Since in 1993 the adaptation of super marios brosof Nintendothat legendary game of the plumber who jumps and destroys brick block with his head, followed by other attempts like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter In the following two years, the three considered very bad films, there began to be talk of a damn in the genre, to the degree that it seemed impossible to adapt those stories into this other language.
Over the years, due to the attempts that were made, no one seemed to be able to break this “curse”. Still in the early 2000s, Lara Croft: Tomb Raiderwith Angelina Jolie in the titular role, he achieved some success —enough to have a sequel—, thanks to the fact that the adventure genre, with other films like “The Mummy”starring brendan fraserwas fashionable, but the critics were not very kind to her.
Because in essence there is a problem that prevents the correct extraction of the experience from a video game and take it to the screen, small or large. And it is that the first is a active mediumwhere the person who experiences it is making decisions and influencing, to a greater or lesser extent, what happens, while in the second it is a passive situationwhere it’s just about sitting back and enjoying the action without any intervention.
This adds to thes dynamics of capitalism that, whether we like it or not, are an important part of making such an adaptation. If a video game is popular, studios will want to make more money from it by taking it to other platforms. But this causes the process itself to fall into the hands of experts who don’t know the source material, or aren’t familiar enough—or in the worst case executives who push ideas without justification—leading to changes that anger people. fans of said game or setbacks in production that prevent a good product from being made.
However, it seems that little by little this “curse” is being left behind. Although it was believed that, in 2017 the film of “Assassin’s Creed”a series with a mythology of such dimension —and an already cinematographic quality in itself—, would achieve this, it was in 2019, with the unexpected arrival of Detective Pikachuwhich decided not to strictly adapt a game, but to tell a story within the world Pokemon.
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soon after came “Sonic”which beyond the scandal of the first character design, was well received as an adventure comedy by audiences and critics, and brought us back to Jim Carrey like Dr. Robotnik.
Television and streaming were not far behind. In 2017 the first season of castlevaniafrom Netflix, began to show that you could tell a good story and at the same time deviate a little from the original material and now it is the turn of Sony and HBO, with The Last of Uswhich in addition to having a stellar cast —with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as protagonists—, it also takes advantage of the fact that its source is a video game that stands out more for its history than its gameplay.
Even other efforts like the most recent adaptation of Mortal Kombat have been best receivedso it seems that future film versions of our favorite games could come to a better port than their predecessors.
