Destructoid Checkpoint: Making Movies

Television shows and movies based on computer games are nothing new. 1986 saw the release of Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. This animated movie is considered the first video game adaptation, and also has a name that tells you exactly what the movie is about, which is a positive or a negative depending on your stance on spoilers.

Over the years, adaptations have been pretty hit-or-miss, but recent years have seen a big shift. We’ve had a surge of critical or commercial successes, or a mix of both. A Minecraft Movie might have gotten hammered by critics, but it made nearly a billion dollars on a $150 million budget. Netflix’s Arcane took a game that is all about abusing your jungler until they cry and turned it into a highly regarded series that is all about abusing your feelings until you cry.

The most recent Super Mario Bros. Movie managed not to get hammered by critics and made about a bajillion dollars on a $100 million budget. Sonic got three movies, all of which made fans and investors happy. Amazon Prime and Bethesda both consider the Fallout show a raging success, The Last of Us was a massive hit, and there is a boatload of new adaptations on the way.

So, what happened? Why are we staring down the barrel of dozens of adaptations without shuddering in fear? Well, like most fun stuff, it seems complicated, but it really isn’t. 

The Pillage Years

At various points in its history, Hollywood has shown itself to latch onto ideas without really knowing what to do with them, usually fueled by a new pipeline of cheap rights-purchasing options. In the ‘90s, that meant video games. The movie-making machine used to be pretty simple. You’d pick up the rights to something that would allow you access to free world-building, concept art, character design, and that also came with some degree of a built-in audience. If the game was really good, you might spend millions on the rights, but that was rare. The rights to the original live-action Super Mario Bros. movie cost $10 million, just as an example that definitely won’t come back around later.

Next, you’d bring on a script writer. Usually, a noname, most likely someone who had sent in a script that caught your eye. You couldn’t make that particular movie, but you knew the writer could turn out a finished script. If the script really showed some promise, you would be handing it off to a more established and talented screenwriter for polish, anyway. If it didn’t, you could just bring in someone else to write a new script and shelve the other one. For example, I bet you didn’t know that the original Super Mario Bros. live-action movie had nine different scripts before everyone settled on what they wanted to do.

The point was that you had the rights, which were usually cheap, and you were working something up. Just getting started is the most important step of any creative venture, but the reasons you are starting a project can have long-term consequences.

This was the problem for many Hollywood adaptations. Movies were big business; in fact, they were THE business. Nobody was more famous than movie stars, and nobody controlled more movie stars than Hollywood. 

Hollywood folks knew how to make movies, so when it came to making movies about videogames it never occurred to them to listen to the people who actually made the originals, because those folks knew nothing about movies. In fact, this might shock you, but Nintendo specifically relinquished creative control to the people making the Super Mario Bros. movie in the 90s, trusting in their vision, and were eager to follow their argument that a more adult-focused movie would open up a whole audience for their games.

Why listen to a bunch of pencil neck geeks who sat in dark offices making games when you could just do what you always did, which was be a creative super genius and make loads of bank?

This led to failure after failure, and after a while, the nature of video game adaptations changed. You were no longer trying to make a blockbuster; you were just looking to cash in on some love for the game and then make solid long-term returns with video rentals to stoners in college towns all across America.

The millennial urge to stop making a mess of things

Around the 2000s, that blissful time when everything was much cooler than it is now, things started to swing. Video game adaptations became more self-aware because more and more people had exposure to the medium.

Hollywood no longer saw games as a joke and was instead willing to extend a tiny bit of respect to the kinds of numbers a smash hit could do. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider brought in a legitimate and real actress, Angelina Jolie, to play the titular character. 

Resident Evil dropped a year later, and once again repeated the magic trick of actually landing pretty well with the target audience, making some decent enough returns at the box office, and then scooping up a long tail in the home video market. 

Neither movie was winning Oscars, but they did embrace the ridiculousness of their subject matter and offered gamers versions of the games they liked enough to result in follow-up movies.

