How video game adaptations have come in 2021

Video game movies are notorious for being terrible. That’s just a fact. There may be some okay exceptions from time to time like the original Silent Hill film or the 2018 Tomb Raider, but the majority of them have since been savaged by critics or become memes as a result of their tremendously poor quality (see every scene in Street Fighter, for instance). Usually, this is due to a lack of faith from the studio about the potential of a video game adaptation, or just stupid incompetence on the part of the filmmakers.

2021 saw the release of 3 new video game movies (at least in the easily obtainable mainstream sense), and I managed to catch all three at some point. Now I can review them and see how studio respect for video games has come along in the past couple of decades, because believe me, it wasn’t great before.

Dynasty Warriors

Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few video game adaptations made in China, Japan and Hong Kong (the Phoenix Wright one is particularly notorious). And one of those was this year’s Dynasty Warriors, a Cantonese-language Netflix war film with a pathetic viewership (less people have watched it than The Little Panda Fighter. The Little Panda Fighter, for God’s sake) and an even more pathetic sense of quality.

It’s clear from watching Dynasty Warrior’s first 10 minutes that it’s going for dumb, explosive, so-bad-it’s-good fun, with terrible CGI, electric guitar music and villains with fake eyebrows so thick that they can take the tops off bottles. And indeed, for those 10 minutes, it succeeds at being pretty entertaining and stupidly fun.

But then it forgets that fun for 90 minutes and takes itself seriously, revealing itself to be an endless, boring, convoluted excuse for a wuxia film that takes too much time giving exposition compared to time throwing people in the air. It’s an odd amalgamation of the worst aspects of Chinese mainland cinema, as though it were an intentionally bad parody YouTube video.

That's one hell of an icypole, sir.

Dynasty Warrior’s largest problem by far is its actual narrative. Taking place in a generic three-kingdoms setting, the movie feels like it expected you to read a thick tome of history and battle charts and character arcs beforehand so you understood anything about the movie. And even then, there’s so much missing from the key story that an HOUR of the film is devoted to a character telling the backstory of another character, without any tension or interesting events in between. It’s like a Hou Hsiao-Hsien film, but with bad CGI on top.

Clearly, this was made for intense fans of the Dynasty Warriors gaming franchise, who get all the in-jokes and references throughout. But beyond the convoluted storyline, there’s no real character development or even real story progression. The film seemingly ends at a random spot without anyone having really done anything at all. There were 2 battles and no main characters died. That’s barely anything. Even fans are going to be turned off by it.

Oddly enough, the battle scenes of the film are the most video-game esque portions of the movie, as they resemble not only the 480p graphics of 2005 Dynasty Warriors titles, but also the terrible CGI of other 2005 video game adaptations like Doom and DOA. Environments have no texture to them, animation is lazy, and compositing looks like it was done by gluing printed jpegs to the physical celluloid. Meanwhile, costume and production design are pulled from the discount section of a Chinese Architecture’R’Us depot.

There is not a shred of realism to any of the fight scenes in the film, but it can’t be considered successful as silly fun because a) there are barely any of these fight scenes in the film, and b) they go on for so ridiculously long that they suck all of the fun out themselves eventually. Combined with a neutered PG-13 rating, there are no stakes nor fun to be had in Dynasty Warriors’s endless parade of NPC’s and coded soldiers flying into the air.

In short, Dynasty Warriors is in many ways emblematic of a bad video game – poor graphics, convoluted narratives, no relatable characters and very few instances of actual gameplay. It belongs in 2005, where game adaptations had no respect and the best part was when hilarious CGI or bare-breasted women came on screen. Some movie producers just never learn.

Dynasty Warriors gets a disastrous D.

Free Guy

Free Guy may not be a direct adaptation like Dynasty Warriors, but is instead about a video game based on Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row and other such sandbox action games. Following a video game character who comes to be self-aware and realises that he’s in essentially a simulation, Free Guy goes on a surprisingly charming quest to find his freedom and save the lives of his friends while discovering love.

It’s important to note here that Free Guy should be separated into two key paths when discussing it – that of the general quality movie and that of the video game movie, because while the former is reasonably strong and quite entertaining, the latter has seen a divided response from gamers and those unfamiliar with gaming.

