A look at the past, present, and future of game-based films

Sep 1, 2015 14:52 GMT  ·  By

Video games may represent one of the newest entertainment mediums, but in the last few decades, they've achieved growth and profits that rival only movies. As such, in recent years, more and more films based on games are appearing in theaters, approaching production, or are still stuck in their own development hell.

The last week was filled with new information about movies based on games, and we can finally say that Hollywood's executives are starting to really dig into the gaming industry and its attractive properties.

The past is littered with good and bad projects

Basing a movie on a video game is no novel idea. Ever since projects like the Super Mario Bros. film, it's been clear that Hollywood producers are keeping an eye on the gaming scene. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good.

Sure, the Tomb Raider films have achieved plenty of success, but in that situation, actress Angelina Jolie played a key role, and the ties to the games just ensured a decent premise and attention from millions of players who fell in love with the virtual Lara Croft.

Another major series that achieved mainstream success was the Resident Evil one. Here, a similar story, involving the attractive Mila Jovovich, soon outweighed all the elements from the video game series made by Capcom, especially as new iterations arrived on the silver screen.

There have also been some lower key efforts that still deserve praise, including the cheesy Street Fighter, the Dead or Alive title that did the best it could do with the source material, or the Hitman movie with Timothy Olyphant.

However, there have also been some disappointing efforts, starting with the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. and continuing with Max Payne, Need for Speed, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, BloodRayne, and many others. The most recent fail has just been scored by Hitman: Agent 47.

The present has plenty of potential

Currently, quite a lot of interesting game-based movies are in development, and many have a decent shot at achieving success.

First up, after quite a few years, the Assassin's Creed movie starts its shooting process this week. After the not-so-impressive Prince of Persia film, Ubisoft has been notorious about approving any and all progress on the Assassin's Creed movie. The presence of Michael Fassbender will ensure some attention, so it's up to Ubisoft to actually market it and ensure that the general public is aware of the adaptation.

Another interesting upcoming project is Warcraft, which has just gotten a leaked trailer and seems to do justice to Blizzard's sprawling universe.

The major announcement from Gearbox Software, 2K Games, and Lionsgate about the Borderlands movie also makes it seem like the project is on the fast track to launch.

Throw in some animated efforts, like Ratchet and Clank or Angry Birds, and game-based movies have a somewhat interesting future.

However, we shouldn't forget that, for all these aforementioned projects, there are still a lot of them that are stuck in development hell, chief among which being the Uncharted film, which has seen plenty of directors attached to its helm over the last few years.

The Wikipedia page for game-based movies is filled with many other projects that were confirmed at some point in time but are now just "vaporware," to use a gaming term. From The Last of Us to Splinter Cell to Deus Ex, Minecraft, Shadow of the Colossus, and many others, it seems that Hollywood isn't all that keen on some of its adaptations.

I, for one, am cautiously optimistic about these types of movies, but I'll still focus more on playing games than watching films based on them.