Hitman (2007)
Video games and the cinema have not really had the best relationship given that most of Hollywood’s interpretations have been poorly received by both critics and fans alike. Yet, there have been a select few that are so bad we wish they had never been made and have probably caused more damage than good. When looking to determine what exactly makes a terrible video game movie we will be factoring in performances, directions, cinematography, story, relationship to the source material, and overall enjoyment. If you are looking for a film to watch, we highly recommend avoiding the following with extreme prejudice.
Hitman has always seemed like a game fit for the thriller genre thanks to the slow-paced action and methodical approach to each mission. However, director Xavier Gens’ interpretation of this title was an all out action movie that failed to capture the fun and general tone of the franchise. The world is not built upon in an interesting way, instead Agent 47 feels completely out of place in his own film. It doesn’t help that the supposed stealth film features a four man sword fight in a subway car, either.
Even good actors like Timothy Olyphant can’t save poor writing that makes every character unlikable and uninteresting. In fact, this film was so bad they decided to reboot the entire series, which didn’t work, again.
Silent Hill: Revelations
Let’s keep it real, the original Silent Hill movie was actually pretty good and added just enough of its own ideas to keep the film fresh. Revelations attempted to follow this idea, but ends up crashing and burning thanks to a faulty script, cheap scares, and forced 3D effects that break the immersion. Even though it loosely follows the plot of Silent Hill 3, director Michael Bassett does nothing interesting with both the source material and his own original script.
Revelations just comes off as a disjointed mix that is shuffling audiences from one Silent Hill set piece to another without trying to tie it all together. Plus, most of the CGI monsters look terrible in motion, with the mannequin spider being the biggest offender. Also, if you are watching this: yes, that’s Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington and yes, he is awful in this movie. Truthfully, a journey into Silent Hill might be better than enduring this film one more time.
House of the Dead
House of the Dead is a fun on-rails shooter that swept through arcades due to its fun level design, boss encounters, and campy, yet fun story. However, none of this translated into the 2003 adaptation that takes the House out of House of the Dead. Set on a remote island instead, this film follows a group of college students that find themselves swarmed by the undead during a nightly rave. We’re sure literally no one is surprised to hear that the acting is abysmal and all of the action scenes look utterly terrible.
Yet, the biggest problem is that the House of the Dead movie has literally nothing to do with House of the Dead. The only similarity these two movies share is the fact that zombies are the main antagonist. What’s worse is that director Uwe Boll decided it was a good idea to use actual in-game footage to make transitions between scenes. That’s right, he would use real footage from the game, splice it between scenes, and considered it a good transition. How this movie even got a sequel is beyond us.
Max Payne
Max Payne was a film that at first glance seemed to have a lot of potential thanks to its noir setting and nabbing actor Mark Wahlberg for the title role. Sadly, this film was just bogged down by a boring plot, lack of interesting characters, and just poor performances from the entire cast.
Not only is this adaptation of the original Max Payne disappointing, but it’s just a boring experience that loses all momentum by the time the second act rolls around. On top of that, the actual shoot outs lack any flair or grit, both of which are synonymous with the Max Payne series.
BloodRayne
It’s pretty safe to say that Uwe Boll is one of the worst directors out there as his films are normally incoherent ramblings that are the shallowest video game adaptations. However, none is worse than his attempted rendition of the vampire hack and slash BloodRayne.
Setting aside the terrible acting, horrifying cheesy action, nonsensical plot, and terrible cinematography that looks like baby’s first attempt at using a camera, it’s Uwe Boll’s failure to direct that truly shines. Not only has it been revealed that he used the first draft of the script before it received any editing, but he pretty much let the actors “…take a crack…” at the script. That apparently didn’t work in any capacity and BloodRayne was a total flop and a critical failure.
Super Mario Bros.
