Why do videogame movies suck?

99 times out of one hundred, the movie adaptation of a video game will be absolutely terrible: bad acting, plot completely unrelated to the game, cheesy costumes and sets, over the top everything. The plot issues would be forgivable if they weren’t so poorly written.

The most recent offender I can think of is DOOM, starring The Rock. DOOM was an amazing game, and a horrible, horrible movie. 

More memorable failures include the Super Mario Brothers movie, the countless Street Fighter movies, the Mortal Kombat movie, and Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark movie. Actually, most of Uwe Boll’s movies have been video game adaptations. He’s actually got a reputation for horrible movies.

Another potential box office failure? The (hopefully) never to be released God of War movie. A movie that doesn’t even have the writers from the franchise behind it.

But, why does it have to be like this? Why can’t a studio actually support  the production of a video game movie? Instead of trying to convert them into cash cow film franchises, using ever stereotypical trope in the book, why not make a movie for the fans? You know those people that paid to play the games and would love to pay to see a good emphasis on a good, movie adaptation? 

Because the Studios Only Want Guaranteed Profits

That’s right, according to many big studios, video game movies aren’t profitable, so it’s a vicious cycle of bad movies because no one wants to put out a big enough budget to properly adapt a game for the silver screen to make it profitable.

Every Gamer’s Experience is Different

This is a point that few people seem to care about. People experience games in very different ways, some people plow through the cutscenes sticking to the action, others go for a bit more story oriented approach.

This means that one movie won’t satisfy everybody and it’s always the vocal minorities that are the loudest. If a studio makes a movie with strong writing people tear it apart for being boring and slow. If they make a movie full of action sequences, it gets criticized for having no plot. (I’m looking at you Resident Evil and DOOM)  Studios try to make video game movies, but we just shred the chances of successful adaptations because we want them to be just like the games they’re based off of forgetting that movies and games are completely different things.

So really…

We can’t have nice things because we as gamers complain about how terrible the movies are.