By Alan Cho
Let’s get this out of the way: movies based on video games suck.
Not only do they suck, scientists have discovered those who watch video game-based movies are more likely to get brain cancer. Okay, maybe that’s a bit too far.
Let’s look at it this way: it’s Saturday afternoon and you’re still in your footy pajamas playing Super Mario Bros. while mainling your regular dosage of breakfast sugars. Do you think at any time: “fuck, they should make a movie about this fat Italian plumber who slides through pipes and breaks bricks with his head–that would be so awesome?” No, no you do not. Yet they still a made a movie starring John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins.
Most movies based on video games are thin justifications to get people to kick others in the head or blow shit up. So, really, the highest these video game-based movies can aspire to are the works of Jean Claude Van Damme, without the benefit of his magic touch.
Mortal Kombat was The Quest with less Asian people. Double Dragon had Scott Wolf doing his best Van Damme impression. Tomb Raider was Van Damme snorting estrogen. Final Fantasy was Van Damme in CG! At least Van Damme has a debilitating drug problem that should end his horrible reign, but video games look to be eternal.
Watching a video game-based movie is like watching a really long, badly written and acted cut scene for a video game that somebody else is playing, which of course means you’ll never get to play. Why watch when you can go upstairs and fuck your bored girlfriend?
Instead, let’s look at video games that appear in movies because it’s those moments that cause you to get off your bony or, alternatively, beefy geek ass and cheer. You see yourself reflected up on the silver screen and you realize you are no longer alone. Take a note, geeks, that I’m not including the ’80s war atrocity, Tron.
Super Mario Bros. 3 in The Wizard: It’s not a very good movie, but it introduced the world to Super Mario Bros. 3 and essentially destroyed the movie career of Fred Savage. To this day, Savage wanders the streets of Washington killing homeless people who look like Mario.
The NHL series in Swingers, Chasing Amy and Mallrats: Whether during a heart-breaking scene between two confrontational best friends or pithy break-up scene, NHL underscores the human struggle the everyday man faces. And nothing says indie smash hit like having NHL show up in your movie. Future filmmakers take note.
Doom in Grosse Point Blank: Why haven’t more people seen this John Cusack classic? It’s brilliant. There’s a gun battle in a convenience store while an oblivious store clerk is playing Doom in the background. So see the movie. For Doom.
Braveheart: Well, no actual video games appear in Braveheart, but what if they did? The Scots would realize the English had inserted a time paradox into their timeline and their entire universe would collapse.