One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video games.

[Aragorn]

Just as the title says, say something positive as well as something negative about the following live action movies that are based on video games.


Super Mario Bros. (1993), starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper

Double Dragon (1994), starring Robert Patrick, Scott Wolf, Alyssa Milano

Street Fighter (1994), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Kylie Minogue

Mortal Kombat (1995), starring Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), starring Robin Shou, James Remar, Talisa Soto

Wing Commander (1999), starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), starring Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Daniel Craig

Resident Evil (2002), starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Salmon

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003), starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Dijmon Hounsou

House of the Dead (2003), starring Clint Howard, Jurgen Prochnow, Erica Durance

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), starring Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr

Alone in the Dark (2005), starring Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff

Doom (2005), starring Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Dwayne Johnson

BloodRayne (2006), starring Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley

Silent Hill (2006), starring Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006), starring Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Ashanti

Hitman (2007), starring Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Henry Ian Cusick

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008), starring Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds

Postal (2008), starring Dave Foley, J.K. Simmons, Verne Troyer

Far Cry (2008), starring Til Schweiger, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Don S. Davis

Max Payne (2008), starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

I've not seen many of those, I can only say:

Mario Brothers was complete crap. Nothing good about it at all. Well, maybe Bob Hoskins.

Tomb Raider was OK the Resident Evil series has been pretty good and Max Payne certainly looks very interesting.

 

[Timby]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Bros.: Good -- Fantastic production design. The movie's world is so delightfully bizarre and outlandish. Bad -- The rest of the movie is terrible.

Double Dragon: Good -- Robert Patrick. Bad -- Pretty much everything else.

Street Fighter: Good -- Raul Julia, very clearly dying of cancer, chewing the scenery with aplomb. Bad -- Nothing can forgive the Godzilla roar.

Mortal Kombat: Good -- as a whole, it's really a very good adaptation. The action is extremely well-choreographed. Bad -- It's rather dull in the middle, and Robin Shou is not a leading man.

Mortal Kombat Annihilation: Good -- Johnny Cage gets knocked off in five minutes. Bad -- Holy God, what the hell was everyone thinking?

Wing Commander: Good -- Peter Lamont's production design, David Arnold's main theme, Jürgen Prochnow. Bad -- Again, what the hell was everyone thinking?

DOOM: Good -- It's actually a fairly entertaining, if by-the-numbers, zombie horror / action movie until the third act. Bad -- The third act.

 

[I am not Spock]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Haven't seen them all, but most of the ones I have seen have been utterly terrible. Max Payne looks pretty cool, though.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Haven't seen them all, but most of the ones I have seen have been utterly terrible. Max Payne looks pretty cool, though.

I wasn't sure about MP at first but hearing explantaions about some of the events in it eased my worries. The more clips I see the more it also looks like it kept some of the film noir style. I just wonder if Payne will occasional down some "painkillers" during the course of the movie?

 

[nx1701g]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Bros. (1993), starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper
Pro: Great sets
Con: The story is horrible


Double Dragon (1994), starring Robert Patrick, Scott Wolf, Alyssa Milano
Pro: Robert Patrick as the bad guy again.
Con: Not very memorable despite Robert Patrick as the bad guy

Street Fighter (1994), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Kylie Minogue
Pro: Raul Julia was a great bad guy
Con: Raul Julia's final film

Wing Commander (1999), starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard
Pro: Introduced me to Saffron Burrows
Con: Everything else about the film

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), starring Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Daniel Craig
Pro: Angelina Jolie
Con: Daniel Craig (I don't like him)

Resident Evil (2002), starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Salmon
Pro: Resident Evil comes to the big screen
Con: Nothing at all like the games.

House of the Dead (2003), starring Clint Howard, Jurgen Prochnow, Erica Durance
Pro: Erica Durance get's naked in the beginning
Con: The film is horrible

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), starring Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr
Pro: Raccoon City gets overrun by zombies!
Con: Not nearly as good as the story its based on.

Doom (2005), starring Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Dwayne Johnson
Pro: Actually repeated the POV of the game for a few minutes.
Con: The Rock.

Silent Hill (2006), starring Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden
Pro: Captures the feel of the game in many places.
Con: Slight changes to the backstory make it a bit more unusual.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Ashanti
Pro: T-Virus destroys humanity
Con: The Tyrant battle takes less than a minute.

