Worst Movie Adaptations of Video Games

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Back in those days Peach was called Princess Toadstool in North America, possibly because of her being the ruler of The Mushroom Kingdom, and in the early games she did have red hair. Some people think that Peach and Toadstool are actually two different characters, but she was always called Peach in Japan. Maybe she had her hair bleached or something, but IDK. The Mario Bros. were actually Italian-American. They were born in Brooklyn, New York which is why they had Brooklyn accents. In the original game Mario Bros, they are actually a pair of plumbers fighting pests in the New York city sewer, which sort of confirms that is what their nationality was supposed to be.

Anyway, I hope that clears up any confusion. Although I have no idea why they had to make Bowser look like a giant fat alligator.

Max Payne

People like a slick neo-noir movie whenever it comes along, but this wasn't it, even with Mark Wahlberg in the lead.

Wing Commander

This movie sucked BIG TIME!

Prince Of Persia

Not only this had a bad case of whitewashing several roles, but did Disney not learn its lesson when it released another flop two years later, the 2012 John Carter movie?

Final Fantasy

Sure the animation is great and all that, but this needed a better script and a better director.

Need For Speed

I'm pretending this one never happened. Enough said.

I watched the cartoon versions of Mortal Kombat and Darkstalkers on YouTube, both of which had plenty of snarky annotations added to help me not get bored into a coma, in fact I couldn't stop laughing at some of them. They had to be the worst ever mainly because they were based on two games that are incredibly NOT for kids, especially MK, and they made a lot of changes to make it suitable for kids. Although you still get to see the bare butts of that merman character, and Felicia - while she hangs out with a teenaged boy in his bedroom. The stories and voices and everything were so awful I can't see kids even liking it. The only good thing was maybe that techno music from MK.

I will always ardently defend the 'Super Mario Bros.' movie. I saw that movie dozens of times as a kid and I didn't even know people disliked it until a couple of years ago. Everyone complains that it "isn't like the games", but I've never heard anyone say how they would do it differently. It's not like the series had any kind of complex plot or characterization...I feel bad for any screenwriter given a copy of 'Super Mario Bros.' for the NES and being told to make a 90-minute movie out of it. I think what they came up with was impressively dark and original. At five years old, I had no idea what "cyberpunk" was, nor had I seen movies like 'Blade Runner' or 'Brazil' yet, so the visuals and concepts in that movie just blew me away.

Thankfully, I think reception to the 'Mario' movie has become warmer over the last 22 years. Nowadays I see more people praising it - either nostalgically or on its own merits - rather than criticizing it.

'Postal' is actually the most faithful video game adaptation I've ever seen, for better and for worse. It captures the tone and humor of the game perfectly, the only problem was that the original game wasn't very good or funny to begin with. The company behind the games actually helped consult on the film, and the creator of 'Postal' even has a cameo in it. It's basically a mediocre adaptation of a mediocre game, so in a way, that balances out to a perfect adaptation if not a very good movie (though it did have its funny parts).

I went on Tooncrap and they had a review of The Power Team, a show that was a lot like Captain N, but while The heroes in that cartoon were poor versions of characters that are beloved, the main protagonists in this one are all from games made by Acclaim that most people probably have never even heard of or care about, like Kwirk the Tomato, who was in this one Game Boy game, and that guy from NARC, and a basketball player guy from Arch Rivals. They were an even weirder team than the one on Captain N, but I guess they were more true to their video game counterparts. Although the main antagonist Mr. Big, was the villain from Narc, and instead of getting people addicted to dangerous street drugs he was stealing all the world's tomatoes, and when he pronounces it as to-mah-toe, this sends Kwirk into a rage where he starts pelting him with tomatoes, even though earlier he had been defending the rights of his "relatives" he now just murdered.

"To-may-toe, to-mah-to, let's call the whole thing crap".

Why would i waste any of my time on those when I can just watch Hitman? that one is good..did not even know it was supposed to be a video game adaptation until my brother told me that. I did try playing the game, it is a really difficult game I think I got past level 1 lol but that was it.

If they do Mass Effect or God of War, they better do a good job.

Same thing with the upcoming Warcraft movie.

I saw Doom and I was very disappointed that there were no demons from hell, but rather mutations from some alien performance enhancing drug thing depending on whether or not you're good or evil.

Only one question: WHY?! !!

The House of the Dead should be at the top of this list.

I didn't even bother with the sequels.

I didn't know there was more than one @_@

But personally, I didn't much care for the game, thought the gameplay got old very quick.



Disney seems to have a knack for that sort of thing. First it was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then Chronicles of Narnia, and then John Carter =/

Although I am pretty glad that we won't ever see a HHGttG2.



I agree with everything you said, me and my friends loved that movie when we were kids, even though we knew it was totally different from the games.

I was going to comment further, and then checked page 2 and it looks like I already did, d'oh.

"Watching it today, though, it does feel a bit like they had to rush it in time for a certain release date. There are parts, especially nearer the end of the film, where the editing just feels very muddled like certain parts had to be dropped and switched around. "

Since then, I've read an interview where the script writers said that the movie was originally going to be much darker. I wish I could see what that movie would have been like, but the finished product that we did get is certainly not as destroyed as a lot of other "studio intervention" films I've seen >_<



Speaking of studio intervention...also another game movie I commented on already:

"I actually thought that movie was surprisingly close to the videogames (that is, if he was playing an Agent 47 who was new to the games and wasn't trying to get Silent Assassin), but after watching the deleted scenes, that's definitely a movie that deserves a director's cut. That "bunch of clones, swordfight out of nowhere!" scene that Sony threw into the finished movie made no sense at all."

Also, I thought Timothy Olyphant did an alright job, but they could have taken just about any guy and shaved his head and threw him in that role. I haven't seen the sequel yet.



The first game isn't very good. I tried playing it for a while, but there's no Silent Assassin, and no real reason to be stealthy at all, AND NO QUICK SAVES...I think they expect you to just go around guns blazing for most of it. I gave up about halfway through, some jungle mission where you have to kill a Tony Montana wannabe.

The second game is much better, and the third game (Contracts) is kind of a best-of remake of the first game. I think Contracts might be where most of the inspiration for the movie came from.

Since people are talking about the Mario movie, I'd like to point out that the actual filming was a terrible experience for many. Many injuries were suffered, but Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, nearly drowned at one point.

At least Nintendo sort of learned their lesson when it came to movies as we have not yet seen Legend of Zelda:Wand of Gamelon(cited in a great deal of sites to be one of the most abominable Nintendo related games ever created). God help us all if that comes to pass.

Mass Effect should be really easy to get right, since there's so much story already written for them. All they have to do is not come up with insane diversions for s**ts and giggles and they'll have a solid movie.

I wonder if the rumors about a live-action Metroid movie will end up being true.

I enjoyed Advent Children, I haven't seen the director's cut but I have heard it is an improvement.

^The Blue-ray release [Advent Children Complete] is so much better than the original. It's refreshing that someone else besides me, my friend, and my special someone likes the movie a lot, too!