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Editorials 
The Shape of Cinema to Come...
- By Andres
Torres
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King swept the Academy Awards this year, garnering 11 awards and tying Titanic and Ben-Hur for most awards ever, but what does that have to do with video games? Adaptation. Pure and simple, the act of drawing one's inspiration directly from a pre-existing text or media. Some of the earliest forms of cinema were adapted from another medium. In 1902 a man named Georges Méliès brought forth A Trip to the Moon, a landmark in cinema which marked the beginning of the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre of film, though it was merely Méliès interpretation of a Jules Verne novel. More than a century later directors and producers look at all forms of media to find inspiration.
Enter the Video Game
The general consensus from most audiences when commenting on video game-based movies is that they are usually average in stature and earnings. This would lead one to assume that all video game movies are pretty bad; however, how can one hope to understand the genre, if one does not know its history? Most would say that Hollywood's tumultuous love affair with video games began in 1982 with a movie called Tron, a movie that rocked the foundations of modern technological innovations!! Most would be wrong, in fact the video game based on the movie outgrossed it. Also the Academy Awards felt Tron cheated by using computers and refused to consider it for any of the technical awards. Thus the movie Tron although essential to most hard-core gamers was mostly a bomb. No . . . excited youngsters in the US would have to wait until 1993, when a hefty British actor would don a red cap and fake a Brooklyn accent to portray the most famous italian plumber in all of history.
Mario Mario & Luigi Mario
Super Mario Bros. operated under the filming budget of $42 million (a shock if you've seen the movie) and grossed little more than $20 million. The movie stands out, even today, as one of the most bizarre things to ever see the light of existence. Italians Mario and Luigi are portrayed by seasoned thespian Bob Hoskins (Hook, Brazil) and Columbian actor/comedian John Leguizamo (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Pest), however the most unnerving yet unsurprising factors of the movie would be King Koopa as portrayed by Dennis Hopper (Speed, Waterworld). The story for the movie was largely written by one of the men behind Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which still doesn't even begin to explain the movie itself. Mario and Luigi travel to an alternate universe inhabited by an evolved species of lizard/dinosaur and use a wide assortment of plot devices used to mimic the video game: i.e. jumping shoes, mushrooms, and bob-ombs. The given would be Mario and Luigi's involvement due to King Koopa's lack of subtlety in courting Princess Daisy. However, the oddly formed Goombas, Yoshi, and Bertha make the movie mostly a labor to watch for all but the devout gamer. Who can forget the elevator/"Somewhere My Love" scene? Though the final blow to the ego that Super Mario Bros. delivered would be the obvious sequel set-up that (sadly?) would never come to fruition.
What it boils down to
When all is said and done, the maiden vessel that promised a glorious union between Hollywood and video games was far from perfect (understatement) and today remains on many lists for worst movies ever created. The following years would bring about Double Dragon with Mark Damscus (the man who took over Brandon Lee's The Crow after his death) and Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (no comment), which have ranked even lower than Mario Bros. in most fan listings. Now for all the fans, its not that all VG-based movies are bad, but for every year that a Mortal Kombat raised the bar of the video game adaptation, there is a Wing Commander that seems to balance out the mediocrity of most game-to-film adaptations. For what its worth though, Hollywood isn't even close to backing away from this medium, as more and more action movies which do quite respectably at the box office are spawned from their VG counter-parts. Tomb Raider and Resident Evil are just a few of the successful franchises that have succeded enough to sprout sequels. And with Crazy Taxi, Spy Hunter, and Deus Ex announced for release in the up-coming years VG-based movies will become a common sight at your neighborhood movie house. But it is with such movies as Silent Hill, Metroid, and the up-and-coming straight-to-video Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children that bolster a hope in every gamer's heart that the bar will be raised ten-fold on the expectations of a true VG film. Perhaps some french art major would enjoy adapting the classic NES title Anticipation into some kind of avante-garde film...
Agree with what I'm saying? Disagree? Let us know your thoughts on this issue in our mail bag. The views of Andres Torres are not necessarily the views of NGenres.com or its affiliates.
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