Have you ever wondered why Nintendo is so fearful to licenses their big names out to various Hollywood studios? Well, you can thank Super Mario Bros. for that since it single-handedly scared Nintendo out of making any cinematic adaptations of their gaming properties. Attempting to make a live action version of Super Mario was a recipe for disaster, especially when you decide to make some of the most iconic character weird caricatures of themselves.
Even though the plot is bad, it’s barely funny, and John Leguizamo looks completely lost during the entire movie, its biggest problem is this didn’t feel like a Mario movie. Many of iconic designs had been tossed out the window and it’s just a generally poor adaptation that was banking on the name brand to carry it to success. Who knows, maybe we will see another Mario movie in 20 or so years.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Oh boy, was this an absolute trainwreck of a movie that essentially derailed any real chances at getting a proper follow up to the original Mortal Kombat movie. Acting as a pseudo-sequel to the first film, it looks like it was slapped together in a weekend and that the movie’s budget was a solid $100. Costumes look incredibly fake, actors give little to no emotion during any of their performances, and worst of all the fight sequences are laughably bad.
All this film had to do was give us our favorite video game fighters on screen fighting, and it couldn’t even manage that. Also, Shao Kahn’s death may go down as one of the worst climaxes in action film history.
Alone in the Dark
Look, we aren’t trying to make this entire list about Uwe Boll’s inability to direct, but his attempted adaptation of the horror franchise Alone in the Dark is just painful. Lead Christain Slater plays one of a few horror stereotypes that lack any sense of personality beyond the most conventional of tropes. Character deaths can be seen coming from a mile away and it lacks any scary sequences.
The cinematography is nauseating and it looks like they just strapped a camera to a dog and let it run around the set for a few hours. Alone in the Dark is a bad movie that makes even some of the worst horror films look terrifying, which is pretty impressive.
Resident Evil Series
There are a lot of slapped together video game adaptation films, but the Resident Evil film franchise is by far the worst of them all. Not only are we six — soon to be seven — movies into this series, but each one is so utterly disjointed it makes their overarching story completely worthless. Even though the first and second entries are barely passable, director Paul W.S. Anderson seems incapable of producing both a compelling and coherent narrative.
His third film, Extinction, is completely different both tonally and visually from the rest, making it look like a cheap Mad Max rip-off with zombies. Afterlife was a failed attempt to include some of the more insane monsters from the franchise, and Revelations was just nothing but video game set pieces shoved together.
Anderson has a terrible habit of trying to pander his films to the Resident Evil community, yet none of it makes any sense. There still hasn’t been an explanation for Las Plagas being introduced, enemies such as the Executioner from RE5 are literally just shoved into two of the film’s scripts, and it has removed all of the charm from the iconic characters.
This is an even bigger shame because Anderson actually made a smart move by creating an original character to drive the plot forward, as it would allow for a fresh perspective. However, Alice is such an utterly cliche and uninteresting character that she can barely carry anything resembling a plot. Oh well, at least we have the CGI movies to fall back on and enjoy.
Pixels
Okay, we are cheating a little bit here because Pixels isn’t exactly a straight video game adaptation. However, the heavy emphasis on retro video game icons like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Centipede make it impossible to ignore. Pixels is not just a bad representation of video games but is possibly one of the worst movies made in the past decade. Acting as an attempted love letter to the golden age of video games, Pixels lacks everything that could have made this film great.
The cast is led by Adam Sandler, who is delivering one of his worst performances ever, only enhanced by the cringe-worthy jokes and god awful dialogue. No one in this movie looks like they are having any fun, and even when things could get interesting, it just falls back on the most basic of slapstick humor.
Couple this with the fact that Pixels story literally just makes things up for the sake of plot convenience and you have one of the worst movies ever. No seriously, there are sequences where the heroes play both the good and bad guys of the video games, during a scene they use a cheat code to win, and apparently the aliens feel the need to reward players with prizes for beating them.
We’re sure this all sounded awesome on paper, but none of it translates well on screen. Pixels ends up doing more harm to the portrayal of video games than good, and will make you wish for the sweet embrace of the Game Over screen.
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