Video Game Movie Reviews

My name is Jason and I am a big fan of video games and a big fan of movies and like most kids when Mario bros was announced I was excited. A movie based on one of my favorite games what could go wrong. Well as a lot of us have discovered over the years a lot can go wrong. Characters can be changed plots dismantled outfits and costumes are wrong and the list goes on. Most of the time video game movies are designed to get kids who play the game to force their parents to see the movie I will admit in recent time video game movies have gotten bigger budgets bigger actors and ever so slightly more like the games the represent. What I hope to accomplish with these series of posts is to review in text as I don’t have a camera of any kind the video game movies that have been released over the years. Each review should follow the same format a quick synopsis of the plot my review my ratings. Now while I will comment on the acting and directing of the movie those will not be my main focus. What I will be doing is commenting on how close to the game the movie is what characters its included content from the game and so on. Then at the end of the review I will give my general rating then ratings in each of the following categories. Content: how much stuff from the game is in the movie. Acting: how well the actors portrayed the characters they are supposed to be. Plot: how much of the story resembles a story from the game. And if possible I will include comparison pictures for everyone to look at. Now with all that being said on to my first review.

The year was 1993 video games where quickly becoming mainstream and the super Mario bros movie was being released in May what more could a kid ask for. Well for starters a good live action representation of one of his favorite games ever for starters. The plot to Mario bros is a simple one of two plumbers who find a portal to another dimension where super evolved dinosaurs rule the city. Wait what dinosaurs Mario never had dinosaurs except in super Mario world but even then they weren’t a big part of the plot. So pretty much the story starts out with Mario and Luigi who are plumbers and surprisingly enough not brothers.
So Luigi meets this girl daisy they have a date where Luigi finds out she’s digging for dinosaur bones under the bridge and the local mafia is putting the squeeze on her. She takes Luigi to the dig site where the mafia has broken the pipes in hopes of flooding the site. Mario and Luigi quickly get into the action stopping the flooding but are knocked out. Daisy is kidnapped and the Mario bros wake up to her screaming they follow it into a cave where they enter into a portal that takes them to an alternate dimension created by a meteorite that struck a long long time ago. In this world humans evolved from dinosaurs not monkeys. Here we find out that daisy was kidnapped by two thugs who also happen to be the cousins of the evil ruler kink kopi. It turns out kopi wants to use the stone daisy wears around her neck which she just so happened to drop when being kidnapped to merge the two dimension so he can rule over all of us. So Mario and Luigi make their way around the city having all kinds of mis adventures running into no enemies form the game also collecting no power ups from the game. Eventually they meet the true ruler of this dimension who just happens to be a big ball of fungus. Mario and Luigi break into koopa's fortress free daisy and Mario’s girlfriend who also happened to be kidnapped along with a bunch of other NY girls. Koopa gets really ticked at this and goes after the two plumbers. Himself. They have a battle in the middle of the city after kopi merges the two dimensions together briefly only to be thwarted by Mario. The fight ends with Koopa being turned into slime and the king being returned to his former self.
Now as far as the movie goes it wasn’t very good at all first let me start with the first major issue Mario and Luigi in this movie are not brothers. During his date with daisy Luigi tells her that Mario adopted him which means that they are in this movie anyway father and son. During the movie many enemies from the game are mentioned but none ever make an appearance in their traditional form. The goombas are there but Mario never has to jump on them and instead of being mushroom shaped they are giant bodies with tiny heads. Another big problem is the fact that everyone is dinosaur based when in the game most enemies where turtle based. Also I can’t even fathom why daisy is the girl in this one. By this point in time daisy had only made one appearance and that was on game boy why they didn’t go with peach I have no idea. As far as the acting goes I can’t really blame the actors at least the main ones anyway bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis hopper are all decent actors. For this movie I blame the writers the dialogue was silly the jokes not very funny and the love story kind of misplaced.
There are a lot of references to the game in the movie the cartridges for the jump boots look like bullet bills. The jump boots themselves are a reference to Mario’s jumping abilities or possibly the green stomp boot in mario3. The king being fungus and having to be saved is kind of like in Mario 3 when every king is something else. The flame thrower guns are like the fire flowers. Big bertha is a giant fish enemy in the game. Toad is in the movie for a second but not anything like he is in the game. The bob-omb plays a big part however they ruin that by showing the Reebok logo on its feet iggy is one of kola’s kids in Mario 3. But all the references to the game don’t make up for how different from the game the movie is we only see Mario and Luigi in there classic outfits for a brief period of time and yoshi even makes a quick cameo but is nothing like his game save for his tongue. Overall it’s just bad and like most video game movies if it didn’t have the name of the game in the title no one would bother seeing it at all. Now on to the scores
Over all I would give the movie 3 out of 10 video game controllers.
While there were lots of references to the game and in jokes the content was sorely lacking so it gets 2 out of 10
The acting was ok I’ve always said you can only act as good as the script lets you so for as crappy as the writing was I give the actors a 4 out of ten for a decent effort
And finally as for the plot I have to give it a 2 it had the character names in it and that’s about it.
Well that’s the end of my review I hope you enjoyed it I would really like criticism if you have any constructive things to say please feel free to e-mail me at horriblesanity @aim .com with the subject review ill try and answer all e-mails if you liked it tell me what you did like I’d like to make this a normal post maybe one every week or two covering all video game movies from Mario up to max Payne being the most recent on a side note if anyone wants to take my reiview and make you tube videos using it I wouldent mind getting together to discuss it

