Mad about Mario, Freddy, and bloaters: Here’s why video game adaptations finally clicked in 2023
After years of disappointment, gaming titles like Super Mario Bros, Five Nights At Freddy's, and The Last Of Us delivered for Hollywood—and for fans
Aux Features Mario
In a series of special year-end roundtable discussions, The A.V. Club looks back at the stories that made the biggest impact on pop culture in 2023.
In 1993, Hollywood unleashed a terror on the world known as Super Mario Bros., a loose adaptation of Nintendo’s mega-popular video game series that took some, uh, liberties with virtually everything that people might recognize about the games. Though the film is a cult classic these days, if only because of how thrillingly deranged it is, the debacle made Nintendo swear off movies for decades … until Illumination, the studio that gave us the Minions, made a great pitch: What if there was a Mario movie that wasn’t completely insane?
The Super Mario Bros. Movie opened to nearly $150 million in the U.S. and went on to make well over $1 billion worldwide over the summer. But it wasn’t the only success story for video game adaptations in 2023: A few months earlier, HBO’s version of The Last Of Us earned rave reviews, and, a few months later, Five Nights At Freddy’s became the highest-grossing film ever released by horror studio Blumhouse. Here A.V. Club staffers Sam Barsanti, William Hughes, and Cindy White talk about how that all happened and—crucially—whether it could ever happen again.
Sam Barsanti: I think the reason video game adaptations really clicked this year is that the people making them finally started treating them the way Marvel Studios treated comic books in the early days of the MCU. Rather than trying to make a video game’s concept fit the mold of a movie or TV show should be, they actually looked at the video games and tried to figure out what would make sense in a movie or TV version with respect to the source material.
I would argue that it’s less about doing some specific thing differently behind the scenes (the three adaptations listed each take very different approaches) than it is about the people who made the originals being hands-on with the adaptations—which made it harder to just toss the things that a regular movie/TV person might not want to deal with. Not to bring up Marvel again, but comic book movies got better when they started being made by people who actually liked comic books.
Unfortunately, I do think this year was a fluke for video game adaptations. Or, at the very least, I think it’ll take another round of good ones before we can begin trusting Hollywood with these properties. I think people will look at The Last Of Us and think every narrative-driven video game will make sense as a serious, gritty prestige play, which is very much not true (I’m wary of A24’s Death Stranding, since the game is all about making you feel the loneliness and the physical exhaustion of that experience by forcing you to play through the most excruciating parts of it). That being said, I’ll absolutely see the Zelda movie, no matter which dumb young dude they cast as Link.
William Hughes: I’ll grant Sam the basic premise that 2023’s gaming adaptations were among the first to meet the medium on its own level—making a Mario movie that actually looks like a Mario game, or a Five Nights At Freddy’s adaptation that shares the source material’s fascination with overly convoluted, charmingly implausible lore. In some part, you can chalk that up to this being the first generation of filmmakers who came up immersed in the visual language of video games, whether that’s all the direct graphical in-jokes peppered around the Mario movie, or something more abstract, like Chad Stahelski deliberately invoking the look of games like Hotline Miami for certain sequences of John Wick: Chapter Four.
I also share some serious skepticism about projects following in the footsteps of The Last Of Us—which only works as an adaptation because it represents the most back-breaking twists of a branch of game design that wants to be movies or TV shows first, and interactive experiences second. Watching Craig Mazin’s show was a bit like seeing a snake choke on its own tail: TV show imitating game imitating show.
To my mind, the apex of gaming film in 2023 wasn’t based on a video game at all: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves stands above the pack because it doesn’t just try to work as a collection of references—it ably recreates the feeling of playing the game itself, fast-talking bards, improvised screw-ups and all. That’s the direction I hope to see these kinds of adaptations go—even if both the box office and the critical consensus suggest I’ll be doing that hoping in vain.
