The Good, the Bad, and the Hideously Ugly

Looking at a brief history of movies based on video games is a bit like fondly remembering your best root canals.  I tend to separate movies into three categories: awful, watchable, and great.  To date there have been plenty of films based on games that fall into the awful category, a few that are watchable, and not one that I would consider "great."  Another way of looking at it is like this: "Great" is The Godfather.  "Awful" is Ernest Goes to Camp.  "Watchable" is anything that falls in between those two polar opposites.

Keep in mind that "watchable" doesn't necessarily mean good or bad.  It is that wide midpoint into which most films fall and into which most films based on video games - even the good ones - will probably fall for some time to come.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Star Wars fan, yet I put most of the Star Wars movies into this category.  Does this mean I think that Star Wars (any of the six) is the same caliber as Lara croft: Tomb Raider?  Of course not, but I am honest enough to admit that it is certainly not deserving of standing shoulder to shoulder with The Godfather either.  It is also miles above Ernest, so into the middle bin it goes.

Of course whether any movie is good is largely based on the viewer's personal opinion and your mileage may vary based upon whether you think plot and character development are more important than the number of car chases in a film or vice versa.  So, this next section is largely based upon my personal opinion and nothing more, take it with as many grains of salt as you like.  If you disagree and want to write a comment saying that I don't know what I'm talking about and that Uwe Boll is the greatest director since Cecil B. DeMille, that's your opinion.  Of course if you do feel this way you probably haven't the foggiest idea who Cecil B. DeMille was.

Awful Video Game Movies

Super Mario Brothers (1993)

Talk about bad with a capital Buh.  You can practically see the stink coming off this movie.  It really is that bad.  Still it laid the groundwork and proved that a movie based on a video game could be made - but it makes us wonder whether it should.  Adding to the awfulness rather than detracting from it is the cast which is largely comprised of rather talented people.  Bob Hoskins (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Mona Lisa, Hollywoodland) stars as Mario Mario and John Leguizamo (Ice Age, Land of the Dead, Spawn) is his brother Luigi.  Dennis Hopper (Apocalypse Now, Easy Rider, Blue Velvet) plays Koopa and you can even catch the ultra-hip Mojo Nixon and guy-who'll-show-up-in-anything Lance Henrickson (Aliens, Dog Day Afternoon) in supporting roles.  Nonetheless, it stinks on ice.

Double Dragon (1994)

Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and a bunch of people you never heard of (well, Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune fame does have a cameo) star in this crappy adaptation of a rather overrated video game (think I'm lying?  Try the version that was just released for Xbox Live Arcade).  The story revolves around brothers that possess half of an ancient Chinese talisman.  An Evil Gang Leader has the other half and is trying to get the brothers' half to complete the talisman and wield Absolute Power.  Is it just me or do ancient talismans that provide Absolute Power always seem to get broken into multiple pieces and spread around the world?

Street Fighter (1994)

I'm willing to bet there was something of a race between the guys making Street Fighter and those making Mortal Kombat to get their celluloid on screen first.  Street Fighter won on that front but Mortal Kombat is arguably the better movie.  Street Fighter is an easily forgettable pile of poo but did wield the star power of Jean Claude VanDamme (Cyborg, Bloodsport) as Guile and Raul Julia (The Addams Family, Kiss of the Spider Woman) in his final screen appearance as the evil general M. Bison.  Rather than thinking of this as Julia's last movie I tend to think of it as the film that killed him.  Ming Na (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Joy Luck Club) plays the sexy as hell Chun-Li, but even her beautiful Asian good looks couldn't save this one.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

MK went straight from a watchable original to an awful sequel.  Way to go, MK.  They couldn't even get Christopher Lambert to reprise his role as Raiden in this craptacular flick.  Fans of the games may have enjoyed seeing more of the wacky MK characters in this one, but not enough to call it a good movie.  It does give us the likes of Jade, Shiva, Shinnok, and a laughable Shao Kahn played by TV actor Brian Thompson (he appeared in episodes of boob tube gems like V.I.P. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as The X Files and Star Trek: Enterprise).  The plot deals with an impending invasion of Earthrealm by the weirdos from Outworld (just like most of the games) and Our Heroes must defend themselves and Earthrealm by engaging in Mortal Kombat.  Spoiler Alert: whiny and arrogant Johnny Cage does get offed barely twenty minutes or so into the film, so it could be worth a single viewing just for that.