Now we were onto something. People were making a bit of money, movies were getting follow-ups, and sometimes even spawning series. Casting directors were getting the house in order when it came to who was getting parts, and we were no longer getting Bob Hoskins as Mario. Just a side note, did you know that Dustin Hoffman was trying to get the rights to Super Mario Bros. so that he could play Mario with Danny DeVito as Luigi? Were you aware that in another universe, there is actually a worse version of that movie?

Animation efforts also came through for us in the 2000s with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Dead Space: Downfall, and a host of Pokémon movies, all of which proved their worth. 

Unfortunately, for every fun outing, there was also a Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time, or a Max Payne. Did you know that Mark Whalberg is such a bad actor that Nintendo briefly funded experimental time-travel technology to send him back in time, just so they could compound the disaster that was the Super Mario Bros. live-action movie by casting him in it?

The golden era is, eh, here…a?

This brings us to now, and why video game movies and shows are actually good. First, studios are doing a better job of figuring out who to aim these products at. I know that lots of grown men disgraced themselves by crying about silly-looking pigs or Jack Black in the Minecraft movie, but that particular hook was never baited for them in the first place. The Minecraft Movie was looking for those kid dollars, and it found them.

Meanwhile, the new Mortal Kombat movies are sticking to the tried-and-true formula of pulling out spines, pushing in spleens, and generally rearranging other organs and body parts. I’ve seen a lot of people question the casting of the upcoming Street Fighter movie, and all I can say is that we are talking about a game where one guy can elongate his body to attack and another guy can fart electricity at you. My only personal problem with it is the casting of Andrew Schulz as Dan, but even then, he has one of the most punchable faces known to man and is literally playing a character that is gonna get punched in the face, so maybe I gotta just shut my damn mouth.

The Last of Us show was pretty serious, and Fallout kinda isn’t. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners understood trading heartache for glory, and Arcane understood family. It’s not that production studios didn’t have access to good people before; they just didn’t seem to want to “waste” the money on good people for video game movies, and when they did, the people they brought in didn’t entirely understand the source material anyway.

Now, all that has changed. Gamers can’t claim to be ostracised for being gamers anymore because gaming is THE industry. It makes the most money. NFL players celebrate scoring touchdowns in fake football with dances from Fortnite. 

A huge part of this is actually down to the elevation of genre fiction, such as sci-fi and fantasy, in the public eye. It’s not all robots and magic spells, and huge parts of the population that may have been dismissive of the genre tropes that keep games alive and engaging now understand that underneath the Chosen One’s and Hero’s Journeys are tremendously emotional stories with as much gravitas as any other quality work of fiction.

The people working at studios who are now eager to make these movies and shows grew up with games, understand their value, and are willing to treat them with the same reverence and respect that studios back in the day gave to novels.

Does it always work out? Hell no. Plenty of adaptations will end up being absolute cheeks, but the bar of quality has risen; there is no doubt about it. 

The good news is that the bad ones are getting rarer, and the good ones are getting a lot more attention and respect, and all because Hollywood has learned to trust the people who make and love the games in the first place.

Except for the Borderlands movie. Somebody probably should have stepped in for that one.

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Over on the Destructoid mothership, Scott Duwe is daring to feel hope that Marathon is making some good moves during the time it bought itself with a release date delay. - “Selecting Rook will spawn you into a match already in progress, and it will always be a solo experience. “You risk nothing, and anything you take out is yours to keep,” said Bungie’s Runner team lead Kevin Yanes. And you know what? Hell yeah. Losing my stuff sucks. Let me keep my stuff with little risk involved.”

Luci Kelemen stopped playing Blue Prince after hitting the credits, and won’t be made to feel bad about that. - “Blue Prince was one of the big surprises of last year, and one of the few contemporary games that even dragged me off the sidelines for a blind playthrough. I really enjoyed my time with the base game, but noped out shortly after I got my inheritance. Having now watched a playthrough in full, boy do I not regret that decision.”

Tiago Manuel, like most of us, enjoyed Expedition 33, but it also reminded him of another game. This ia pretty spoiler-heavy article, so you’ll just need to throw caution to the wind and go and read it, if you wish.

And that’s it for this week, folks. Stay gold.