The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Ten movies inspired by video games

Playing in the cinema

  • print
  • alert

Film Round-up Capcom's Street Fighter series celebrates its 25th birthday this week and while the world is awash with various mementos – including boxsets and a dedicated Street Fighter site for fans to reminisce on their favourite moments – we decided it was the perfect opportunity to look back at the film adaptations of video game franchises over the years.

If a game becomes popular, you can bet your bottom dollar some Hollywood exec is already rubbing his hands at the prospect of taking it to the big screen. And you can be assured that Uwe Boll has already inquired about directing it. Either way, in almost every case, the scripts are rushed, the actors have little thespian talent, and movie-goers are almost always left disappointed. It rarely stops us watching them, though. Sometimes, they're so bad, they're good. Vulture Central's local fleapit, even makes a virtue out of bad but good films and has seasons of them.

Lest we forget, if a game concept is too bonkers for Tinsel Town, chances are, some fan will probably knock something up anyway – a Pac-Man movie being the latest example. So here's a roundup of several terrible films based on video games that perhaps weren't so terrible. Oh, and we're using the new industry standard Boll-buster ranking here, so the higher the rating, the worse the film. Hadouken!

Doom (2005)

RH Numbers

id Software's classic FPS should never have been made into a movie, it's as simple as that. A group of elite soldiers head off to Mars on a mission to find out what happened to the inhabitants of an ancient city discovered through a portal in the Nevada desert. Sound familiar? No, because this has barely no relation to the game whatsoever.

Other than a 15 minute section where the film's protagonist traverses the area in first-person-shooter mode, the connection to Doom – or Doom3 to be exact – is loose at best. Depth to both character and script is fairly non-existent and the less said about Dwaine "The Rock" Johnson's acting the better. Whatever he's cooking, it certainly isn't an Academy Award nomination. Crud like this makes me want to shoot the telly with a BFG.

Doom

Uwe BollUwe BollUwe BollUwe BollBoll-buster Rating 80%
More info IMDB

Double Dragon (1994)

RH Numbers

Here's another video game movie with such a unattached connection to the game, its title is barely warranted. Sure, the two main characters bear the same names and wear blue and red outfits like Player 1 and Player 2 respectively. Heck, a couple of the enemies also bear resemblance to their gaming counterparts, but taking a side-scrolling beat 'em up to the big screen is a tall order.

With an overly cheesy script and pathetic storyline featuring the protection of a broken medallion called Double Dragon – which was certainly not a feature of the game – the film was critically panned and flopped in the box office. Subsequent VHS and DVD versions have since been discontinued. Proper lame, as usual, but you knew that already, right?

Double Dragon

Uwe BollUwe BollUwe BollUwe BollUwe BollBoll-buster Rating 100%
More info IMDB

Next page: Hitman (2007)

They wanted to do that, but it was blocked repeatedly.

20
0

Resident Evil

I actually like the RE films, they are a bit of fun to watch if you totally ignore the actual RE part of it and just take it as a zombie shooter style movie. Of course, seeing Milla Jovovich naked makes the film totally perfect and devoid of any criticism ever. Indeed, if you have the worst movie in the world ever (as voted for by El Reg users) the films become instant classics if you have Milla Jovovich naked at the end.

Hell, even Twilight would become watchable if you had Milla Jovovich naked in it (albeit for the 5-10 seconds she appears).

9
0

I kinda liked...

Hitman and Resident Evil. Though I think the saving grace was I never played the games in the first place.

BTW, the biggest turd is missing from the list: Wing Commander. Boy was that a space dump.

10
1

Criminally left out

What about Liam Neeson in Tekken?

8
0

Re: Criminally left out

Why not? He has no problem appearing in the A-Team or Battleship. I think if you offered him enough cash he would appear in 'Pong: The Movie'.

5
0

More from The Register

Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'
Buying a new mobe? You'll stick with the same maker - survey
iPhone 5 totters at the top as Samsung thrusts up UK mobe chart
But older Apples are still holding their own
Google to Glass devs: 'Duh! Go ahead, hack your headset'
'We intentionally left the device unlocked'
Japan's naughty nurses scam free meals with mobile games
Hungry women trick unsuspecting otaku into paying for grub
 breaking news
Turn off the mic: Nokia gets injunction on 'key' HTC One component
Dutch court stops Taiwanese firm from using microphones
Next Xbox to be called ‘Xbox Infinity’... er... ‘Xbox’
We don’t know. Maybe Microsoft doesn’t (yet) either
Sord drawn: The story of the M5 micro
The 1983 Japanese home computer that tried to cut it in the UK
Nudge nudge, wink wink interface may drive Google Glass
Two-finger salutes also come in handy, as may patent lawyers
Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow
Gigahertz-class pocket-sized ARM Ubuntu rig, anyone?