf! Use your Animality! Alright I’m gonna jet now!” See where I’m getting at? Characters popped in, said something or got killed, and that was it. Like 90% of all the characters in this movie were killed off. And about speaking of all the characters in this movie, none of them looked anything like their characters from the video game! The costumes were terrible! Look above at Sheeva the four armed movie! She doesn't even look intimidatingly she looks like she should be in a home for special people (and I'm sorry if I offended anyone with that comment).
It was a crap movie but I’ll give it one thing – it actually stuck to the storyline. It continued the running theme of conquering Earthrealm via the tournament only now Shao Khan was so pissed off he lost he decided to invade anyway. Regardless the fight scenes were nowhere as good as the first movie and with the cameos of thirty-something people in ninety minutes, it didn’t leave room for much development of a storyline or of characters in general.
Resident Evil.
What frightens me is that this movie has become the highest grossing video game movie of all time… at the moment. Resident Evil is a classic survivor horror game involving a deadly virus that was created by the Umbrella Corporation that turns people into zombies. The movie was announced and I got excited. I watched the movie and well… it was ok but it wasn’t anything special.
We have some agent called Alice who guards the Umbrella’s mansion – the setting of the first video game – and the virus breaks out and blah blah blah… you get what happens. Alice must escape from the zombies with a bunch of other people. She gets out, and it leads to the second movie where she has to get out of Raccoon City – the setting of the second game. Her and some allies must fight off both the zombies and Umbrella who wants to cover up the outbreak.
The third? Alice had to get to Nevada or some crap still fighting zombies. I don’t even know what the hell was going on in this movie they ruined the whole thing from the first movie. Ok, the virus was from the game as was the company that made it and some characters from the game were in the movie, who were in the movie for about ten minutes then disappeared. Don’t get me started on how they turned a killing machine like Nemesis into a pussy. It may have made a lot of money but it is not a good video game based movie. Had they followed the awesome storyline from the games, that would have given us a totally different thing all together.
Billy & Jimmy - or Bimmy & Jimmy if you've played the third Double Dragon game - appear once again on this website to grace us with their crapness.
Double Dragon.
This little gem I reviewed here months ago and if you’re a fan of this website you would know what I think of this movie. I’m not going to be bashing this movie a lot since you can check back on the past posts for that. Double Dragon was a popular beat ‘em up video game that someone tried to turn into a movie. So here’s the basic storyline of the video game: you’re girl gets kidnapped so you and your brother go around beating the crap out of everyone to get her back.
Simple? Yeah. Did they follow this storyline? Of course not it would have been too logical if the director did! We got the same characters from the video game tossed into a stupid storyline of a bad guy wanted an ancient amulet to rule the city. While the video games were dark and violent, this movie was designed for a much younger audience. The sounds of fists breaking faces were replaced with stupid “Whoop!” noises when people fall or the sound of bowling balls smashing through pins.
Believe it or not the movie was based heavily on the storyline of the original game. Many people don’t know that the game was set in a post-Apocalyptic world were gangs controlled the streets. The movie was based in the same world only it was just… ridiculously childish for a city rocked by nuclear bombs. It was a pretty bad movie yet despite its horribleness, it not as bad as other video game movies.
If you think these are bad you have no idea what is in store next week. We’ll be taking a look at those video game movies that I have labeled as “the ugly”. These are movies that basically suck so bad, it puts you off from playing the video game. These are movies that are so bad you wouldn’t have guessed that these are actually games. These are movies that are so bad the only thing in common with the movie and the video game is merely the title. It’s not going to be pretty but note that the worst is yet to come.
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Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
Resident Dribble.
I was hoping for something good instead I got some implausible story about a mega company that can control everything. The zombies were a side issue and did not look that real or scary. I liked the little girl concept but the did it badly. The monster at the end was cool but the ending specifically designed to lead onto a sequel was unsatisfactory and annoying. I was disappointed that the best actor in the film got diced up with lasers too early. I was not disappointed with seeing everyone else get killed.
Now don't get me started on the second film.
Ah, I feel better.
Comment by Wayne F
Bucket Movies
The first Resident Evil movie was ok but could have been executed way better. I am a huge fan of the game so when I saw this movie I was very disappointed. Why did they have the Lurker (that crawling monster) "evolve" when it killed? That never happened in the game. I agree the zombies didn't look very scary they looked too clean to be zombies.
Comment by Michaelie
Flick Wit
Is that Scott Wolf is Double Dragon?? I hope that's not what he ended his film career 'success' with.
Michaelie
Comment by Wayne F
Bucket Movies
Oh if they made a Wonderboy movie I would so watch that. It probably would be a bit crappy but I'm down for it!