Like any cross-medium adaptation, changes and sacrifices must be made in order to make the material fit the new medium. Even though most people will argue that yes, the Mario movie was rather poorly done, would it have really been better if they'd stuck to the bright, cartoony world of the games? I may be in the minority, but I would prefer the bizarre realistic take to be used in the movie rather than the game's look. At the very least, it's a refreshing difference from the games, and let's face it, if I wanted something that was exactly like the game, I would play the game itself.

Not to mention the fact that many videogames would have to be changed dramatically for the sake of movie conventions. They have to add in significantly more plot or interest. Look at Doom - the game is basically one silent man rushing around, shooting demons non-stop, with very little exposition other than "Kill demons and survive." You can't make a movie about that - it would get boring, kind of like watching someone else play a videogame for 100 minutes. So you have to change it around, add in stuff that may not be in the games, if only for the sake of a semi-coherent movie. That's why the Doom movie had a drastically different plot to any of the games - because that's the only way anyone would be vaguely interested.

Besides, who watches video game movies and picks apart how "it's not like in the game"? What do you care? Just play the game, then. Hell, do you watch the trailer, see it's nothing like the game, then see it anyway just to complain about how it's not like the game? If it was like the game, it'd be way too long (most games take about 10-20 hours to play, most popcorn movies take 1 hour and 40 minutes), get boring (like I said, like watching someone else play the game) and just wouldn't be fun.

You should enjoy the game for what it is, and enjoy the movie for what it is. Or not enjoy either one, as the case may be. Who cares? Judging the movies badly solely because they're not like the games is just stupid.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