Cindy White: I fully expect studio executives to take all the wrong lessons from the success of The Last Of Us and just start indiscriminately searching out more video games, and horror games in particular, to adapt. But the fact that it was based on a video game wasn’t what made it a good show. It was good because the game already had a fully fleshed-out story and interesting characters that could be easily adapted (by design) into a show. The same is true for Five Nights At Freddy’s. And even, to some extent, Super Mario Bros. That was the problem with the Twisted Metal series that also came out this year. Cool cars and weapons aren’t enough to build a show around. Producers shouldn’t just be looking for popular games to adapt, they should be looking for good stories.
As for the future, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with some of the projects either already made, in production, or announced, like Fallout, Bioshock, Death Stranding, and Portal. All of those have narratively rich worlds to explore and, if done right, could continue what The Last Of Us started. It’s still too early to tell if it’s going to lead to a trend, and what they may look like in the future, but it’s a positive step. I think we’ve still only scratched the surface of what can be done with these adaptations.
18 Comments
Bloaters, eh?
As mentioned, having people that enjoy and understand the world that they’re working in, makes a big difference.Talent for writing and directing is obviously a need, but if the person making decisions doesn’t “get” the material in the first place, then things aren’t going to feel good with the final cinematic product.
Maybe in 2024 the world will finally be ready for a Bubsy movie.
It’s not that difficult and it never has been. A movie based on a video game needs to be a good movie. The source material isn’t relevant. People who haven’t played the game (or don’t play games much at all) aren’t going to feel differently about it because it’s “not like the game.” Good characters, good narrative, all the other things that make any movie click? A video game adaptation needs those too.Video game adaptations in particular have been held back by a few things:The owners of video game IPs are typically large corporations with a lot of power to dictate how the movie is made. This means the power to interfere with the filmmakers who know their medium. Book authors, by contrast, typically don’t have that power, so book adaptations typically suffer from less interference than video game adapations.
Video games by their nature often depict elaborate fantasy worlds that require larger budgets. Larger budgets mean more studio interference.Video game adaptations have historically been seen as a creative ghetto by the film industry, meaning that the most talented folks are less likely to get involved. Thus video game adaptations tended to get B- and C-tier talent, both in front of and behind the camera (although obviously there have been plenty of exceptions). This is the self-perpetuating part of the cycle: They attract lesser talent, so they aren’t as good, so they’re seen as inevitably bad, so they attract lesser talent. We only got The Last of Us after thirty years of mostly total garbage.
I agree with most of your point. Though I do think that the biggest impediment was studios not trading the source material with enough respect. There was definitely a idea of “just throw some crap together and toss a super Mario title on it and we’ll print money from it. For better or worse, (and in my opinion, mostly for better) the MCU really did show executives that you can make money by taking this shit seriously.
I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest impediment, or even in the top three, because studios always are trying to make the most money for the least effort (which is just how capitalism works, it’s not specific to movie studios). Movies like Doom, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Warcraft had budgets ranging from $60 million to $200 million; when you’re spending that kind of money, you’re not “just throwing some crap together,” you’re (as a studio executive) risking your career.Besides that, studios have long taken genre stuff (SF/fantasy, which includes a large portion of video game adaptations) seriously from time to time, depending on the vicissitudes of fate, or more specifically the luck of having a studio executive who both fights for a movie and lets the creative side run its course without much interference.
Tomb Raider was a Indiana Jones knock off with “throw in a sexy Angelina jolie,” the only respect for the source material was that she looked like Lara Croft. Doom had a completely nonsensical storyline unrelated to the games and a design that was basically a doom skin, and nothing says respect for the source material like casting Jake Gyllenhaal as a Persian guy in prince of Persia (also with a story completely unrelated to the games). Adapting a sci-fi/fantasy IP that isn’t based in video games (usually books) is a much safer gamble as books lend better to adaptation, but even then, the most of really successful and acclaimed adaptations is sorta limited. In fact, I think prince of Persia served as a warning to execs because it bombed so bad. It led to MORE “just throw some crap together” mindset than less. The fact is most studios have a shit ton of scripts sitting around that are 3/4 done. They nab an IP like doom or tomb Raider, then swap out the appropriate pronouns and slap on a title. It happens all the time, or at least used to. Having respect for the source material means stressing from the jump to make a script from the IP, not adapting what’s already sitting around.
