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10 VIDEO GAME MOVIES YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT

8/6/2016

22 Comments

 
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Warcraft: The Beginning was released the other week, and might even still be in cinemas. We neither know nor care.

Still, it's just one of several game-inspired movies to come out this year, along with Ratchet & Clank, Angry Birds, and Assassin's Creed. By all accounts, it has disappointed at least critically (if not commercially) - much as Super Mario Bros., Doom, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Street Fighter disappointed before it.

Indeed, the list of video game-to-movie abominations is as long as a vestigial fat-tube hanging from a Subtle Simon. And that's a real long thing! Wibble-wobble.

Here are ten further game-o-movies that you possibly didn't even know existed - none of which we've even seen. Consequently, anything we tell you about them is, at best, guesswork.
STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI (2009)
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Everybody loves street fightin' Chun-Li, the female street fighter from the street fighting game Street Fighter II. Though she'd already appeared once in a live action movie - Street Fighter - she got a street fighting movie all to herself in 2009, apparently.

Despite the lack of iconic blue dress in the above image - she's wearing "a pair of browns" - we're assuming the floater above is indeed Chun-Li. We make the following bonus assumption: she has contracted a real bad cold, which causes her to hover and rotate involuntarily in alleyways. Her boyfriend - let's call him 'John' - spends most of the film attempting to bash her to the ground with his special shovel, 'Johns-son'.

"Get down from there, Chun-Li," he shouts. "I hate all this hovering!"

"I can't stop," sighs Chun-Li. "Incidentally: I love you, John."

"Yes, yes... I love you too."
FAR CRY (2008)
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Let's say that this man, we'll call him 'John'... went for a walk in the woods in his dirty black shirt. All we know about him is that he also owns a watch, a gun and a truck. He has a cut above his left eye, from trying to trim his eyebrows. He is the number one top handsome boy on the continent of Pangea.

What's he looking at? A mirror. He's practicing his sweet moves in the woods. Just like you do in the video game, Far Cry.

"I look good today," says John. "Shame about my eyebrow and dirty black shirt. I'm the number one top handsome boy on the continent of Pangea."
POSTAL (2007)
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We all know Postal as a controversial mass-murder simulation. The movie, perhaps, goes in a different direction: Mini-Me, John Candy, and two other fellers - 'John' and 'Johnny' are held hostage in a bank vault by some women of a mysterious and saucy nature.

"I'm John," says John Candy, apropos nothing.
BLOODRAYNE (2005)
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Not only do we fail to recall the movie of the game Bloodrayne, but we fail to even recall the game it is based on. Oh well. It happens.

Judging from the above still, it tells the story of a woman - let's call her 'Joan' - who enters the World Doner Championships. She hopes to win the prize for creating the biggest doner kebab of all time (seen to the right of the above image). Very soon she will begin to slice the kebab leg. Soon, she will have victory over all the kebab artisans on the continent of Pangea.
HITMAN (2007)
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The first of the two Hitman movies is about a bald - he's called 'John' - who wants to shoot the moon, maybe. 'John' hates the moon, because it too is a bald, and reminds him of his "bonce".

"Die, oh mocking sky-ball," gargles 'John' as he takes aim with his gun. "Ha ha! I shoot you out of the ether! I shoot you, you bloody moon!"
MAX PAYNE (2008)
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Gritty cop Max Payne goes under cover as a large crow-bird called "John Crowston", by dressing all in black and donning a large pair of wings. He flaps around, landing in nests, and shooting real crows. First though, he tells them jokes.

"Where do crows go to listen to trance music and eat ecstasy? Rave(n)s!"
IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE STORY (2007)
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Remember Dungeon Siege? Surely you remember it don't you? The game with the dungeons and the sieges? No. No... nor do we. Presumably, this is about an army of super cool dudes - let's call them 'The Johns' - plus Jason Statham, one woman, and Ian Beale when he was a tramp (left and below).

What are they doing in the image above? Perhaps they are attending a rally for the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency, Mr Donald Trump.

​No... wait. Two of them are black, so that can't be it.
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D.O.A. - DEAD OR ALIVE (2007)
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Potentialy, a movie about a sentient volleyball. Is it dead or is it alive? What defines consciousness? Is it enough to be aware and responsive to ones surroundings? The ability to feel, to perceive and experience reality in a subjective context? Does that - can that - define life?

The movie explores the notion put forward by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger: "The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing…"

Indeed.
ALONE IN THE DARK (2005)
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This is film might be about a lady called 'Johnette Jam-Head', whose head is full of delicious raspberry jam. Unfortunately, Ms Jam-Head gets into a bit of a pickle when the Lord Mayor of Pangea asks her what sort of jam she has in her head. Rather than respond in the traditional manner, she simply blows  a raspberry at the mayor!

Unbeknownst to Jammy, some kids filmed her on their phones, and uploaded the footage to YouTube! She becomes known as the rudest woman in all creation, and is sentenced to 7 months hard labour in the Marmalade Commissary.
HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003)
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Possibly a film about a man who has a map of the entire mainline British rail network tattooed on his face.

"I have the entire mainline British rail network tattooed on my face," he hisses to the woman in the picture above. "Choo choo!"
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
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22 Comments
RG
8/6/2016 11:28:14 am

If 'John' the hitman is shooting at the moon in that photo, I think he'll miss by quite a wide margin...

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SweetMrGibs
8/6/2016 01:04:44 pm

C'mon Mr Biffo... Warcraft hasn't disappointed commercially - at least not yet. Thought you were better than buying into the media 'buzz' verbatim.

