OPINION: Best and worst video game movies ever

Movies are an important medium in today’s society, they have been for decades. While films lack the interactivity that video games give us, they are an exciting, thrilling and thought-provoking medium that shows no sign of stopping anytime within my lifetime. I love movies, I go to the cinema whenever I can afford it. I’m also an avid player of video games. But video games haven’t really translated all that well to the big screen. For every alright video game movie, there’s a really, really awful one. So today, in honor of a slow news day, I have decided to write about the best and worst video game movies that I’ve seen.

Bad: Max Payne

I love Max Payne, Max Payne 2 is probably one of my favorite third-person shooter games ever. Remedy created a fantastically written, designed and paced experiences you could ever experience. But the three things that Remedy got near perfect when creating the Max Payne game were completely destroyed when John Moore directed the 2008 movie adaptation.

Max Payne, played by Mark ‘Marky Mark’ Wahlberg, is still the depressed, psychopathic New York cop with a recently murdered family tracking down a gang selling Valkyr but unlike the game, Max Payne is incredibly slow. So slow, in fact, that the first time I ever watched it I was woken up four times—that I can remember—by my friend and it felt like this movie was never, ever going to end.

Max Payne (2008) was not only a boring slog of a film but also incredibly bland. Characters never felt as if they were developed, the action was slow—in reference to the games’ bullet time mechanic?—there were some weird, awful-looking angel things and they even made a post-credits sequence alluding to a sequel. Which I hope and pray never gets made.

Good: Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat isn’t really a good movie, especially by today’s standards. As a video game movie, however, Mortal Kombat is sadly one of the best. Released in 1995 and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the man who would later go on to ruin Resident Evil in movie form, Mortal Kombat is the hallmark of mid-nineties cheese and edginess that makes the movie somehow enjoyable to watch.

The story still tells the tale of Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Raiden and Lui Kang as they fight in the Mortal Kombat tournament in order to save Earthrealm from the invasion of Netherrealm. The movie actually provides a decent job in staying faithful to the source material with the rules of the tournament staying the same as well as including a pretty hefty variety of the series’ villains from the four-armed Goro all the way to Reptile.

As a fan of Mortal Kombat as well as a fan of 90’s cheesiness, Mortal Kombat isn’t a bad time. Mortal Kombat is the type of movie that makes you smile at its lack of quality but also the type of movie you won’t mind watching numerous times in order to get a good laugh. If you can get past some pretty awful special effects as well as weirdly creepy Christopher Lambert as Raiden, you should give Mortal Kombat a watch.

Bad: Postal

Postal isn’t just a bad movie, it’s just straight-out offensive. I’m the kind of person who enjoys dark humour—probably due to my lack of a conscience—but Uwe Boll’s take on the satirically-drenched, dark-comedy game series by Running with Scissors is one of the least funny comedies I’ve ever watched.

The movie opens with Al-Qaeda terrorists on Flight 11 as they argue over how many virgins they’ll receive after they crash the plane into the World Trade Centre. Obviously, releasing just seven years after the events of 9/11, Uwe Boll’s ‘comedy’ struck a controversy goldmine from just the opening five minutes of what is undoubtedly a movie released just to cash in on controversial headlines. The sheer amount of headlines following the film, however, did not translate well to box office with the $15 million film only raking in $146,741 in box office tickets.

Nevertheless, I watched Postal for the first time a few years ago after replaying Postal 2 for flatulence and chuckles and even if it wasn’t for the constant references to Al-Qaeda that knowingly rubbed people the wrong way, Postal 2 just isn’t very good. Taking place in Arizona, Paradise, Postal Dude is unemployed, lives in a trailer park with his morbidly obese, cheater wife who literally cannot leave her bed. So to try and make some money he teams up with his sleazy, playboy uncle, Dave to steal a shipment of Krotchy dolls and apparent hilarity ensues from there on out.

This action-maybe-comedy flick moves from set-piece to set-piece faster than your average Call of Duty campaign but without anywhere near the skill or production value until, spoiler, the Postal Dude kills his wife, her lovers, Al-Qaeda, an angry cult and the rest of the town whilst George Bush and Osama bin Laden skip together whilst laughing. Unless you really want to watch an hour and a half of terribly written attempts at comedy and half-decent action sequences, for the budget, stay away from Postal.

