Game-to-Screen Adaptations Often Fall Short, but They Don’t Have To

Iko Lee ‘26

In early September of this year, Warner Bros released the long-anticipated first teaser trailer for A Minecraft Movie, a film based on the classic sandbox game Minecraft. However, viewers were disappointed to find that the film was shot live-action, with real actors green-screened into a CGI environment made to resemble the game. People all across the internet seemed to share the same sentiment: the CGI backgrounds and 3D animal models looked uncanny at best, ugly at worst. 

A Minecraft Movie is far from the first video game adaptation to receive this kind of backlash, as almost identical complaints were made about the first trailer for Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog. But the hatred of video game movies goes beyond bad CGI. It seems that similarly to how many Disney fans are fed up with seeing tasteless live action remakes of old classics, gamers are tired of seeing ugly CGI renditions of their favorite characters.

Poor artistic direction frequently results in underwhelming, disappointing adaptations. Studios often miss the mark when it comes to translating certain games’ art styles to the big screen. Games such as The Last of Us or Uncharted translated easily to live action because both games utilize realistic 3D animation, so it makes sense to cast real people in these roles. However, for games like Sonic the Hedgehog or Minecraft, where the characters and environments are drawn in a distinctly cartoonish or artistic way, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to choose live-action over animated in the first place. When producers announced that the Sonic movie would be shot live-action, audiences began to ask “Wait, how are they even going to do that?” This adaptation in particular became infamous for how bad the initial realistic redesign of Sonic looked. His large cartoon eyes were replaced with small, human-looking eyes, and his iconic blue spikes were swapped in favor of hyper-realistic fur textures. The trailer received so much backlash that Paramount scrapped the old design, opting for a more true-to-the-source, cartoony design. Although most viewers welcomed the more familiar design, some were still left unconvinced: could trying to integrate cartoon characters into scenes in the real world be anything but off-putting? 

Another issue with video game adaptations lies in the content of the films. Often, studios prioritize making big money off the fans and general public over paying homage to–and pleasing the fans of–the game they’re drawing from. The benefit of adapting a familiar property is that you know there already are fans who will engage with your product solely because it’s related to a familiar franchise. However it seems that studios worry that the fans won’t be enough, so they often focus more on appealing to the masses. For example, Columbia’s film adaptation of the Playstation classic Uncharted was, audiences argued, nothing more than a generic adventure movie with an Uncharted coat of paint slapped on it. As one audience member said, “Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg are a lot of fun to watch-on-screen together, but even their charisma can’t make up for a pretty generic film.” Some fans theorize that studios go the live-action route to appeal to a wider audience. The idea is that having a star-studded cast will attract people who would otherwise show no interest in a video game movie. However, seeing how poorly these adaptations perform, it begs to be asked why these studios opt to make subpar films that general audiences find unoriginal and fans find disappointing. 

Adapting any property to the big screen is a difficult task. It’s near-impossible to include every story beat of a book, series, or game within the length of a feature film, and viewers understand that. Fans know that not everything about the property they love can be included, but they hope that the film will at least recreate important moments, accurately represent the characters, and capture the essence of the original story. Capturing that essence in particular is what studios seem to miss the mark on more than anything. However, when you provide viewers with a faithful adaptation, you not only please the fans, but you also create new fans out of audience members. Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a great example of a studio taking the time to accurately represent the feeling of the games. Superfans and regular moviegoers alike voiced their appreciation of the setting, which was colorful and fun, including easter eggs for fans to spot. And all the studio’s hard work paid off in the end, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now the highest-grossing movie based on a video game ever!

There’s a long list of flops when it comes to TV and movie adaptations of video games, but it doesn’t have to be this way! It’s been shown in the ratings of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Last of Us that when studios put in the extra effort to accurately depict the franchises they’re taking from, audiences enjoy them much more, and in the coming years, I’m optimistic that video game adaptations can break their losing streak.