Hitman (2007), starring Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Henry Ian Cusick
Pro: Feels like the game in many places
Con: Some of its pretty boring

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Pro: Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy, John Leguizamo is not really annoying at all and the Goombas were pretty cool
Con: The movie really wasn't that great

Resident Evil (2002)
Pro: It was pretty creepy in some places and Milla Jovovich is hot
Con: Not enough zombies

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Pro: A pretty kick ass movie, Sienna Guillory as Jill
Con: Nemesis was kind of a wuss toward the end

Doom (2005)
Pro: The game POV was cool
Con: The Rock as the villain kinda sucked

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Pro: Ummm.....
Con: Was pretty dull and tried too much to be a zombie Mad Max movie

 

[MANT!]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Brothers..
Pro...Not much..Con..too much

Doom..Pro--the Design
Con--teleportation with THOSE weapons?

Wing Commander.. Pros--Design on a budget ,Saffron Burrows
Con-- Horrible story, right down to "silent running" in the vaccum of space.

 

[Thrall]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

House of The Dead had naked strippers blowing away zombies with machine guns in Matrix Bullet Time. And Erica Durance naked as well. It was so bad it was good.

Downside was that it was directed by Uwe Boll and the rest of it was blah.

 

[Shurik]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Out of all those movies, only Silent Hill was a decent, even good, horror movie. First Resident Evil wasn't that bad either.

Alone In The Dark and Bloodrayne are of "so bad it's good" sort and In The Name Of The King was so boring I gave up after a 40 or so minutes ...

 

[captcalhoun]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

SMB and Double Dragon
good: uh....
bad: everything

Streetfighter
good: ummm...Kylie?
bad: most of it

Mortal Kombat
good: most of it.
bad: Lambert's laughable wig.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
good: talisa soto and some good fight scenes
bad: most of the rest

Tomb Raider
good: quite a lot
bad: daniel craig

Tomb Raider 2
good: Angelina
bad: most of it.

DooM
good: solid dumb popcorn action movie, Rosamund Pike
bad: making The Rock a bad guy

 

[MyCylon]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

The Bad: Those movies.
The Good: You can still play the games.

Ok, seriously, I haven't seen all of those so here's just a quick rundown of the ones I can comment on:

Super Mario:
+ Fun. I remember it being silly but fun.
- Pretty crappy generally speaking.

Tomb Raider:
+ In all honesty, I can't think of a single redeeming element in the Tomb Raider movies.
- I can't stand Angelina Jolie. The character of Lara Croft was completey destroyed which is in part due to the fact that they went more with what the character had been turned into in later games rather than going with the first. In the movie, she was nothing but a maniac IMHO.

Street Fighter:
+ It's got the late Raul Julia in it. And van Damme is enjoyable every now and then.
- Just a bad, bad movie.


I've seen the trailer for Max Payne. The trailer looks good but somehow, for me anyway, it begged the question of what this movie is possibly going to offer that the game didn't already give me? The game Max Payne was atmospheric, stylish and violent. And you got to be a central part of that environment.
In the movie, you 'only' get to watch all of that. So I really don't see a reason to see the movie whatsoever at this point.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

You know what movie I saw very recently, the original Mortal Kombat, and I realized that movie is incredibly OVERRATED. Its only good if you compare it to its craptacular sequel, it has a little bit of style to it and doesn't overstuff itself.

In of itself, it is not a good movie, period. Very cliche, very badly written, as usual with video-games is more concerned with making sure the characters/ideas from the games are in it rather than putting together a cohesive movie.

 

[Luckyflux]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

I have only seen or remember a few on this list. I saw Super Mario Bros, but don't remember a thing about it, except it was pretty bad. But I do have some comments on some of the others listed.

Mortal Kombat (and 2): The best thing about these is the soundtrack no question about it. For those that like music like that, it cannot be beat. Crank it as loud as you can (up to 11 preferably) and you are all set. Plus Traci Lords kind of singing, more like humming, in the techno song is a favorite of mine.

