There have been many examples over the years of a film or film franchise based solely on a video game or video game franchise, creating a new story from it or trying to follow the same storyline, if loosely, featured in the games. Usually, studios choose the latter. But some games, like Resident Evil, for instance, have so many diverging and converging storylines that it’s impossible to fit it all into a single film or even a film series, so they created a story inside the same universe with recognizable characters and basically make a fanfiction for money. And overall, the majority of these films, whether they be originals or retellings, are usually poorly received. There are exceptions to this, the latest being Detective Pikachu and the Sonic the Hedgehog film, both of which were released in the last couple of years and received props for keeping some of the whimsy that the games instilled in their players. But what about the rest in the bargain bin? Well, I’m here to look at each of them and determine if the hate is justified. So, here are three major blockbuster video game movies and my reviews for them.
Quick side note, there are movies worse off than the ones I mention on this list, but I have not seen them because I didn’t know some of them even existed. For instance, you could look at the films I chose and say “Well this other movie has 1% on Rotten Tomatoes, these ones have higher ratings.” And while I do look at the ratings for some of these films, I also go to watch them, and I will not watch any movie that has that kind of rating just to determine if it’s bad or not because I already know it is. I also won’t include franchises like Resident Evil on this list, because those movies especially overlap and don’t really get worse or better in my opinion.
1. Mortal Kombat (1995)
If you’re a fan of video games AT ALL you’ve probably heard of the 1995 blockbuster bomb that was Mortal Kombat. Now, this film was infamous for a small budget but large takeaway, making nearly 10 times more than what it spent. However, because of that small budget, we were also greeted with some subpar acting, cheesy fighting sequences, and early CGI that made me gag when I watched it. But I also had to account for the time period. Computer animation EXPLODED in the 1990s and, frankly, this is some of the better 90s animations that I’ve seen in live-action films, even if watching that creature slowly emerge from Scorpian’s hand gave me nightmares after I first saw it.
I also can’t argue that it was enjoyable to watch, I mean compared to the fighting game it was based on, this film actually made an entertaining story out of what was basically nothing but character descriptions, and because there was no congruent story to use with these characters, they had to write one of their own containing some interesting backstories and some bland ones. In particular, I enjoyed how Johnny Cage was seen as a fake fighter throughout the first half simply because he was an actor. There were also plenty of no-names in this film, people who to this day only have this film in their filmography as an acclaimed role, and the only actors I recognized at first were Christopher Lambert who played Raiden, and Kevin Michael Richardson, who was the voice actor for Goro, both of whom I felt did very well in their respective roles.
People disliked this movie for quite a long time, mostly because it simply came before many of the worse off films both on and off of this list, and in recent years it’s seen more acceptance from fans, even if it’s still not a perfect film adaptation. Overall this movie is a cheesy, corny performance of martial arts and magic, but it’s an enjoyable watch and one of the better video game movies that I’ve seen.
Now I know what some of you may be thinking: What about the sequel? A film that was notoriously worse than this one? One that you will find is actually linked to another sequel to yet ANOTHER film on this list? Mortal Kombat: Annihilation falls into that unarguably bad percentile of films that reviewing it would be pointless as there is no possibility of redemption for it, unlike its predecessor.
2. Doom (2005)
As it was with Mortal Kombat, Doom also received its own film adaptation due to its overwhelming popularity. Starring a new to acting Dwane “The Rock” Johnson and Karl Urban, this shared a similar sentiment, at least in my point of view, to that of Mortal Kombat with cheesy acting and fight scenes, an ok story idea, and CGI that has since aged like milk. Though, to be honest, I find this movie much worse off than Mortal Kombat. And you might be thinking: “It has the Rock in it, how could it be bad?” Well, this was a time before the Rock took acting classes. His performance didn’t feel believable at times, and he delivered lines in a very strange, emersion-breaking manner. Not to mention he was the villain in this movie, in the end, how many movies can you say the Rock’s been a bad guy in? Karl Urban plays the Doom Slayer but his name is John Grimm in this, and, as we all know, Doomguy doesn’t have a name! And I get it, it’s a movie, they have to call him something and give him speaking parts, but it was sort of like a Master Chief situation in the games where he was a silent hero with an ominous backstory. I mean the Rock’s character was just named Sarge, and he wasn’t even the protagonist.