Wing Commander (1999)

Sometimes the best games make the worst movies.  If there's anything that makes me fearful for the fate of the upcoming Gears of War movie it is Wing Commander.  A pre-Scooby-Doo Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Matthew Lillard star in this flick that takes everything that was cool about the games (story, characters, concepts, etc.) and jettisons them into space like the garbage which helped conceal the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back.  Worse than anything is the fact that this was directed by Chris Roberts - the man who created and developed the games - proving (as Stephen King did with Maximum Overdrive) that proficiency with one form of media does not automatically translate into proficiency in another.  There is not one redeeming thing I can say about this film and that's sad especially considering that Lillard who was so enjoyable in flicks like Scream, Thir13en Ghosts, and the Jeff Probst-directed
(and surprisingly good) Finder's Fee appears in it.

House of the Dead (2003)

Here it is; the flick that started Uwe Boll down the road to video game movie infamy.  It has been said that if you're watching a movie that has "Directed by Alan Smithee" in the credits you should be prepared for one of the worst experiences of your life.  Alan Smithee is a pseudonym used by the Director's Guild any time a director feels the film is too horrible to be associated with.  Now we can safely say that if the movie you're about to watch says "Directed by Uwe Boll" in the credits you should run for your life.  Boll's work makes the imaginary Smithee's look like it came straight from Francis Coppola, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, and Frank Capra's combined.

The game in question was an arcade light gun shooter, so there really was no story to it and that fits perfectly because there's not one in the film either.  Basically a bunch of teens go to an island for a rave and are attacked by zombies.  Buckets of blood and a few bare boobies ensue.  The biggest star is Clint Howard, the guy that would have no career if it weren't for his director brother Ron.  Boll is, in the words of Homer Simpson, the suckiest suck who ever sucked a suck, and this piece of crap proves it.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)

The first Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider was passable, but the sequel is just bad.  Watching this one you get the feeling that everyone from Jolie herself to the director and producers to the lowliest grip completely phoned this one in.  It's no surprise that after this was released Jolie announced that she'd not be playing Lara again.  My guess is that no one will, not on the big screen anyway.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

Repeat offender Uwe Boll returns with this Christian Slater (Heathers, Mobsters, Gleaming the Cube) and Tara Reid (American Pie, nothing else of consequence) vehicle based on one of the creepiest game series ever and the franchise that essentially invented the survival horror genre.  If you felt bad about enjoying either Resident Evil film, give this one a look and Paul W.S. Anderson will suddenly look like an artist.  There's a plot in here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I could uncover it without consulting IMDB.  Save yourself 96 minutes of your life that you can never get back and avoid this one at all costs.

Doom (2005)

Bad script, bad acting, bad cast, bad idea.  Anytime you cast a guy who has a definite article for a first name (The Rock) you're asking for trouble.  And it's not that The (we're on a first name basis) can't act, I loved his thinly veiled closet homosexual character in Be Cool; he just didn't have very much to work with here.  The film makes clever use of a first person camera near the ending, but watching Doom turns out to be about as much fun as watching someone play Doom and that is not much fun at all.

BloodRayne (2005)

Wow, was 2005 a bad year for game movies or what?  BloodRayne, the first video game vixen to pose topless in Playboy was brought to the silver screen by our man Uwe Boll.  This guy is as good for video games as a cup of steaming Hot Coffee and a visit from Jack Thompson, isn't he?  This poorly written and abysmally performed pile of guano is another of those bad movies with a good cast. 

Kristanna Loken (the "hot" Terminator in T3) plays Rayne but is backed up by veterans like Meat Loaf (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Black Dog, Fight Club), Sir Ben Kingsley (Ghandi - he's an Oscar winner, boys and girls), Michelle Rodriguez, Billy Zane (Titanic, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight), and Mr. If-I'm-In-It-But-Tarantino-Didn't-Direct-It-Will-Suck, Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs).  Even so, BloodRayne proves that a hot chick does not a good movie make and, of course, that a Uwe Boll makes a terrible movie pretty much every time.  What's it gonna take to get this guy to go back to whatever corner of Germany he crawled out of and stay there?

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

Yes it is as bad as you think.  Even all the scantily clad gals (Jamie Pressly among them) can't help it or make it worth while.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.