Why do film adaptations of video games usually do so poorly?

Question

It seems as though most movies based on video games usually do very poorly at the box office. Why do you think that is?

MCheetah · Accepted Answer

1. Not understanding the source material.
2. Not caring about the source material (apathy).
3. Destroying the source material in an attempt to "market to all audiences."
4. Incompetence.
5. Tax write-offs.
6. Some combination of the above.

As of right now, the "best" video game movie is Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and that's not even related to the 2D Sonic trilogy, for the most part. Besides Knuckles being in it. It's not a bad movie, but certainly not worthy of "the best video game movie of all time." Especially if they hadn't fixed the first movie's awful CG, it would've bombed and never gotten a sequel.

Why do film adaptations of video games usually do so poorly?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/c58OWcOJ9mY

The worst video game adaptation of all time is Netflix's Resident Evil, which is so bad, it's heavily believed to have been its own original zombie IP, with the Resident Evil name slapped on at the end. It's literally now "the worst video game adaptation of all time." By the numbers.

Both were not only released in 2022, but only within four months, as of August 2022, the time of this post.

ADFSDF1996 · Accepted Answer

They deviate too much from the game’s lore.

Raiden and Shao Khan are depicted as brothers with Shinnok being their father in the Mortal kombat film. In the games they are not related at all. As such the films aren’t usually canon to the game and take place on a separate timeline.

“Enter the Matrix” was the reverse in which it is a game that is based on a movie and takes place directly after the first Matrix film. It also is canon and must be played in order to understand the Matrix reloaded as the game ties into the film.

DizzyDesii · Accepted Answer

Despite what others think, I loved Doom, Resident Evil, Lara Croft, Rampage, Mortal Kombat 2021, and Sonic. If Pixels and Ready Player One count then those too. Tekken was okay. Need For Speed was disappointing. I never played Uncharted but the movie itself was disappointing

SecretsofKB · Accepted Answer

I have no idea. Which scares me for The Last of Us adaptation.

Lookingforthetruth · Answer

Following reasons.

1. Video game franchise tend to have very weak plot, resulting in film makes not having enough materials to work with in order to stretch it out to 1 1/2 to 2 hr long movie.

2. The producers and directors often bank on the popularity of the franchise to draw in enough of an audience to the theaters and make a half ass attempt at producing a solid film.

3. Too much creative injection, studio interference and woke politics often get interjected into films that they betray the very material that they are drawing upon.

Anonymous · Answer

Games tend not to have a long and lurid story line and universe for the movie people to embrace. Traditionally, movie and games people have been very different and I don't think they understand their target market well or their source material, leading to a stream of partly funded children's movies that do not attempt to build a lasting legacy.
The public are not as good as the producers think and quickly see through the superficial, half arsed attempt to translate the game to movie. Many have seen this many times before. Some of the kids may like it in a matinee but then kids are as not discerning as their parents.

WindAtMyBack · Answer

I've never seen one of those movies. It's probably because video games have very little story. Trying to base a movie on a game is just using the name, but without having any substance to work with.

The other way around, basing a game on a movie, doesn't seem to work well either. Movies and games are just too different.

Books to movies or games can work pretty well though. Books are written by professional authors so there is some good material to work with.

NathanDavis · Answer

I really believe they do have a fetish for it...

to take any masterpiece of gaming or anime, and then ruin it as badly and awfully possible

but who knows, maybe they're just able to buy the rights for it at a very low coast, and then they are able to make a very good profit with the less investment and effort possible... lol

IAteTwoFullHams · Answer

Often it's because they just don't transition well into films. I mean, look at the Super Mario Bros. disaster - no one knew how Mario and Luigi talked. Or what motivated the Koopas. Or where Bowser came from. Or what world it was set in. Or even what Mario's last name was.

So the filmmaker just had to make everything up. There was really no outcome that was going to satisfy people.

RiseofArtemis · Answer

Because they are either woke, have little to nothing to do with the game they are from or are just crap. Witcher 3 is one of the best games ever created from a book series but look of poorly the Netflix series does. The closer you are to the original the better. Also no woke shit.

worldscolide · Answer

Probably because they don't understand/never have played the game. Doom for instance could have been good. Especially with doom eternal out now, but instead it's just shit. There are only a small hand full of ones they did well.

Here is the rub though, game adaptations of movies are usually just as bad if not worse.

FilmGuy93 · Answer

It's just a different style of storytelling. Part of what makes game's presentation so appealing is that it's interactive. So you're trying to take a story that was written with the intention that the audience would be participating, and then forcing them to only be observers.

Noodle_fan · Answer

u are absolutely right

and to answer your question ( i will use resident evil as example) , i think it is because the movie director didn't even play the game and finish it himself ( even he did , he may probably not enjoyed it), so he didn't get the feel, like the gamers who genuinely enjoy the game

clampfan101 · Answer

They typically don’t feel at all like the original characters. Especially with live action adaptation in some cases. That’s something the Sonic movies got right. Sonic was also easier than characters like Mario who don’t talk much would be, even with the right look and voice.

redbeardsley91 · Answer

It depends on the time and effort spent!

Infamously, Uwe Boll. He must’ve missed the memo after "House of the Dead" because he later came for "BloodRayne" and "Alone in the Dark".
Thank God Jonathan Cherry has "Final Destination 2" to fall back on just like as Ellie Cornell has "Halloween 4" and "Halloween 5".
Clint Howard, he's been around the block DOZENS of times!

TitsMcGee16 · Answer

Wing Commander? I have never seen that movie. I might check it out just out of curiosity. To answer your question i think that they try to reinvent something different instead of sticking to what made those video games popular. They always seem to have an itch to change things that they should not touch. Hollywood is not what it used to be. Everything is woke crap nowadays and you know what they say, go woke, go broke.

JPresidente · Answer

Usually it’s because the studios don’t put the right people in charge who don’t know the source material and they go off on tangents and write the script the way they like it and don’t care about the fans.

BeMuse · Answer

What you mean like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil?

exitseven · Answer

The video games are really not very interesting and writing a good script is practically impossible.

zagor · Answer

The interaction that makes up for lack of plot is missing. I thought the writing in "The Witcher 3" game was better than in the Netflix series.

Cubus · Answer

Warcraft was quite nice for me. I guess because many of them were directed by Uwe Boll.

joeldalton · Answer

Because many video games are fairly simplistic. Hard to stretch that out to 90 mins.

slatyb · Answer

Because video games don’t have plot or character.

Why do film adaptations of video games usually do so poorly?

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