i was not reviewing the movie to say its not like the game i was comparing it to the game and this one happened o not be like the game very much at all. theres other things they could have done to make it more like the game like having peach as the princess or having the mario bros actually be brothers. i have a pretty open mind wehn it comes to transitions witch is why iw asent that upset with venoms aperence in spiderman three (being skinny and more like spiderman then bulky like in teh comic). i could see tiny slightly larger tehn normal mushroom like monsters attacking mario and them steping on them to crush them and even alic in wonderland had people growing and shrinking and insted of growing or shrinking they could have done a increse in strength. those are just a few exsamples i completly understand that changes have to be made and in teh cas eof doom i actually liked it. most enemys from teh game where there every weapon including chainsaw from teh game was there it was on mars like in doom three and the first pearson scene at teh end was a nice touch only thing i really would have liked is if teh rock had ended up looking like the games version of teh baron of hell. i understand meeningless parts of a games story has to be cut because games are designed to give teh pearson a complete experience and you cant really make a movie 5 hours long to get the whole story. a good exsample is max payne i enjoyed the movie alot it got the basics of teh plot from the game changed teh story only slightly to give the villian more depth and teh action scenes where simaler to the game with thankfully les slow motion. the main purpose of my reviews would be to see just how far the movies deviate from the main idea and spirit of the games thats all and point out the parts people may not have relized. a small exsample of that would be like in double dragon the charecter bo abobo was suposed to be liek one of the bosses from teh game those tall guys with teh giant heads that where easist to beat with teh jump kick. anyway thats the end of my defense rant and mario being teh first video game movie was my first review it just so happend that it just wasent very good and had very little to do with teh game

Okay. Then you say this...

Case closed.

The movie Double Dragon and The Wizard was terrible in my opinion.

I'm not trying to be a hater, but I need spaces between the paragraphs, OP.

You're a fan of video game movies, but not a fan of punctuation?

I couldn't agree more. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter went the same way. Not to mention comic book movies, Xmen and Fantastic 4. I think the movies should honor the games, sure you have to create a back story to compinsate if there isnt one already but you can at least make it a good movie with a solid plot.

What games do you guys think would actually make for good movies ?

__________________

I only have one thing to say about Mario Brothers:

I wouldn't mind seeing a Halo movie.

As for Hitman, I hate the games, but love the movie.

Right on, Iro. Even after those abysmal Milla Jovovich flicks, I STILL think that a Resident Evil film could be very good if a studio got a visionary director willing to tackle it. Sometimes I feel like going for it myself...

Yeah, I don't want to sound like i'm having a go either, but I only skim read your post because you didn't have paragraphs, OP. Trust me, it's better to have paragraphs in the long run as people are more likely to respond to your posts in the future.

I'm of two minds about whether or not a Metal Gear Solid film should be done because the games are movies themselves.

I think a reboot of Mortal Kombat could be Lord Of The Rings kind of epic. Not a fan of Lord Of The Rings myself, but I think even Peter Jackson's most hardened critic would admit that those films were beautifully made pieces of cinema with meticulous attention to all aspects of film so I have the utmost respect for it and it deserved the Oscars it got even though it didn't really get to me. But I look at that film and imagine what Peter Jackson could do for a Mortal Kombat film as MK has a pretty deep and epic narrative too that could make for an epic film.

Prestige - thanks for the kind words. I've also been checking up on Mortal Kombat lately (I just watched the films for the first time a few weeks back) and I found this on IMDb. Apparently there's a Mortal Kombat reboot scheduled for release next year, but virtually nothing is known about it and IMDb isn't exactly the most reliable source, but at least there's hope. I'm hoping it's more faithful to the game (and of all-around better quality) than Paul Anderson's 1995 original - as fun as that was, it could've been way better.

As for a Metal Gear Solid movie - yeah, the narrative complexity and general weirdness would be nigh-impossible to pin down in the space of a two-hour film. The same goes for Resident Evil 4.

However, Turok and RoboCop vs. Terminator would make for simplistic yet entertaining films. I doubt Die Hard Trilogy 2 will ever come to fruition in the wake of Live Free or Die Hard, though.

Your bringing me back to the 90's, man! That Turok was on the N64. Yeah I remember that was a great game. Could make a decent film.

Thanks for the link to the this new Mortal Kombat film. Since I clicked it i've been trying to do extensive research but like you said zilch is known. I just hope it fulfills it's potential..

And yes, I will always love Anderson's Mortal Kombat as it's a huge guilty pleasure for me and you know it also made it onto my Top 100 list. But yeah, like you said, it could have been a lot lot better.