Earlier this year, I did a piece arguing that video game adaptions have been mostly good recently and it’s okay to admit that. Around the time, Fallout debut on Amazon Prime to high critical and audience claim, with certain folks claiming that was the one that broke the video game adaption curse. Never mind the fact, that Arcane, The Last of Us, Mario, Sonic, Pokémon, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners already existed before then. We can’t count those because that would go against the narrative that video game adaptions are ALWAYS bad and can never be good because…..they’re…..video game adaptions? It’s such an annoying trend to tear down or forget previous well received video game adaptions just to prop up the newest one, claiming THAT was the one that got it all right. I stated that I strongly believe that video game adaptions have been strong starting with the late 2010s to now currently in the 2020s with only a few missteps and that it was okay to admit that. Unfortunately, there has been some truly embarrassing work in the video game adaption subgenre that has made certain folks question the credibility of video game adaptions once again.
First off, there was last month’s release of Borderlands. the latest video game movie, released to an overwhelmingly negative critical reception and an absolute financial failure at the box office. It did just about everything you can possibly do with a video game adaption or even a proper film wrong. The narrative was absolutely disjointed, the action and PG-13 rated violence was absolutely subpar, none of the cast members had any chemistry with each other at all, and the editing was chopper than SpongeBob doing karate. For a movie that was trying so badly to be the Guardians of the Galaxy and/or Suicide Squad of video game movies, it tripped and constantly fell flat on it’s face every step of the way. It couldn’t even compete with a 15th year anniversary re-release of Coraline at the box office and has likely already made it’s way to digital and streaming because of how little money it has made at the box office.
Even so, despite how terrible Borderlands was, to most video games fans out there, this was simply one dud in a sea of consistently great video game adaptions for the last four to five years. The mediocrity of Uncharted wasn’t enough to overlook the awesomeness that was Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for example. Unfortunately, there is looking to be another dud of a video game adaption on the rise. While the movie itself doesn’t come out until Spring next year, the newest trailer for it was so bad that it had people already making up their minds already that another bad video game movie is coming, possibly confirming that video game adaptions are heading another dark path. Of course, I’m talking about the trailer…..for the Minecraft movie, or at the trailer titles is as…..A Minecraft Movie.
I’m not gonna discuss everything that is wrong with this trailer because 1.) I wouldn’t even know where to begin and 2.) the internet has already teared it apart a new asshole so there’s no point for me to do so. But, the fact that the main trailer has now surpassed 1 million dislikes on YouTube probably brings home the notion that folks are NOT looking forward to the new Minecraft movie. It’s easy to dismiss the majority of those as dislike bombing but I’m willing to assume the average YouTuber that was just genuinely to check out the Minecraft trailer were not impressed themselves. While there have been certain folks defending the trailer and the Minecraft movie as a whole, mostly for trivial matter such as being a movie made “for kids”, this upcoming video game adaption is about as controversial as the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was when the first trailer debuted “Ugly Sonic” to the world (which the crew of Minecraft claimed they did NOT want that to happen). However, unlike Ugly Sonic, I don’t think there’s an easy fix to make the Minecraft movie appealing to the general public and we might just have another video game movie bomb on our hands for 2025.
These two latest additions to the video game movie canon has led people to debate the overall quality of video game adaptions at this very moment. Most notably, have they gotten bad again or if they were ever even good to begin with? Never mind the fact that we have Sonic 3 coming out on Christmas, never mind the fact that we have Arcane Season 2 coming soon, never mind the fact that we got a new Tomb Raider anime coming with the G.O.A.T. Hayley Atwell voicing Lara Croft, and ESPECIALLY never mind the fact we got the Fallout Amazon series earlier this year, which many regarded as one of the best, if not the best, video game adaption of all time. Never mind all of that…all because Borderlands was terrible and Minecraft is looking to be terrible.
This discourse over the current state of video game adaptions is similar to that of the discourse over the current state of DreamWorks animation. Yes, the tv folks made a shitty low-budget Megamind sequel and the movie folks made an iffy, short budget Kung Fu Panda sequel that was a decent box office and critical hit anyway. Even with how good The Wild Robot looks, you got folks claiming that DreamWorks has gotten “downhill” because every movie they’ve put out for the past couple of years has NOT been a Puss in Boots: The Last Wish level masterpiece. Never mind the fact that this is the same company that has always been kinda inconsistent with it’s quality, such as when they released Shrek 2 and Shark Tales in the EXACT same year! We have to forget all of that because we got to make a hundred different YouTube videos about how DreamWorks sucks now because….negativity and clickbait are the only things that sells nowadays.
This is the similar reaction that I’ve been seeing regarding the state of video game adaptions after Borderlands and Minecraft. The sky is falling, nothing matters anymore, nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everyone is gonna die. All because a movie that had been in development hell for years and suffered from multiple reshoots turned out to be a shitty movie and a movie that likely had a similar development history and production will likely turn out to be a shitty movie. All of that hard work from the likes of Arcane, The Last of Us, Fallout, Mario, Pokemon, and Sonic has been flushed down the drain. We are now back in the ages of shitty video game adaptions.
Keep in mind, this is not what I’M saying but what OTHERS folks are saying right now.
Personally, I don’t buy it. Every medium, no matter how successful they are or even in their peak form, will have it’s bad moments. The original runs of SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Odd Parents had bad episodes. The Marvel Cinematic Universe during Phases 1 through 3 had bad installments. There’s probably even a certain someone out there that think the worst episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t just a mere 7/10 that most people say it is but a legit bad episode in of itself. There will always be cracks in the armor in some way, shape, or form for any successful brand. Yes, you can definitely argue that Borderlands and Minecraft are way more than just cracks in the armor but you can take any good video game adaption in recent memory to replace that armor completely and you are good to go.
Borderlands and Minecraft just seem like products that were destined to fail from the get go. Whether it’s because of a crappy development cycle or not knowing what to do with the actual source material they had, it was just never meant to be. There’s still plenty of other video game adaptions in 2024 and beyond to be excited for. I can’t see into the future but I’m pretty confident that Sonic 3 will deliver a peak Shadow and expand the fanbase of the Blue Blur even further, the upcoming Tomb Raider anime could make for a nice bridge between the rebooted trilogy and the classic trilogy with Lara Croft, and Arcane: Season 2 will be able to properly stick the landing for it’s amazing storyline. If at least one or two of those things happen, then it will be easier to dismiss Borderlands and Minecraft as being individual video game adaption failures that no longer need any focus on.
To answer the question of the title of this post, unless every video game adaption is bad from here on out, I don’t think the failure of Borderlands and the potential failure of Minecraft should change the narrative of video game adaptions being bad. If folks can just push these failures to the side just like they did with Uncharted, Monster House, and Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (I actually like this one but I know MANY people did NOT!) and put the proper spotlight on the likes of Sonic 3, Mario 2, and The Last of Us Season 2, then we will all be just fine. It’s only the folks that led Borderlands and Minecraft be the end all, be all for them that they can say that video game adaptions have gotten bad again.
Fingers crossed that Control and Alan Wake don’t suffer similar fate!
Also, fyi, I do legit hope for the best for the Minecraft movie because I do think there’s unlimited potential for that as a movie. But that first trailer was just……….ROUGH!
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