We’ve all been there. Everyone at some stage has booted up a game and been blown away with the story, humor, adventure or excitement. After countless late nights, missed meals and forgotten showers, the game will be over. That is when it will happen. That is when those six inevitable words will slip out.

THIS WOULD MAKE AN AWESOME MOVIE

I know this is something I have been guilty of thinking on more than one occasion. Video games and movies should be the perfect combination, like bacon and eggs or cheese and crackers. Unfortunately, they’ve not quite hit their groove yet. Not so much bacon and eggs but more like bacon and diarrhea. Everybody loves bacon, but no one really enjoys it enough to sit through the inevitable pile of shit. Unless, you know, you REALLY love bacon. It became common place for big budget blockbusters to get released alongside a game of the same name (not that these were particularly good either, I’m looking at you ET) so it only made sense for it to happen the other way around. The first video game movie to be released was the infamous Super Mario Bros  – Mario Mario and Luigi Mario? God the 90’s ruin everything – 23 years ago. A film made by Hollywood Pictures, a sub-company of Disney at the time, it received an impressively low score of 15% on Rotten Tomatoes and found its way to the number 3 spot on E’s 20 worst movies of the 90’s list. For Hollywood’s first crack at adapting a video game for the silver screen, they done goofed.

UNCHARTED WATERS

That could have been video games’ first and last hurrah into the world of film, but there was still too much money potential in video games to let it end there. Since then we have seen some good and plenty of bad movies, the most recent of which being 2015’s Hitman reboot. Despite big name licences (Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, Need for Speed) and big name actors (Angelina Jolie, Jake Gyllenhaal, Aaron Paul) the best these films could hope for was a cult classic status due to the critical reception for most of them being average at best. Over the last 23 years, 29 movies based on video games have been released theatrically (so not counting straight to DVD films). The ratings for those 29 movies average out to a staggering 18% according to Rotten Tomatoes, the best being Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at 44% and the worst being Alone in the Dark at 1% (but this still got a sequel!? Motherf…) Any-who, it goes to show that even with the talented writers, actors, directors and technology we have today, people still can’t get the formula right for a video game movie. It’s been over two decades. Is it time to hang up the boots and call it a day?

Not quite yet it seems. This year alone we have four more movies to look forward to with Ratchet and Clank next month, The Angry Birds Movie, Warcraft and Assassins Creed. Now here’s the funny part. Even after knowing what I know about the history of video game movies, and even after getting my hopes up to have them come crashing down time and time again, I’m still excited for almost all of these films. There’s almost no indication to say that any of these movies will be better than the ones that have already come and gone, but that doesn’t lessen my excitement. Video game movies are still wanted by the fans, still made by Hollywood and still attract impressive talent to star in them. Strangely enough though, they are also disliked by the fans that wanted them, the companies that made them and the actors who starred in them. So why are they still being made and, more importantly, will they ever be good? It seems that the film industry is never going to allow video game films to die out, but are they working on making them any better?

THE ALMOST GOLDEN AGE FOR THE SILVER SCREEN

Call me an optimist, but I can see a faint glimmer of hope in the near future. When you look at today’s established franchises and companies, none of them really knew what they were doing or who they were doing it for when they started. Comic book movies were cheesy, cheap and at times, downright laughable. Now they are a multi-billion dollar industry, with Marvel being responsible for 3 of the 10 highest grossing films of all time. Lego almost declared bankruptcy in 2004 and came back swinging with the greatest film ever made, Die Hard The Lego Movie. Hell, even Apple almost got flushed down the toilet, now that story has spawned two films, one of them won two golden globes, the other had Ashton Kutcher. As well as being enjoyed by fans, the domino effect that these films have had in their respective fields is enormous. Comic books have never been more popular or in as high demand as they are now. Lego has brought back adults who had lost their way, making it cool again. If video game movies are done right, not only will we have an awesome movie, but it will draw in people who had never been interested in games before and expand the industry to help them make even more awesome new titles. We only need one ‘Ironman’ to light the way and then after that it should be smooth sailing.

So will it happen this year? Maybe. Warcraft is already being talked about as the first good video game blockbuster to hit theaters, while I personally have very high hopes for Ratchet and Clank and Assassins Creed. As a gamer, even with the terrible plots, bad acting and cheesy effects, I still love a good video game movie (good is definitely not describing the quality of the film in this case). The Resident Evil franchise is a mix between comfort food and crack for me, and I know that many of my friends and colleagues have a video game movie that they love, while still acknowledging that it is a bad movie. I pray that this is the year when things turn around, the year we will begin to see great video game movies rather than just bearable ones. Until then however, we will keep playing games, thinking those six words and watching video game movies, whether we like them or not.

So what video games would you like to see turned to film? What are your favourite video game movies? Who of you loves bacon enough to sit through the diarrhea? Let us know in the comments below!