P.S. You're right though - it looks a bit shit.

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Mr Biffo
8/6/2016 01:08:48 pm

You are right: I just checked. Hasn't released in the US yet though...

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SweetMrGibs
8/6/2016 01:13:50 pm

True. But apparently it's going down a storm in China.

Interesting fact: China have banned movies about time-travel since 2011 as they don't want people to feel 'nostalgic'.

Mr Biffo
8/6/2016 02:44:06 pm

Yeah, I saw that about it being massive in China. How very odd. Even odder is the time travel thing.

SweetMrGibs
8/6/2016 01:17:19 pm

To clarify; since 2011, movies about time travel have been banned in China. China has NOT banned movies which feature time travel from between the years 2011 and 2016. An important distinction for anyone planning on visiting China to watch Back to the Future (because you won't be able to), or perhaps The Terminator.

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Adam Newman
9/6/2016 12:28:40 am

Really? Then how come the terrible Terminator:Genisys was released in China and did surprisingly well?

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SweetMrGibs
9/6/2016 09:45:20 am

I don't know, you'd have to ask them. Maybe the Chinese Time Travel in Appreciation Society made them see sense. http://techland.time.com/2011/04/13/china-decides-to-ban-time-travel/

synthetictruism
8/6/2016 01:18:59 pm

Uwe Boll really did seem have a monopoly on games-to-movies... And I can't think of anything positive to say about the three or four I've seen.
It's painful to think a game based on the board game "Battleships" was better than films based FarCry and Alone in the Dark. Hey ho. Still, I have high hopes for the up-coming Tetris movie.

On an aside, is it wrong that I actually like Super Mario Bros the Movie?

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Alastair
8/6/2016 04:44:58 pm

You can't be the only one, Super Mario Bros is a reasonably expensive DVD/Blu Ray in CEX.

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Heeden
11/6/2016 01:11:43 pm

The only decent Uwe Boll film I've seen is Postal because it's almost impossible to make a mess of that one.

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Walter Peck
8/6/2016 02:09:26 pm

I remember reading on some dodgy teletext page that the House of the Dead movie was set to be some kind of teen sex comedy.

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Spot
8/6/2016 03:26:40 pm

I've seen all those movies, I didn't realise some were based on games though. Every single one of them is awful especially the chun li one, there's a tekken movie too that's got a bros in it...it was also really REALLY shite

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Nige
8/6/2016 05:01:16 pm

I quite liked Max Payne. It felt very Max Payney.

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Thom Yorke
8/6/2016 08:24:08 pm

LIES! Everyone knows the Mortal Kombat film is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. How bloody dare you!

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Kelvin Green link
8/6/2016 08:24:28 pm

You keep mentioning that Ratchet and Clank film, Biffo, but I have seen nothing about it anywhere, so I'm beginning to think it's an elaborate Digitiser joke-me-do.

There are a couple of Final Fantasy films. They are not very good.

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Dan Bartlett
8/6/2016 08:27:47 pm

Gosh, I've seen most of those, for shame! DOA is surprisingly good.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
9/6/2016 08:52:46 am

I saw that too, and to my shame, I didn't think it was too bad. I rather like DOA as a fighting game because it's pleasingly technical and the reversal-based combat makes for some crazy matches, and it's a shame the series has a pretty bad name.

The movie is alright, it translates the plot of the games reasonably (though that isn't saying a lot) and has some great wire-fu moments. Plus, Jaime Pressley is pretty good in it. She doesn't get to be quite as outrageously funny as she was in My Name is Earl, but she gets a few moments.

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Anton Gully
23/6/2016 12:36:33 pm

I like the DOA movie. Great fights, girls in bikinis, what's not to like?

There's a great Holly Valance scene, and the Pressley vs Kevin Nash fight, back when he was one of the biggest things in pro-wrestling.

I've also seen Bloodrayne, Far Cry and In the Name of the King. All Uwe Boll, and none of them execrable - they're not great movies, but they're okay. I've seen a few of the others as well. Don't think any of them were that bad.

I may have a really low bar when it comes to movies.

The Silent Hill movie was outright decent, though I guess that was too popular to make the list.

Stay
8/6/2016 11:58:12 pm

My father-in-law asked if I wanted to see Warcraft but I replied no but my 9 year old son wanted to see it. They are going to watch it on Friday. I hope I haven't stitched my son up.

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Chris
11/6/2016 07:59:33 pm

There's a Wing Commander film too. I've not seen it.

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Dave
12/6/2016 12:52:29 am

After watching it finally, being a real fan of Duncan Jones’ work I can understand this film has some major problems but i can’t hate it. I certainly enjoyed it more than the new X-Men film.

It may just be my love for the director colouring my view but after the shaky start hopping all over the place it settled and actually was fairly compelling.

That being said the bad points,of which there are a lot:

Namely the set design and scenes felt too much like a theatre production of of Warcraft and didn’t feel like anyone actually lived in the world - GoT/LOTR’s world feels gritty and lived in whereas with Warcraft it felt like everything from the set to the clothes was a prop and clean and new just for that scene.

I understand that had to have been a conscious decision to be in-keeping with the design aesthetic of the game and not to riff heavily from LOTR or GoT but it feels too fake to really feel invested and drawn in

Characters ages all seemed sub 35 there was no range of ages that allowed for the feel of the world to be real.

All the hopping between cities only show a wide pan then a room scene with a small amount of people, it just doesn’t feel like there isn’t many people living in these cities.

The direction seemed so worried that the orcs would be the weak link they put the effort in to them and it paid off, The human side by comparison felt very poor.

Reply



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