The Great Video Game Adaptation
In 1868, writer John William De Forest wrote about the Great American Novel, which he reckoned hadn't been written yet. To him, the GAN would "Paint the American Souls" and capture that which is distinctly American within it's bindings. There have been claimants to the title, such as Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby, and no one would ever deny that USA hasn't produced great literature, but the question endures. The Great American Novel is less of milemark for the nation's progress, and more of a question of it's character. Can we produce something equivalent to Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer and the like?
I think to this question as we enter the late 2020's, not towards literature, but that other Great American Pastime: Video Games. By this point, Video Games are mainstream and are as common as reading or sports. Everyone knows the big one's; Sonic, Mario, and even my Mother can tell you about Master Chief and Solid Snake. Soon, if the gaming industry doesn't commit total suicide, video games could become part of common vernacular outside of those who play games. Instead of the Strength of Hercules, you have the strength of Chris Redfield.
In fact, I would this may have already happened if it weren't for one snag: the adaptations suck. OK, not universally, but as the great video essayist Dan Olson once put it, "Based on the bestselling game" doesn't have the same ring as "Based on the bestselling book." He said this in his breakdown of 2009's "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" which sits comfortably at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that's a common figure for games adaptations.
The 2000s in particular were a cultural desert for VG adaptions, with disaster after disaster throughout the decade and into the next. There were shining points, I think the first Tomb Raider movie is excellent and The Silent Hill movie... exists, but nothing that captured the same way as Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, or even the then maligned Star Wars Prequels. Hell, even the fledgling comic book movie's of the era were doing head and shoulders better then VG movies.
So are there no good Video Game Adaptations? Of course there are, but this wraps back around to The Great American Novel. Has the US made great novels? Yes. But Worthy of the old worlds literature? Literary Scholars are unsure.
So yes, good Video Game Adaptions have come out, recently even. The 90s had cheese fest media like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, while imperfect were still earnest in there attempt to capture the games, and the aforementioned Silent Hill movie has it's fans. But if I had to pick a time when a series came out that was exceptional, that would be 2017's Castlevania. It was mature, well animated, and adapted the franchise with love and care while being it's own thing. At the time, it seemed like the Video Game curse was lifted. How naive I was.
Not only did crappy adaptions keep coming out, though with good to decent one's to balance it out, it seemed like Video Game Scholars couldn't agree on when we "made it." CastleVania was seemingly forgotten, and now every adaption had to not only prove "good" but also be a cultural ambassador.
The Sonic Movie came out, and by not being the terrible mess the first trailer showed, it was praised. Then the New Mortal Kombat comes out and people couldn't agree if it was better or worse then the orignal.
The major split came when the Halo TV show was released, which had the most negative surrounding it before it even came out. Such sins were that it was an alternate continuity to the games (I know, it's been never been done before in the history of adaptation. The Wizard of Oz? Totally in continuity with the books).
Then "THE ARTICLE" came out. On march 16th, 2022, an article from Variety came out that claimed that the show's creators didn't look at the games, which was interpreted as the the show being Halo: IN NAME ONLY. Of course, if you read the past the headline, the creatives make it clear that they did research the Canon, even consulting 343 Industries on matters of lore. Hell, main star Pablo Shreiber, in the Article's second paragraph, talks about playing the games.
Not only was this a clickbait article, but looking back, it's damaged video game discourse. No longer are we looking at directors and writers, now were looking to see if the people making it are super fans or not. "Will this be reverential to the source material?" is the question now.
Now a bad movie can't be a bad movie. 2024s Borderlands can't just be a bad movie, it's a bad movie for the culture. The Mario Movie on the other hand, with it's Nintendo approved script and 1 to 1 adapting, is the gold standard for some. "Only stuffy critics who don't play video games would dislike this."
Look, I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I already dislike the "Critic's vs. audience" shit, as I find it super unhelpful to any meaningful discourse. But now your trying to make it this cultural divide, that if they were gamers ™ they'd get it.
To use a direct example of how toxic this mentality has gotten, lets look at a review of the recent Iron Lung. Released January 30th, 2026 and based off the game of the same name from 2022. The movie is a passion project of internet personality Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach, and was made independently. With a popular Youtuber adapting a popular game, it made a pretty penny, earning $52 million against it's $3 million dollar budget. So, everything's good right?
Well, then the critics stepped in, such as Eric Goldman from IGN, who gave it a 4/10. Was this because he hated the game, Markiplier, or life itself? No, he thought the movie was sluggish and thought it would work better as a short film as opposed to a 2 hour feature that it is. Despite that, this still riled people online, including Markiplier's Reddit (I sincerely don't believe he egged any of this on, fandoms are just like this).
I haven't seen the movie, but the people I follow online have also offered criticism of it, including having a crappy script and too much exposition. These are normal things to say about film, if you care about film. In fact, the great irony of the all this backlash against the naysayers is that nobody is down on the film existing. Even it's harshest critics are happy that a passion project with a modest budget was made at all outside the studio system. Not everyone's Spielberg outside the gate, and I hope Mark only improves as a filmmaker going forward.
