Is Hollywood finally about to make good video game-based shows and movies?
Uwe Boll, we hardly knew ye.
Hollywood has a spotty record with video game adaptations, to put it mildly. Even beyond the absurd decision to cast Jake Gyllenhaal as a character of Iranian descent in Prince of Persia, the industry’s track record with those kinds of projects isn’t stellar.
I enjoyed the hell out of Super Mario Bros., the original Mortal Kombat, and Silent Hill when I first saw them many years ago. Doom’s kinda fun too. By and large, though, shows and movies based on games are usually not great (hi, Uwe Boll). I think that’s about to change, thanks to some exciting things that are in the pipeline.
Take a look at the first trailer for the Mortal Kombat reboot over at Engadget. I wrote about it there, so I won’t go into too much detail again here. It’s super gory, I love the tone and it looks like a ridiculous blast. I’m sold.
Casting news recently emerged for HBO’s The Last of Us series. I’m beyond thrilled with the two leads. I don’t think Pedro Pascal was on too many people’s wishlists for Joel, but he is brilliant. He’ll absolutely crush this. As for Ellie, Bella Ramsey is an inspired choice. She was one of the best parts of latter Game of Thrones, and I can’t wait to see what she does with one of the finest characters in games.
Neil Druckmann’s direct involvement gives me a lot of hope for this. Some very fine pieces are coming together to fill out this puzzle and I can’t wait to see what HBO and the creative team are cooking up.
Then there’s another giant adaptation of a Sony franchise on the horizon. It seems like every time we get closer to the Uncharted movie, it fades away, like that one part of Uncharted 3. But the film is in the can and Sony’s waiting for the world to unfuck itself before releasing it. Tom Holland’s great and I’m sure he’ll be a good Nathan Drake. I wish we’d gotten to see a proper mid-30s version of Drake on the big screen first, but after over a decade of development hell, I’ll take what I can get.
I have deep love for all of the Uncharted and The Last of Us games, but there’s another upcoming video game movie that’s caught my attention, even if I’m not super familiar with the source material. I‘ve had a few Borderlands games languishing in my PlayStation library for forever, but I haven’t played any of them. The upcoming movie has a hell of a cast, though, with Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black on board. It seems like an odd choice for a movie adaptation, but I’m curious to see what Eli Roth does with it.
Let’s not forget that there’s a Metal Gear Solid flick in development too, with Llewyn Davis himself, Oscar Isaac, set to play Solid Snake. Again, that’s inspired casting, and I have my fingers crossed that the movie will match his talents. I’m confident that’ll be the case, since director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is a talented cat.
Also on the TV side, Netflix has Dota 2 and Tomb Raider anime on the way. A Halo series is coming to Paramount+ next year and an adaptation of the classic PlayStation series Twisted Metal is in development.
With all of those (and more) in the works, at least a few video game-based shows and movies have to be legitimately good, right? There’s a ton of quality creative talent involved in many of these projects and in the case of a few of them (especially Sony’s), there’s a lot on the line.
Most of these have richer storytelling and lore to draw from than older games, so it’s unlikely that we’ll end up with… whatever someone saw in the Mario games to make the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Just… make at least some of these good, please, Hollywood? Video game fans have endured too many failed adaptations for one lifetime.