Good: Silent Hill

I love Silent Hill. Silent Hill 2 is one of the best survival horror experiences that you can get your hands on. Promise, one of the songs from Silent Hill 2, has been my ringtone for too many years to count. A game series focused on delivering creepy, atmospheric and slow-paced horror somehow translated well into a movie. While not the best movie that you can get your hands on, Silent Hill is definitely the best example of a video game being translated to cinema. Not the sequel, though… that’s a CGI abomination.

Released in 2006 and directed by Christophe Gans, Silent Hill follows Rose the adoptive mother of Sharon, a nine-year-old girl who frequently sleepwalks. When she sleepwalks, however, she mentions the name of a town; a town called Silent Hill. In order to find out just what is so important about this town, Rose decides that it would be a great idea to take Sharon down to the hell-bent town of Silent Hill. Much like the plot of the original game, Rose loses Sharon in the fog-covered town and has to search for her.

In terms of keeping with the source material, Silent Hill borrows heavily from the first two games. Mostly following the plot of the original in terms of the missing adopted daughter, the cult and the dark double of the protagonist’s daughter, Alessa. Even the cop from the original Silent Hill, Cybil Bennet, takes a role in the plot. Then dark, hellish industrial atmosphere of the town is shown frequently here too with the rusted metallic aesthetic taking over the town once the siren sounds. In terms of Silent Hill 2, the movie brings in fan-favourite creatures from the Bubble Head Nurses to the Lying Figures and, of course, the horrifying Pyramid Head.

Silent Hill is the best live-action video game movie, at least until we find out whether Warcraft is any good. However, before you watch it, I am a fan of the first two Silent Hill games and seeing the games be so faithfully recreated in film format means that I would obviously have more enjoyment than someone who doesn’t. If you do love Silent Hill though and you haven’t watched Silent Hill… what are you doing here? Go and watch it!

Bad: Alone in the Dark

Another movie from the always great Uwe Boll, Alone in the Dark is very widely known to be one of the worst movies ever created by man…and animal. Whereas Silent Hill took important key points from its source material, Alone in the Dark is only loosely, very loosely, based off of the 2001 reboot, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare whilst also originally aiming to launch alongside the 2008 reboot before the games three-year delay and a complete redesign.

Alone in the Dark, 2005, follows Edward Carnby as he attempts to discover more about his past and his torturous experiences as the child experiment of a mad scientist. Unlike all of the video game movies listed above, Alone in the Dark doesn’t even bring forth happy memories of the game series that it comes from. Mortal Kombat focused on the Mortal Kombat tournament, Max Payne focused on Max and the drug trade from the game, Silent Hill brought in the titular town and plot elements from the first two games. Alone in the Dark, however, takes its story from Bureau 713, an organization that was mentioned a couple of times in Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and features monsters with similar attributes to that of the game.

Somehow, this movie also got a sequel despite not turning a profit and being heralded as one of the world movies of all time. What the hell, Hollywood?

Good: Wreck-It Ralph

As I mentioned before, no live action video game is actually considered to be a good movie. In the transformation from game to movie, something seems to be lost during the move. Either the movie moves drastically away from its source material or tries to cram so much of the franchise into one movie that it becomes a mess of a movie. Wreck- It Ralph doesn’t focus on any one video game and its plot but instead brings together a multitude of characters for an ensemble, CGI movie for kids, although enjoyable for adults too.

Focusing on the titular Wreck-It Ralph, the antagonist of fake video game Fix-It Felix Jr., Wreck-It Ralph follows Ralph as he tries to become the good guy for once, instead of the hotel-destroying giant he’s known for. On the way, he will meet real and fake video game characters alike, ranging from the bartender from Tapper to Q*Bert and even Kano, complete with his heart-ripping fatality.

Wreck-It Ralph is a movie that is literally bursting with charm from the candy-created world of the fake kart racer Sugar Rush to the horrific, sci-fi world of Duty Calls, Wreck-It Ralph is the best video game movie ever made while only featuring real video game characters on the side. Does this movie count? I dunno. Did I put this on here just to have a good movie on the list? Most probably. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Wreck-It Ralph is a really good movie for everyone to watch. So go watch it, do it!

What’s your favorite or least favorite video game movie? Did the Postal movie manage to get a laugh out of you? Tell us in the comments below!