Top 5 ‘Best’ lists are over-rated; it’s much more fun to take a look at the ‘worst of’ something instead. After all, we all like to feel good about the crappy stuff that other people have come up with! With that in mind, let’s take a trip down memory lane (even if you may have been trying to repress those memories) to re-visit some of the lamest movies inspired by video games that have ever made the big screen.
We are not even going to get into the world of slot games here as that would make our list too long, so let’s stick to these familiar and much-loved games that were so callously butchered by Hollywood!
Super Mario Bros.
(Rotten Tomatoes Score: 14%)
Where else could we start than with the much-maligned original video-game-inspired movie? It is almost surprising that Hollywood bother making any more of them after this gigantic flop. Starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the titular Bros., the $42 million pumped into this live-action adventure was a chunk of change in 1993. This was the first, but certainly not the last, movie which failed abysmally to match the genius of the game it was based on.
Max Payne
(Rotten Tomatoes Score: 16%)
This humorless action thriller starring Mark Wahlberg in the titular lead is a violent and convoluted mess. Max Payne strides grimly through the criminal underworld seeking revenge for the brutal murder of his family, so I guess you know not to expect a laugh riot. However, the needlessly convoluted plot drags along without providing much in the way of entertainment value and its 100 minute running time seems twice that length.
Alone in the Dark
(Rotten Tomatoes Score: 1%)
Director Uwe Boll has made a career out of transforming average to poor video games into dreadful to horrendous movie versions. For some reason people kept funding him to make these movies, and the consequences of such inexplicable largesse are films like this one. Alone in the Dark was accurately described by one prominent critic as ‘a violent and incomprehensible piece of gibberish’. We can’t add much more to that other than to marvel at the impressive 1% score from Rotten Tomatoes which suggests that a professional movie critic actually enjoyed this dreck!
Doom
(Rotten Tomatoes Score: 19%)
The game of Doom was a ground-breaking title that brought first-person-gaming to the fore back in the nineties. An influential game like this deserves a good movie adaptation, but not even The Rock can save this one. There is a sequence late in the move featuring some running around corridors blasting things in a belated homage to the game, but otherwise this is just a generic sci-fi movie with a dumb-as-rocks plot.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
(Rotten Tomatoes Score: 3%)
Given the decidedly unenthusiastic reception for the first Mortal Kombat movie when it came out in 1995, it is hard to believe that audiences were banging down the doors to demand this 1997 sequel. Yet here it is, in all its horrendous glory. Regularly voted as the worst of all video game adaptations we would not wish a viewing of this mess upon our worst enemies. It’s been 20 years since this sequel was released and you may imagine that the franchise was dealt a mortal blow. In fact, Hollywood has been planning a third instalment for many years, so expect round three of this awful Kombat sport to show up in your local multiplex sooner or later.