But even in the Video Game echo chamber, I don't think this movie is moving the needle for them. Castlevania couldn't, Sonic couldn't, Mario and Minecraft sure as shit didn't, and neither will this. See, the difference between the Great American Novel and the Great Video Game Adaption is that the Great American Novel is a scholarly issue, with many different interpretations about what it is within the confines of literary scholorship. The Great Video Game Adaption is about getting the support of critics outside of the gaming sphere.
Famously, movie critic Roger Ebert got into many an online spat about his take that games aren't art. He did concede that he was no experienced enough to make such a judgement, but he also conceded that "they'll never be art" statement. Never is a long time, and he did think that given enough time video games could evolve to something meaningful. But regardless of how nuanced he tried to frame it, I feel like the sentiment still stings.
I mean, can you name a video game critic as respected as Ebert? That's not a diss to anyone, I think their are some as knowledgeable (and bull headed) as Ebert, but in the cultural cache of media analysis, his words carry to this day. And He was right about one thing: it's about validation from an authority figure. To rephrase something Dan Olson said, what sounds better to a layman? "Film Critic" or "Video Game Critic."
Perception is reality to gamers ™, and the reality of the situation is that the only method of being taken seriously is if the critics outside of gaming take it seriously. This was fine when VG movies were absolute dogshit, but now that their just kinda bad to pretty good, tepid responses hurt more. "The movie's doing everything it should, isn't that enough?"
But box-office, pure accuracy, and Easter eggs aren't going to convince your parents that Mario is all that deep a series.
Lord of the Rings would be looked at as just nerd shit if that's all Peter Jackson and co. were going for, but they sought to tell good movies first. The behind the scenes are full of them talking about being faithfulness to the source material, but also filming techniques, how they did the special effects, acting, what to cut from the source material and what not to. It's like a class in film school just watching the behind the scenes. It's not enough to have passion for what your adapting, you also need passion for what your adapting it with.
If we were just talking about Hollywood adaptations, this is where we'd end the discussion for now. But I must reveal an omission from all this spilled ink: It's Western Focused. Video Games are not just America's pastime, but also Japans. The Mario Bros. Movie from 1993 is considered the first VG adaptation, but Mirai Ninja was 5 years old by that point. The 1990s were chock full of OVAs (Orignal Video Animations) covering Street Fighting, Fatal Fury, Sonic The Hedgehog Tekken, and of course the dozens of Pokemon Movies.
That last one's important, because growing up watching Pokemon, the word "adaptation" never came up compared to other series. I just appreciated them as animation, both the series and the films, and said Films felt really ambitious for what they were. To this day, the emotions that Pokemon 3: The Movie conjure in my memories is stronger then some mainstream western animated features.
There's a whole half of the discussion not had, because it's "Anime" and Japanese. Mario, Street Fighter, Metroid, Zelda, Metal Gear, these are all Japanese in origin, but as far as the one's adapted, we only consider the Western one's part of "the Canon." While I referenced the Great American Novel and how I thought it was an apt comparison, I can't help but feel like that's how people frame the issue: Until an American version comes out, it doesn't count.
So that's why I want to put my money where my mouth is. Besides just complaining about the current discourse surrounding VG adaptions as of late, I also want to announce that I plan on talking about VG adaptions a lot on here. From the early 80s to today, no stone will be unturned, and we will be looking at it all.
I want to see how people adapt them, the challenges they face, as well as why their are common issues in the adaption process. I'll also use it to show off some lesser known works, mostly the aforementioned Japanese adaptions, both from the big series and small one's.
But to put a cap on this topic, I think what gamer's need to do is stop asking to be popular. I mean, they are, I made a whole big deal about how mainstream gaming is. But rather realize that you already have a great artform, with many great pieces of art. Ebert was wrong in his assessment, because if the Video Games of today are just cave drawings, there some of the best cave drawings.
Instead of looking to movie critics as the final word, chew on what they say for YOUR OWN analysis. How does it figure in your brain? Stop worrying about how this will effect game sales, look at it as an adaptation, how it fits the canon of the series. What it did right, wrong, what if anything it gets right about the soul of the original work.
To use a final Lord of The Rings film example, Tolkien Scholars didn't just pat themselves on the back and reap the reward. They kept reading, writing, interpreting and analyzing the work with the films now part of that dialogue.
So the next time a game gets a crappy adaptation, instead of seeing it as the sky falling, you can add it to the conversation. Enrich your existing knowledge with this flawed offshoot, see what you really care about. Or just ignore it, that's also healthy.
So until then, I'll see you all on the corner.
Citations:
The Art of Storytelling and the Legend of Chun Li https://youtu.be/9Hl203g5k3Y?si=qj0q6Tf3R1xgOesy
More Than $90 Million and 265 Script Drafts Later, ‘Halo’ Is Finally a TV Show https://variety.com/2022/tv/features/halo-series-paramount-plus-master-chief-1235205361/
Iron Lung Review https://www.ign.com/articles/iron-lung-review-markiplier
https://www.reddit.com/r/Markiplier/comments/1qrg6nr/wtf_ign/
Okay, kids, play on my lawn https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/okay-kids-play-on-my-lawn