It is a truth universally acknowledged that no one has ever made a good movie based on a video game, since the genre came into being with 1993’s Super Mario Bros. I don’t usually care for such truths, but that’s one I’m happy to accept, by and large. I would possibly carve out an exception for some of the Pokémon movies, though I haven’t watched any of them in a long time, and there are, of course, some good movies about video games or inspired by their aesthetic: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Wreck-It Ralph, Tron, etc. But as far as film adaptations of video games, it’s been one failure after another, with only occasional spells of mediocrity to shake things up.
Break the Studios, Save the Movies
Hollywood is in a prolonged state of crisis. Everybody knows this. Studios pump out a seemingly endless supply of sequels, spin-offs, remakes, reboots, and films otherwise based on any and all previously existing intellectual property, all of which invariably cost upwards of 100 million dollars. We call them tentpole films, because they’re supposed to be sure-fire bets that can make enough money to finance smaller, riskier projects across the studio’s slate, like tentpoles upholding a tent. The problem is that there is no tent. There’s just masses and masses of poles, sticking upright in a field, and we’re all so used to getting wet that we’re more likely to ask for the poles to be more interesting than ask for some tarp.
The Sundae 