The way that this whole movie played out reminded me more of Dead Space than of Doom, I mean Karl Urban’s character had to go save his wife, that’s like one of the main things in the first Dead Space game. Overall this movie feels phoned in and lazy in a bunch of parts with a story that felt less believable than Mortal Kombat’s, but I can appreciate some of the special PRACTICAL effects with some of the monsters that appeared in the film, and even the Rock’s crazy infected/transformation make-up near the end.
Side note, I mentioned Mortal Kombat: Annihilation before saying it would relate to yet another film on this list. This is the one. For you see Doom from 2005 actually has a sequel as well, and an even WORSE one that I want to give a little honorable mention just because of how bad it is.
DOOM: ANNIHILATION, that’s right, it’s got the same name! This film came out in 2019 and follows the Phobos storyline from the games, taking place on Phobos, one of Mars’s moons, and, while it’s not a direct sequel to the first film, is still considered one by me. This movie is bad, it has terrible special effects for the modern era, the cinematography looks like something from a Hallmark soap opera adapted for use in a horror film, the acting is atrocious, this feels like a fan film made by someone on YouTube that Universal Pictures, in their infinite wisdom, decided to slap their name onto, but nope it’s professionally made. And it doesn’t even have Doomguy in it! Don’t see this movie, it is not worth it. It’s confusing, shoddy, and boring, so much worse than the first title. I didn’t include it as a place taker because it was straight to DVD, or in this case straight to Netflix and Amazon because no one knew about or wanted it. I mean only seven real critics decided to review this thing, which is why it has a higher rating critically, but audiences, thank god, put it lower than the first film.
3. Assassin’s Creed (2016)
By far the most disappointing modern Video Game film on this list. I had high HIGH hopes for this film, I love the Assassin’s Creed games and to see them get an adaptation into film, especially starring Michael freaking Fassbender, made me ecstatic beyond belief. The outcome though was a bunch of questions with no answers. This wasn’t based, as far as I can tell, on an existing story within the Assassin’s Creed mythos, but a new one based in the same universe with a similar goal as the games. I can’t deny that it did its job in delivering a singular story as Fassbender’s character becomes more aware of his lineage within the Assassin order, but we didn’t get much else about the world or history surrounding it. Granted the games accomplished most of this already, but I felt an attempt should have been made to try and open the world a bit, go all in considering the vastness of the Assassin’s Creed universe. But they didn’t, and it wasn’t until the end of the film that we saw some semblance of what the world was like and even then we were still left confused.
For the most part, I think the film focused more on the psychological aspects of the Animus, the tool used to tap into ancestral memories. For some reason, it looked completely different than it did in the games, having Fassbender go through the sequences in real-time instead of just tapping into the memory and living it out like a lucid dream. I think this was meant for the audience; to deliver a more entertaining experience, but I feel like they could have stuck to the source material and focused more on OTHER aspects.
Fassbender delivered a solid performance as Aguilar if brief compared to his modern-day character Cal Lynch, and no one will debate that Jeremy Irons delivered the same as the Templar Alan Rikkin, but that cannot make up for an overall boring and confusing film that made any possibility of a sequel dead in the water.
Conclusion
Trying to adapt something so beloved as a book or video game into a film is risky, to say the least. Sometimes filmmakers trip over themselves on a few things, sometimes they deliver something solid, but it seems that with the majority of video game movies they stumble and fall. However, in recent years we’ve seen that they can be done right, and with the upcoming public release of the new Mortal Kombat film, already doing better than its 1995 counterpart, we may see a better era of adaptations, ones done correctly and with the help of those who know more about the games than just the bare minimum.