So how do we get the teenagers interested?
Eh…put Indiana Jones in a thong?
Yeah, alright.
I’d actually throw a strange example at you to, I believe, verify your point and it’s arguably not a “good” series at all.Resident Evil made a VERY specific narrative choice in the first film which absolutely wazzed on the source material paying very little respect to the lore and canon. However because it very genuinely, aimed for “turn your brain off at the door” they managed to create a very profitable series with quite a strong fan base that would go to bat for even the weaker of the 6-film franchise.I have friends who can’t stand the Resident Evil franchise because of what they did to their beloved franchise but how many series of that nature make 6 very profitable films and bow out without a single financial clunker? Are they “good” films, very much not when it comes to quality but they certainly know what they’re aiming for and hit the target superbly.Then take the “7th” cinematic Resident Evil film which absolutely marries itself to the lore and canon. Just about made it’s money back and won’t see a sequel.
Your last point is probably the most important. More faithful adaptations tend to be better movies overall, just because when studios don’t really give a fuck about the source material, they tend not to be that mindful of making a good movie in general.Yes, a movie could do its own thing and be good in its own right; but 9 times out of 10 it’s just to shoehorn the premise (or part of the premise) into some formulaic dreck with a but of shallow fanservice slapped on top.Filmmakers need to at least understand what makes the source material compelling and how that can carry over into an adaptation. That’s where having the original authors involved can be valuable, they’ll usually know what the heart of their work is.
Twisted Metal could have been a good show, it just wasn’t well done.
Next you’ll be telling me Battleship had a good movie in there somewhere.
I heard a surprising amount of positive “Huh, it’s actually… pretty dope?” type reactions after it realised. Mild positive shock after a whole lotta skepticism. Kinda Preacher energy?
I think the good version would have been like Preacher or The Boys. It has a good cast and some good moments, but never quite came together for me. Having Will Arnett dub Samoa Joe was a mistake, it never looked natural the way it did on Doom Patrol or Mandalorian. It needed tightening and polishing. I really enjoyed seeing Jamie Neumann pop up, she’s always good.
This year’s not that important for the history of videogame adaptations.Detective Pikachu made half a billion dollars in 2019 and was critically lauded. And that’s after decades of successful Pokemon anime movies and TV shows.We’re two successful and well-reviewed Sonic the Hedgehog films in since 2020 and they’re lining up an entire franchise and spin-offs behind them. The sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog made way more money than and was much better reviewed than Five Nights at Freddy’s and it came out last year.
Castlevania ran for three seasons starting in 2017. We’re now seeing a SEQUEL to that series on the air again.Gangs of London has been on the air since 2020 and is one of the best-reviewed shows on television right this second. People literally didn’t know it was a videogame adaptation it’s so good.Cuphead has been on the air since 2022. It already has an EMMY and an ANNIE.Arcane? 2021. 11 Annies and 2 Emmys.We’re here. It happened. Videogame adaptations are good now and have been for decades. Hell, The Last of Us is on the air right now with another live action adaptation that is equally as good as it is.We can start treating them like they deserve to be on the screen instead of being shocked every three months that someone made another good video game adaptation.
I really enjoyed Detective Pikachu and have only cursory knowledge of Pokémon other than younger family who played it and those assholes at work who kept “catching” Pokémon at my desk with their phones.
“bloaters”? It’s “BLOOPERS”…Space FOOL!
The live action One Piece series is very good as well. I don’t think it’s a matter of loving the source material though, it’s a matter of loving the story you’re trying to tell while respecting the source material. It’s also a matter of volume because the more adaptations you make, sooner or later some are bound to be good.One medium that Hollywood has been adapting for a good century now has been books, and there have been countless good and bad adaptations. The more you do, the more likely the odds you’ll stumble into a good mix of story and talent.