2016's Video Game Movies: From Bad to Awful
In 1993, a movie came out that changed history. It was a trailblazer, the first of its kind, one whose impact on cinema could be felt in the following twenty-four years. The one that inspired countless others.That movie was Super Mario Bros., the first video game movie. And it was awful.Video game movies rest in a similar place to comic book movies, both of them adapted from a niche medium that went through rough early years with truly terrible movies. Comic book movies eventually broke out of that rut, becoming one of the most powerful genres of film on the planet. Video game movies, meanwhile, have spent two decades failing over and over again.2016 brought hope. It brought us five video games movies and they had, dare we say it, potential! They had big budgets, talent on and behind the camera, and spanned a variety of genres. One of them was bound to become the first good video game movie in history.Except they didn’t. Every attempt failed miserably to reach the lofty heights of “okay.”I spent winter break watching all five of these movies (because I hate myself). Here they are, ranked from least bad to the absolute worst.
- Ratchet & Clank
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a young man, the last of his kind, is an orphan on a desert planet with dreams of doing something greater. One day, a robot lands on the planet with news of a weapon that threatens the galaxy, one that can destroy entire planets. The young man jumps at the call, and learns along the way that being a hero comes from the heart.It’s not a dealbreaker that the plot of this movie is the same thing you’ve heard time and time again. The issue is that Ratchet & Clank never elevates above that. That generic feeling is everywhere in the movie. The characters, jokes, story beats, --it all feels like things you’ve seen in better movies. Wrap all that up in some visuals that are really unpleasant to look at, and you will not have a good time.The reason this is at the top of the list is because it’s competent. The story here has a beginning, middle and end, with characters that do somewhat logical things. This may seem basic, but it’s the only movie on this list that has these things. Ratchet & Clank is at the top because it aimed low. I wouldn’t call that a victory, but I’m the one handing out the medals so it gets gold.
- Assassin’s Creed
The Assassin’s Creed games should be a home run in film. Get a bunch of people to wear hooded robes and knives strapped to their arms, toss them in a cool period of history, and set them against some villains for a bunch of stabby parkour action. Instead, what we get is a movie that decides a bunch of grey rooms and corridors is more interesting than the Spanish Inquisition. We get Michael Fassbender gritting his teeth while Marion Cotillard talks technobabble like she’s constantly out of breath (bless their hearts). Half of this movie is nothing but a joyless, ugly slog, with people we don’t know talking about stakes we don’t care about, setting up sequels we will never see.At the last half hour the movie flies so far off the rails and ceases to make even an ounce of sense that it’s almost magical. I saw this with a friend, and during these final minutes, I asked him, “Do you know what’s going on?” He didn’t. I can’t think of another movie where, even while paying attention the prior 90 minutes, nothing made sense. Assassin’s Creed is a one of a kind experience in how it throws up its hands and gives up.
- Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
Announced early in the year and released a few months later, this film was part of the larger multimedia push for the release of Final Fantasy XV, a game announced alllllllll the way back in 2006. It is impossible to tell what happened in those ten years, but the release of this movie (in addition to an anime series, for god’s sake) indicate that the lore and mythos of this one game was so expansive, it couldn’t fit in a fifty-hour video game and would require supplementary viewing to even begin to understand what was happening.Well, the joke’s on them because the first half of this movie is incomprehensible. The viewer is blasted with names of places, people, events and background details at breakneck speed, which makes it impossible to know what’s going on. This movie simply doesn’t make sense without having played the game it is trying to promote. In fact, having started the game itself, I can also say that one doesn’t make any sense without having seen this movie.They wanted a multimedia franchise but what they built was a paradox.To its credit, the movie gets a lot better in its latter half. The stakes become clear, our grizzled hero --voiced by Aaron Paul, has to get the princess --voiced by Lena Headey, out of the city that’s under attack. There are explosions. It looks nice. It’s not Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Whatever.
- Warcraft
Have you ever pitied a movie?On paper, Warcraft seems like it could hit all the right notes. Duncan Jones, a talented director, tells a story about orcs invading a peaceful land less out of malice than necessity that, through relatable struggle and folly, marks the beginning of a long and unnecessary war. The orcs are given humanity with some damn good CGI, it was confidently released in summer as a big tentpole release, and it seemed like just the kind of gamble that would really pay off.Nothing in Warcraft works. And not in a fun way either. The biggest sin this movie commits is just how tedious it is. The human characters are all so boring and we’re stuck with them for most of the movie. The orcs get introduced in a small, intimate scene, only to be thrown out in favor of big, garish, and ugly displays of CG, you can actually feel aging before your eyes. The orcs are saddled with their part of the movie explaining why they follow the most obviously evil wizard, while the humans get to explain everything else. The whole thing plays out like someone is reading the Wikipedia summary of one of the games because they insist you need to know the backstory and we just don’t care.I can’t hate Warcraft. But having sat through two hours of it, I can’t care about it either.
- The Angry Birds Movie
A movie based on a phone app? Fine, honestly. The main thing that sunk most of these movies was a reliance on impenetrable lore, so this movie coming in with nothing but an app as a backstory sounds fine by me. Angry Birds decides to take the origin story route and ask “what made all these birds so darn angry?”As it turns out, immigrants.I cannot fathom what thought process leads one to think that the origin story for the game you play on the toilet had to be an unfamiliar race comes to a peaceful land, introduces new cultures and technologies, and gains the trust of the people so they can blow up their homes and steal their children.But in between the plot of loving Jason Sudeikis for being a xenophobe, this movie also wants to be a wacky comedy! The only problem is that it forgot to bring any jokes. There’s not a single moment of this movie where I laughed, and the moments I smiled were when I realized it wanted me to laugh but was failing miserably. There is, no exaggeration, a full minute of this movie where two of the birds scream. For sixty seconds, two talented actors screaming at the top of their lungs is the best joke this movie can come up with.Ratchet & Clank is just competent, Assassin’s Creed is an admirable mess, Kingsglaive is a dumb spectacle, and Warcraft is an earnest disaster. But Angry Birds? The Angry Birds Movie is lazy, ugly, and miserable.