From Super Mario Bros. to The Angry Birds Movie, Hollywood just can’t seem to make a decent movie that is based on a video game. Therefore, in this episode, Baconsale is talking about why most video game film adaptations fail both critically and commercially.
We also talk about the few hidden treasures in the vast wasteland of video game movies. They’re not good movies, per se, but at least they don’t make you want to gouge your eyes out. Plus, as an added bonus, Kent and Joel both pitch ideas for new films based on video games — one of which is actually good.
So whether you’re a fan of Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation. Xbox or PC gaming, you’re sure to enjoy us mocking the terrible movies based on the games you love.
Baconsale 
Joel, that pitch was a thing of beauty. Earthworm Jim? Ecco? Toejam & Earl? Just wow. So many memories haha Earthworm Jim was awesome! Did you ever watch the TV show?
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Yes I did. Fun stuff!
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I’m not a big video game player, so I can’t speak to the fidelity of recent video game movies to video games. I did see Prince of Persia, but I had no idea it was a video game before it was a movie until you mentioned it on one of your shows last year. But I did Prince of Persia was ok.
But I do think you’re right about what is wrong with video game movies, the people making them have never played them and cared about them – just like M. Night Shamalamadindong ruined Airbender because he never cared about it.
But when I did play video games, I liked Streetfighter, but never played Mortal Kombat because it was a really violent video game. But I did get into Halo after graduating college when my new roommates played it, and I liked the Halo 4 movie on Netflix – it wasn’t bad as far as straight to video movies are concerned. I would like to see a Legend of Zelda movie.
The sequel to this episode should be about movies that have been made into video games. Which ones are successful, and why.
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I wonder how good a Legend of Zelda movie would actually be. I don’t think it would translate very well to the big screen.
I think Halo would be an easy big screen adaptation and would make a killing. I’m surprised they haven’t made the jump.
The number of movies made into good video games may have a worse record than video game movies.. All I can think of are really terrible ones off the top of my head.
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I only played Toejam and Earl when I visited my cousins in SLC (we were a strictly Nintendo family). I liked how you could equalize your energy by giving a high 5. But I have never heard of Echo the Dolphin or the Worm guy.
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Yeah Echo sucks. So you’re not missing much there. Earthworm Jim was just kind of a hokey fun game, I loved it.
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I never played sega games so I can’t have an opinion on Joel’s pitch. Kingdom Hearts and Castlevania could both be amazing in the right hands. Although, that could be said for 100 different games. There are so many games that have awesome stories and/or worlds that I could easily see them finding their stride like superhero movies have. At least I hope they will.
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Never played castlevania but I agree with Kingdom Hearts. The problem with that one is the main story is pretty complex. It would be cool to do a prequel kind of thing to the series, or maybe a movie following Mickey through his journey in the first one. I think it would be a cool expansion to see what he was really up to.
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To be honest, I couldn’t care less about getting a good video game movie. I’d just like for games not to cost an extra $50 after I’ve bought them to get all the content the company has made for the game.
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Yeah, I know a lot of work goes into them, but I rarely, if ever, buy games these days. I rent or borrow.
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Honestly, I think the best way to make a video game movie is to grab a small but important event or character from a game and make a cool 2 hour story that adds to the game. Video games have an interesting opportunity to really connect films to themselves in a way that comic book movies will never have by making films giving characters backstory and then allowing their audience to control those characters in playing out the rest of the story. I think in the next decade or two we’ll see a bunch of video game movies and I’m not excited about it. Though I think Halo and Michael Bay are a match made in heaven; cool looking graphics, big explosions, aliens, and a simple story line that even M. Night Shamylan couldn’t screw up? It would make a killing. It wouldn’t even have to be that close to the storyline as most people only cared about the multiplayer aspect of the game anyway.
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Stupid… Didn’t mean to like my own comment. Why can’t we unlike or edit comments on here? Haha
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