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Video Games Adaptations Part 2 – The 90’s Movies
While the current trend is on the rise, the market is still pretty much in its infancy and we can take a look at how things are changing, by looking at some of the Video game to movie adaptations that have already been released. One of the big and early well known video game to movie adaptations was that of Nintendo’s classic plumber Mario and his brother Luigi, so lets take a look at some of the movies that have gone before.
Back in 1993 Super Mario Brothers the movie was released, and wow, what a monumental mess of a movie that was. However I can see why they went the way they did, taking the slightly science fiction style, it must have been a tough decision on how to portray the world. However the end result was fairly unanimous, it was not good and it wasn’t clever. We are already off to a great start here in the video game adaptation market, one license already slayed, but admittedly Super Mario Bros. was never really going to make a great live action movie, animation anyone?
In 1994 we had the seriously uncool adaptation of Street Fighter. Well for one of the most popular games of the nineties this movie sure turned into a cheesy bad haircut and outfit show. What a mistake to focus on Guile rather than one of the real main characters, like Ryu or Chun Li who hold the more fighter orientated focus which should be the real crux of the movie. Enough about this early Street Fighter adaptation, if the series is your thing then you should read the stories around on the newer Street Fighter movie that is in the making. Hopefully lessons have been learned.
In 1995 we had the great Street Fighter rival Mortal Kombat transferred to the big screen with suitably bad results. This led to a nice little break in the adaptations disregarding the actual Mortal Kombat sequel. No game name was quite big enough to really transition, or so the studios though, with various rumours flying around a few key titles but nothing actually getting made.
1999 saw a long awaited movie version of Wing Commander appear, a game which was very popular with computer game fans. Wing Commander the movie was far from good unfortunately and was easily surpassed by non game based sci fi fiction, from the past and the present. I’m sure viewing figures were quite high for the budget involved, but we never saw a sequel and that speaks volumes about this movies success.
Next we will be moving on to the movies released after the year 2000, does it get any better?