Video game movies. Often derided by critics and video game fans alike, video game movies have many misses, but the successes aren‘t celebrated nearly enough in my opinion. This is a topic I often debate with friends, and I would love to hear the forum’s answers. My personal picks are Sonic the Hedgehog - The Movie (1999) for its superb animation and soundtrack, Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie for being a fun and schlocky time, and TEKKEN (2010) for the fantastic fight scenes.
hmm I haven't seen that many, but Silent Hill (2006) was ok for what it was.
@hellomrkearns#17278 I like Silent Hill a lot. Christophe Gans is a real style over substance guy but sometimes that's honestly all I need. Many filmmakers have no style at all! I also loved his Beauty and the Beast from a few years ago. It felt almost like a live action Ghibli movie.
Obviously the Super Mario Brothers movie
https://twitter.com/smbmovie/status/1085713978636914688
It would be criminal to not bask in the joy of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUAhg0PmACE
As a worthy faithful adaptation I think that Silent Hill as well is the closest one, although I think the movie had some pacing issues that could‘ve made the adaptation a really great blockbuster for years to come. But as a movie in and out of itself I have to handle this to the Resident Evil movie. While it has some bad issues with screenwriting at times it is visually more impressive than what I’d expected and it plays a great homage to several horror directors like Carpenter or Romero. The thing is, Paul WS Anderson not only got those references right, but adapted them into his own style, and the first 40 minutes are fucking brilliant in a way that few action-oriented movies from the 2000s are, but I have to watch more films from the saga to really know which one is the best out of all.
30 seconds of Mojo Nixon is still more Mojo than any other video-game movie has.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_nFgY7PZA
The cops pulling up backwards is another weird delight in this one minute clip.
Super Mario Bros.
The first Resident Evil movie could be a totally fine action/horror film and if you renamed it, I think it would still be pretty decent.
The correct answer however is _[Initial D: The Live Action Movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_D_%28film%29)_.
Yeah, I guess it’s a manga adaptation but I associate _Initial D_ more with a good knock-off of _Ridge Racer_. It became a running joke with my two friends who went on a vacation to Japan more than 15 years ago (I am old now). I kept on suggesting we go see it as a joke, and for my birthday the next year, they bought me a copy on DVD!
The synopsis on Wikipedia I linked is pretty accurate, but it is missing how the girlfriend character says toward the end of the movie "I bought a sexy swimsuit!" But he never gets to go on that date and see her wear it because he drift-races off into the sunset. However he is haunted by it and like four times there is a voice-over on top of a closeup of the hero's where you hear a young woman say... "I bought a sexy swimsuit!"
I'm looking forward to the Monster Hunter movie. I wanna see some big swords
I finally saw that Monster Hunter movie which included some oversized weaponry. It also included an oversized wig for Ron Perlman.
The start of the movie was kinda dull and a bit dissapointing, then it suddenly went into a pretty gory sequence of events with all the characters dying to giant bugs. After that it went more into how I expected the movie to go; Mila Jovovich learning to become a Monster Hunter.
I'm really impressed they decided to keep in the fake language from the game, it's such a strange desicion to make. I guess it kept the script short? The monsters were well done, they skimped on the CGI at the very start but then when it focuses on a few monsters later on it gets a lot better. All the characters's costumes are almost identical to the ones from MH World and didn't look cheap (apart from the wig). A bizarrely faithful movie.
I was enjoying it by the end.
maybe it has been eroded by the passage of time, but sonic the hedgehog 2020 is easily my favorite game movie and it hasn't appeared to have been mentioned in this thread.
Mostly for nostalgic reasons, but for me its gotta be Double Dragon. It‘s pretty much a ’90s kids trash adventure, but it‘s honestly pretty fun if you’re in a mood to just roll with it. [upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/8PTvh2O.jpeg]
I liked when dr robotnik let slip that he was involved in CIA regime change efforts in the global south
I like Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf. It's just fun and watchable and a digestible introduction to that whole soap opera of a world.
The Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter movies were films that I did not like as a child, but love to watch as an adult. Mortal Kombat is also fun for a different reason, which is that it's pretty much exactly what you'd want out of a Mortal Kombat movie. And, yeah, I enjoyed Sonic (2020) as well. It felt unashamed to be what it was, and was a pretty competent three-act-structure kids' adventure movie. Detective Pikachu was pretty good, too, in how fully realized its Pokemon world is -- and how it refreshingly doesn't feel the need to explain it to us, because lord knows we already know what Pokemon is thank you very much -- that has an extremely dumb ending which also feels dumb enough to be in a Pokemon anime probably, so maybe it all works out?
I remember the Dead or Alive movie being fatally stupid but extremely forthcoming and honest about its cheese. I remember it being a fun watch(I was like 16 so could be extremely wrong lol)
It's also the return of the Wacky Jim Carrey Vehicle and as someone who was a kid in the 90s I can't help but kind of feel comforted by that
@GigaSlime Yes! That‘s another thing I like about it. It seems like Jim Carrey spent the last 25 or so years insisting to everybody that he is not the Jim Carrey we know, he’s the Jim Carrey who is very deep & into numerology & painting & drama movies. But for Sonic the Hedgehog, of all things, he has allowed himself to once again go Full Jim Carrey in a very joyful way; even as someone who isn‘t a huge fan of those ’90s comedies, it also feels cosmically right, as that particular esoteric Jim Carrey performance style is just as associated with the whole vibe of the 1990s as Sonic itself. The entire meta around that movie – from that element to the discussion around how much the audience should participate in the creative process – somehow makes it more enjoyable.
Yes I am a 90’s kid I got slimed at nick studios Orlando on my 8th birthday for real I got pictures
There are a lot of lesser known OVAs too, and stuff like Fire Emblem. But those are my favorites off top. And OVAs might be cheating. In which case the SMB Movie is all I ever cared about. I saw it at age 7 after having only played SM64 and barely touching SMB NES and All Stars SNES at daycare and moms boyfriends house respectively where I wasn’t even allowed to play.
So the SMB movie absolutely drove a koopa car through my imagination, I pretended to be Bob Hoskins on the playground and made my friend Phillip be John Leggy. It blended my imaginative fascination with retro Mario (old Mario, as I called it) and the modern stuff I knew from SM64 like Bob ombs, which, along with the brief bullet bill cameo, was always my favorite part of the film.
People trashing it online was one of my earliest lessons that I hate groupthink and just because it was a box office failure doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. It’s so charming, how can you not love it?? It also seems like people are finally coming around to appreciate it. (especially here??)
The Sonic OVA is the best though, holy shit. I also saw it around the same time, or, I saw the badass advertisements for it on my Pokémon VHS tapes. They had it at blockbuster but when I finally got to rent it apparently it had been stolen, understandably.
Finally got to see it later on.
Pokémon the First still makes me cry. 2000 I haven’t seen as much but it’s cool and Slowking is my spirit animal.👑
If we‘re counting OVAs then I’m going with Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals. It‘s a direct sequel to Final Fantasy V but that doesn’t wind up mattering much since it‘s far enough into the future that all the characters from that game are dead. It’s basically just a fun little romp set in that world, where Four Heroes Chosen by Crystals band together against an insane mad scientist trying to become God. It's got crystals, airships, chocobos, and in like the first ten minutes a plucky anime teen decapitates a giant bug monster with a sword
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgc9J0fWHLw&t=390s
I often cite this scene as the moment I fell in love with anime
@beets having never seen this, and noticing it is available to stream, I think I’ll give it a go also.
I was curious how they’d adapt Monster Hunter, but not curious enough to see it in a cinema.
Also, early new year resolution: watch more movies. I was real slack this year.