Resident Evil: The coolest scene is near the beginning when the military team goes in to try and kill the supercomputer. They start to walk down the hallway toward the computer chamber, and then all of sudden the lights go on and the doors close. Everyone looks around, and we all know that they are f-cked. Then the beam of light stretches across the hallway and moves toward the soldiers. The black guy who is in charge ducks to avoid it. Some dude tries a matrix bullet dodge trick, but gets his fingers cut off, and some woman gets beheaded as the beam gets to the end of the hallway. Cut to the other end of the hallway and we see the beam materialize and start to come back. The leader jumps to the top of the hallway and grabs a handle and just barely clears the deadly beam of light as the rest of the people die miserably. At this point I was totally rooting for the black guy! I thought he was gonna make it! But then the beam returns. As our hero is staring down the corridor toward the cutting beam coming at him, I was thinking that he could still pull out some acrobatic move to dodge the beam.....that is until the beam turned into a big grid and went right through him!!! I was upset as little cube shaped pieces of him fell to the floor.

Doom: How badly did you just want a movie of the first person view? That is all I wanted, just show me the first person view of what the Rock (or Urban) was looking at, and have him just start blasting stuff. But no, we didn't get that until the very end, for such a short time period, and it wasn't even the Rock! But when that sequence was going on, I was diggin' it!

Hitman: You don't know how badly I didn't want this to suck. I begged and pleaded for it not to suck. But alas, it sucked. Why? How? Just give someone a nice suit, load them up with weapons, bar code their neck, and tell them where the bad guys are, and watch the ensuing carnage. That is all I wanted. I knew Hitman wasn't going to stretch my mind, or fill me with questions of reality or enlightenment...I jsut wanted to see him shoot alot of people, but realistically. I didn't think that happened. I was really in an altered state of mind when I saw it, but I do remember not liking it, nor having a clue what it was about.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

House of the Dead (2003), starring Clint Howard, Jurgen Prochnow, Erica Durance
Pro: Erica Durance get's naked in the beginning

Time to amend my Netflix que.

 

[nx1701g]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

House of the Dead (2003), starring Clint Howard, Jurgen Prochnow, Erica Durance
Pro: Erica Durance get's naked in the beginning

Time to amend my Netflix que.

Everytime someone mentions Erica Durance naked in that movie I think rentals of that film spike.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Bros.
GOOD: It's completely insane and it just doesn't care! There's no way in hell the video game could ever be faithfully adapted into live action, so they just made up something equally weird. One of my all-time favorite guilty pleasure movies.
BAD: There was never a sequel.

Mortal Kombat
GOOD: Christopher Lambert is in it.
BAD: Giving stories to fighting games is just kinda stupid. Making a movie triples the stupidity.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
GOOD: Princess Kitana was hot.
BAD: Where do I even begin? (Although the Animalities were especially stupid.)

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
GOOD: Fun, peppy movie with fun, peppy soundtrack.
BAD: Not much. I guess I would have liked more Chris Barrie.

Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
GOOD: Angelina Jolie still kicks ass as Lara Croft.
BAD: It lacked the zest of the 1st movie.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
GOOD: It feels like a video game.
BAD: It feels like a video game.

Resident Evil: Extinction
GOOD: It feels less like a video game and more like an actual movie.
BAD: I already saw the movie back when it was called The Road Warrior.

 

[Shintaek]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

Super Mario Bros
+ It seemed like a fun movie back then.
- THEY DIDN'T USE PRINCESS TOADSTOOL!

Double Dragon
+ The hot actors who payed Billy and Jimmy.
- Everything else, especially Alyssa Milano's hair and the various gangs that reminded me of The Warriors.

Street Fighter
+ Raul Julia, The guy who plays Ryu is hot, and I find it funny that Kylie is in it.
- Guile has an accent and mostly anything else.

Mortal Kombat
+ Raiden, the soundtrack, and it's still reasonably watchable if nothing else is on.
- Laughable, but the fact a movie can actually come from a fighting game.

Resident Evil
+ The scene when a number of the team is killed by lasers.
- Michelle Rodriguez plays the bad-ass girl...again and everything else in the movie.

Silent Hill
+ The Borg Queen is once again the villain. Mostly everything else.
- WTF?! ending, I hope they have a sequel to this.

 

[roguephoenix]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

good thing: built in audience

bad thing: the movie

 

[Leroy]

Re: One positive, one negative thing about... movies based on video ga

I'm shocked no love for Bloodrayne! Ugh I can think of one good thing it's got bewbs in it? The bad thing is that you can get them through better sources instead of sitting through that awful film.