In Honor of the Assassin's Creed Movie Trailer Dropping, Here Are Some of the Worst Video Game Movies of All-Time.
The Assassin's Creed trailer dropped the other day and the reaction was divided. Some praised it feeling that it captured the essence of the game, others were left scratching their heads at the inclusion of Kanye West's I Am a God. We don't know if the movie is gonna stink, but we do know that the movies on this list do indeed stink. Strap on your rocket boots because we're about to go on an adventure.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (1993)
This Hollywood's first foray into the video game world, which I like to think scarred Nintendo deeply. They haven't dipped their toes into making movies off their properties since. The movie died a quick death upon release. Between bad reviews, opening against Sylvester Stallone's Cliffhanger (Which made a whopping $16,176,967 over its opening weekend compared to Mario's $8,532,623) and Jurassic Park coming out a few weeks later, this movie simply didn't stand a chance.
Game Informer has a fantastic write-up explaining how things went wrong and some fascinating stuff. Here's a snippet from the story:
But you got to hand it to them. They took some really ballsy risks with the property. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out for them.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
There is no redeeming qualities about this movie. While the other Street Fighter movie can take solace in the fact that it's absolutely ridiculous, The Legend of Chun-Li is just...boring. Something is going on about property values, Bison kills his wife for some reason, and I can't figure out how that dude from The Black Eyed Peas got an acting job. I also think they wanted Nicholas Cage to play Charlie Nash but settled for Chris Klein doing his best Cage impression.
Here is a mixtape of all his lines. You be the judge.
BloodRayne (2005)
I guess BloodRayne was super popular in the mid-to-late 2000s. Popular enough to warrant a Playboy center spread (Seriously) and a Hollywood feature length film. Uwe Boll wanted BloodRayne to be an epic on the scale of Braveheart or Lord of the Rings, but it ended up being one big ol' wet fart. The plot absolutely does not make any sense at all. The only redeeming quality of this film is that Meat Loaf gives the performance of a lifetime. Oh, and he is surrounded by actual real life prostitutes because Boll said they were cheaper to hire than actresses.
No one cares about this movie. Not even the studio who produced the film cares about it because you can find the entire movie uploaded to Youtube. Twice.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
2002's wasn't a bad video game adaptation, there just wasn't anything really spectacular about it. One of the main criticisms was that while the movie borrowed the source material, it didn't expand on it and wanted to distance itself from the video game counterpart.
The solution? Try to cram every single aspect of the franchise into the sequel. There are a ton of side characters, and we don't even know why half of them are there. The movie is filled with cliche after cliche after cliche. And hey, I don't wanna figure out how Umbrella managed to unleash a virus and quarantine an entire city within 13 hours. At least Jill and Nemesis straight up looked like they were ripped out of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
I'll defend the first Mortal Kombat movie till the day I die. It's actually one of the best video game movies out there. The same cannot be said about Annihilation. The acting is hands down terrible. The CGI is laughably bad. For some reason Sub-Zero and Scorpion return even though they both died in the previous movie. At least we got this wonderful scene. The actor who portrayed Johnny Cage in the first read the scrpit for Annihilation and didn't want to be a part of it. He ended up appearing at the beginning of the movie only to be killed instantly.
Annihilation just can't do anything right.