Videogame Movie, Critic Anathema

I love videogames. I love movies. I hate most videogame movies. The math doesn’t work but here we are. Mostly growing up in the 90s and early 00s videogame movies were hot trash. 9 out of the ten highest grossing videogame films were released in the last ten years, and the top three came out in the last three years. We’re getting better at them slowly but surely. This partly comes down to games being much more saturated culturally, giving them a much broader market off the bat without having to apologise to regular movie goers about being goofy weird little things. The Minecraft movie is the second highest grossing videogame film of all time, It’s an IP that became multigenerational before it even had a chance at putting Jason Mamoa in a pink jacket or meme Jack Black into becoming an arbiter of thrown popcorn and trashed theatre seats.

3D animation has also fully matured to the point where we can make videogame movies stay where they’re comfortable, and make them look even better in the process. The Super Mario Bros movie is the highest grossing Videogame film of all time cracking over 1.3 billion dollars. The last time Nintendo had a go licensing out Mario was in the 1990s which resulted in the first American produced videogame movie the live action 1993 Super Mario Bros. It was a fever dream and best left in the past. Suffice to say it was bad enough for Nintendo to run away from the idea for 3 decades.

Apart from the surprisingly highly rated Sonic 3 film almost none of them have managed to impress critics across the board.

If you want to make a critically acclaimed videogame media product, make it a TV Show, and cover everyone in dirt. Worked for The Last Of Us and The Witcher.