Top Five Movies Based on Video Games

Hitman: Agent 47, a movie based on the popular Hitman video game franchise, hits theatres this weekend. This newest attempt at a Hitman movie originally starred Paul Walker as the mysterious and deadly Agent 47, but producers recast the role with Rupert Friend after Walker died in a tragic car accident in November 2013. Unlike comic book movies, video game movie franchises haven’t had much success in Hollywood.While a few video game movies have performed well at the box office, no video game film has ever received a Rotten Tomatoes rating higher than 44%. Of course, just because a movie receives some bad reviews doesn’t mean that it’s still not an enjoyable film. With that in mind, here’s our list of the five greatest video game movies of all time:

Resident Evil

  

 An adaptation of the popular horror video game franchise, the Resident Evil series is the most popular and best-selling video game movie franchise of all time. The movie series follows Milla Jovovich’s Alice as she fought legions of zombies and mutant monsters created by the evil Umbrella Corporation. As the movies progressed, Alice interacted with many characters from the Resident Evil games as she transformed from a gun-wielding survivor into a superhuman ass-kicker with superior martial arts abilities and psychic powers.

Although every movie received poor reviews, the Resident Evil franchise stayed faithful to its video game roots, filling each installment with plenty of video game inspired camera angles and action sequences. All five Resident Evil movies have done well in the box office, and a sixth, final movie is planned for 2017.

Mortal Kombat

  

FINISH HIM!!! New Line Cinema’s Mortal Kombat was a cheesy, yet faithful adaptation of the first two Mortal Kombat games. Production for the movie was as unforgiving as the Mortal Kombat tournament itself. Most of the actors performed their own stunts, leading to broken ribs, bruised kidneys and plenty of sore muscles. Even Original Sonya Blade actress Cameron Diaz dropped out shortly before production started after breaking her wrist while training for the film. And the expensive Goro animatronic puppet broke down constantly and required a team of puppeteers to manage. Despite these setbacks, Mortal Kombat was a success at the box office, earning over $122 million, and propelled the video game’s catchy theme song and catchphrases into the mainstream. New Line Cinema failed to capitalize on the movie’s popularity, releasing a poorly received sequel and two quickly cancelled spinoff TV series. After a fan film revitalized interest in the franchise, New Line released a web series based on Mortal Kombat and is moving forward with a new movie directed by James Wan. 

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

  

After successfully launching the popular Final Fantasy video game series, game director Hironobu Sakaguchi  transitioned into the world of film with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. While not a straight adaptation of any particular Final Fantasy game, Square (the makers of the video game franchise) produced the film, building a $30 million studio to house animators for the new film. Starring a voice cast that included Ming Na (Agent May from Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) and Alec Baldwin, The Spirits Within was a groundbreaking technical film, using photorealistic CGI and motion capture to simulate characters’ actions. Unfortunately, the movie was a monster to create, taking over four years to produce and blowing through its budget. Although the film received mixed reviews, the $138 million budget was too much for The Spirits Within to recoup. It earned just $85 million, making it a major box office bomb. As a result, Square later folded its movie studio and delayed a planned merger between Square and Enix by over a year.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

  

The movie that turned Angelina Jolie into an international superstar, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a nonsensical action film starring Jolie as the iconic heroine of the Tomb Raider game series. Jolie’s casting as Croft stirred much debate and criticism from fans of the video game franchise; however, her performance as the treasure seeking archaeologist was one of the film’s few highlights. With a hard to follow plot that involved time travel, stone statues that came to life, and a young Daniel Craig as Croft’s love interest, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider earned over $274 million at the box office. Jolie also starred in a much more coherent sequel involving Pandora’s Box a few years later, but chose not to film a third movie. Paramount is now working on a prequel based on the recent Tomb Raider reboot that came out in 2013.

Pokemon: The First Movie

  

 Pokemon was the video game franchise of the late 1990s. As Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue dominated video games sales chart, the popular anime series brought the world to life on television for millions of kids each and every day. In 1998, Pokemon: The First Movie hit Japanese theatres, followed a year later by a dubbed version for American audiences. Theatres promoted the movie by distributing limited edition Pokemon trading cards, which were also all the rage in elementary schools. While Pokemon: The First Movie was pretty boring even for Pokemon fans, I remember tearing up when Pikachu discovered that his best friend Ash Ketchum had turned to stone and tried to resuscitate him using his thunderbolts. Not only did Pokemon: The First Movie clean up at the box office, it also started the trend of using the movies to showcase legendary Pokemon and also introduced several Pokemon from the upcoming Pokemon Gold and Silver games.  Now that’s smart marketing.