Sadly, on the whole, video game movie adaptations are just awful, some of them being among the worst films of all time. In recent years, we’ve seen a slight change, with TV shows making some great adaptations. However, if you’re looking for a laughably bad game adaptation, take something from this list.
Video game adaptations that get it all wrong
There can be so many elements that go wrong when adapting anything into a movie. However, for some reason, video games seem to have such a hard time. Books are often the source material for films, and they can sometimes be masterpieces. However, due to either the team being unfamiliar with the game or a studio simply not understanding their material, there are a ton of terrible video game movie adaptations.
Alone in The Dark – 2005
Uwe Boll is a name you will be familiar with before this list is complete. This director is responsible for a significant amount of entries on this list of the worst video game adaptations. Honestly, after the panning each and every one of his movies gets, they still allow him to make more and even sign him up for sequels to the absolute visual abuse he produces.
Alone in The Dark is an important game and should have been treated with respect. Its first iteration is considered one of the earliest survival horrors, helping push the genre into the mainstream. The many games are usually based on works by writers like Lovecraft, pulling inspiration from artists such as Geiger. However, the movie is dull and confusing and has little to no atmosphere of any kind, let alone horror.
House of The Dead – 2003
Uwe Boll is back with another unmitigated disaster of a video game movie adaptation. Anyone who has even stepped foot in a film school has tried their hand at a bit of horror, and zombies are the most obvious choice in the genre. Yet, somehow, this absolute hack manages to mess up one of the most iconic arcade zombie shooters of all time.
The failings of this film go beyond just shoddy direction and writing. Uwe loves to throw in effects and film fads over and over again. This horror game adaptation is one to watch simply because of how abysmal it is; it will have you howling after a few drinks. He even manages to slip a few scenes from the arcade game in there, somehow.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation – 1997
It’s not just one of the worst video game adaptations but also one of the worst movies altogether. However, if you’re a fan of shoddy acting, incomprehensible plots, and VFX that look like they were pulled from a PlayStation One demo disk, you may be into this one. The film, from the very start, lets you know it is not going to be anything special, and it doesn’t fail to deliver.
The acting is what really sets this apart from the wealth of the worst video game movie adaptations. It’s hard to find a line in the film that isn’t read so badly that it’s difficult even to figure out what they are implying. Thankfully, subtlety and nuance aren’t something this film is particularly driving for. All this being said, the theme tune for the movie is excellent.
Borderlands – 2024
If you hadn’t already heard, Borderlands absolutely flopped, to absolutely nobody’s surprise. I won’t lie and say I’m not disappointed, but I, for one, certainly saw this coming. As soon as I read that they planned to squeeze into the 12A rating, I knew they would miss the mark. Borderlands is a no-holds-barred, foul-mounted, gory gun fest, and to take that away is a sure sign the production team has no clue about what the fans are there for.
Sadly, unlike a few of the others on the worst video game movie adaptations, you can’t even pop this on in the background with some palls and enjoy the travesty; it is just a bad, boring movie. How the team manages to take a game as breakneck and full of humor as Borderlands and produce something as bland as they did takes its own level of skill. Everything from the casting to the plot was completely missed, resulting in something truly insulting to the fanbase and original games.
Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge – 2014
So the studio bought the rights for Tekken and made the first film to some success. However, for some reason, the second one was planned as a prequel, following the story of Kazuya from the first. He isn’t the most intriguing of characters, and the decision to delve into his past was already a bit of a left-field choice. The result is a film that isn’t bad in a good way; it is bad in a bad way. Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge is boring.
The film is wrought with tedious, contemplative, and dull flashbacks as the mysterious ‘K’ recounts his lost memories. These flashbacks barely even tell a story, as many of them are from minutes earlier in the film. The terrible production is made even worse by the seemingly endless slow-motion scenes. Shot without flashback and at regular speed, this whole film could have fit in a still very boring YouTube short.
Hitman – 2007
This film gave me the first migraine of my life. Immediately afterward, I started looking up real hitmen so one of them could shoot me in the face, and I would be able to forget about the messy, confusing, astronomically dull, worst video game movie adaptation possible. How do you turn a video game so full of story, suspense, adaptability, and even humor into something so convoluted and boring?
Sure, there is violence and action, but it is wrapped up in a story that makes little sense and doesn’t inspire intrigue. I feel like Hitman, the game, allows for a little more suspension of disbelief because it is just that—a game. However, the film doesn’t do a great job explaining many of the little things that can get swept under the rug in the original source material.
Max Payne – 2008
Messing up a Max Payne film is a sin. The game is already a cinematic masterpiece, even introducing movie camera techniques into the gameplay. The whole thing is right there, complete with troubled antihero and beautiful settings. And yet, here it is on many of the worst video game movie adaptations lists across the web.
I don’t know if I would have chosen Mark Wahlberg of Marky Mark fame and Mila Kunis to play the two lead roles in this film, but there is no denying they’re big names. However, Wahlberg, especially when directed badly, is a real chore to watch, and this is the case here. However, the boredom doesn’t stop there. Director John Moore somehow manages to miss the action-packed scenes of the game in favor of the slower and much less interesting detective work Payne is known for. The pacing is way off compared to the games, resulting in something remarkably devoid of entertainment or interest.
Bloodyrayne – 2005
Despite Boll being responsible for some of the worst video game movie adaptations out there, I think this is one of his better ones, but that isn’t saying a lot. With a cast that includes Meatloaf, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen, it’s considerably more star-studded than many video game adaptations. It’s a shame they all read their lines like they wish they were anywhere else.
The blood and gore in the film are a draw for some. The sheer amount of physical effects and blood spray is incredible. The clean-up on the set must have taken longer than the shooting itself. Also, the way that blood gets sprayed is usually very anti-climatic. The action scenes in this are akin to the early seasons of Buffy, with very amateur acrobatics and swordplay. It’s a fun one to watch, but still very much to the shoddy standard we expect from Boll.
Need For Speed – 2014
Fast cars, street racing, pink slips, car customization, and police chases sound like the recipe for a hell of a wild ride in the cinema, and yet, once again, the video game movie adaptation is the worst it could be. Thankfully, the problem with this film doesn’t lie in the fact that it doesn’t have some great action. It does. I love the cars and the races, and really, that’s what I should expect from a film based on a video game about racing.
However, the plot and scripting are just so nonsensical and boring. There are so many loopholes in the plot and odd purposeless characters thrown in that it breaks immersion in the world being created. The racing in the film is fantastic, and the director did his best to avoid using CGI, but it becomes diluted by the lack of any discernible plot or purpose.
Warcraft – 2016
I should preface this by saying I find Travis Fimmel’s acting style makes my skin crawl. But this aside, I still found this to be one of the worst possible ways they could have made a World of Warcraft video game movie adaptation. With lore and a collection of questing stories that date back to 2004, you would think the team could pull something epic together. However, what results is a film that tries to please everyone, ticks too many boxes, and fails at both.
Multiple times throughout the movie, I would zone out a little for a minute or two and get completely lost when I came back around. I think the problem lay a lot with how many of the Orcs looked way too similar without any discernable character. The film also wildly misses passing the Bechdel test, with the only woman I remember in the movie being little more than a love interest, although whose love interest is still quite unclear. The film felt disjointed and overly confusing for a plot that turned out to be very basic and with an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion. Pretty good CGI action scenes, though.
Published: Aug 24, 2024 09:45 am