I view it more from the perspective of a general film, and from that viewpoint, Free Guy is fun, charming and generally entertaining, if sometimes too cutesy for its own good. Filled with CGI, brimming with creativity around a generic formula, and featuring another charming performance from Ryan Reynolds, the film is certainly a fun summer blockbuster for all.

The great success of the film was finding that lightweight, positive tone, and maintaining it across a premise which lends itself tremendously to hardcore violence in the context of adapting a video game. Free Guy doesn’t have any pretentious messages to hide or wishes to be anything else, so it’s content to simply nail the cute jokes it throws on the screen and move on, maintaining a summer breeziness that’s hard to come by anymore. Comparing it to other June/July movies like The Tomorrow War or Black Widow, both of which failed to really land a compellingly amusing tone, Free Guy comes off as tremendously likable.

Ryan Reynolds, as usual, helps carry that light comedic tone through a performance that should seem pretty familiar at this stage to those whose seen his work, aided by Shaun Levy’s strong direction of colour and silly video game VFX. Aided by Joe Keery and Jodie Comer in supporting roles, Free Guy has no problem presenting itself as a fun blockbuster…to those in general audiences.

Where the movie falls apart is the corporate, “video-game” elements of the film’s plot and characterisation. Part of this is due to the film’s constant show-stopping references to Disney properties like Star Wars and Marvel, angering those who consider the Disney leadership misguided and monopolising for both franchises.

Part of this is also due to the in-movie depiction of businesses, which not only criticises corporate practices while also ironically representing the IPs of Disney (the world’s worst corporation) as positive influences, but also comes off as cliched and unfunny due to an annoying Taika Waititi performance as the game developing head.

But probably what annoyed gamers the most was the many inaccuracies taken by the film in regard to the depiction of a video game (which is why some gamer channels like Jar Media have really laid into this film):

Stuff like:

- The aforementioned corporate product placement

- Involvement of video game figures who are no longer really relevant

- Relentless celebrity cameos

- Awful, dated footage of the actual gameplay (it looks like it came out in 2008 when you see it on people’s computer screens in the film)

- Incompetent “hacking” (the film’s developers have no idea how to use noclip programs and instead wreck the whole game trying to find one hacker)

- Ludicrous real-world reactions to this video game (the movie depicts ordinary people as being hooked on every word, when in reality most people are like Observer critic Rex Reed who gave this film a zero for being about “people who waste their lives playing video games”)

So in regard to being a video game adaptation, Free Guy isn’t great in its lack of respect for the accuracy of what it’s depicting. But as a film, it’s certainly fun enough to warrant at least a casual watch.

Free Guy gets a B.

Moving onto our final video game movie, we have…

Mortal Kombat

Now, there are already a significant number of Mortal Kombat adaptations out there – we had the 1995 Mortal Kombat film and its dreadful sequel, we had multiple Web Series adaptations both live-action and animated, and it could be argued that the Mortal Kombat franchise has evolved in story to a Hollywood-scale adventure of its own. But Mortal Kombat 2021 promised to remove the problems of the old movies in favour of straight-up brutal fighting action. It certainly gave us that – but it introduced even MORE problems!

So for those who don’t know, Mortal Kombat as a franchise focuses on a tournament between Earth and Outworld, where fighters from each must compete with each other in a game delegated by the gods. Having lost the previous 9 tournaments, Earth is doomed if it loses a 10th, meaning that a bunch of dependable Earthlings have to team up to beat Outworld and save Earth once again.

The Mortal Kombat games are defined by their overcomplicated lore, colourful characters and ludrious amounts of gore. All of that is for certain present in this movie, with a narrative so disjointed that newcomers won’t figure what the hell is going on, rather profane protagonists, and plenty of people getting split in half. So for Mortal Kombat fans, this certainly does the trick.

This version promised to rectify the issues fans had with the 1995 Mortal Kombat film, specifically the wooden acting and the lack of gore, and it mostly did (Josh Lawson’s Kano is a big highlight for the acting in this film). When you view it that way, Mortal Kombat 2021 is very fan-servicey, and so as a video game adaptation, it can be perceived as one of the most successful in terms of its reverence to the source material. Maybe in terms of overall quality it’s not the best, but in terms of an authentic adaptation, it nails it.

That doesn’t mean MK2021 gets away with everything. It enters this odd zone of being moderately entertaining at all times while being objectively pretty bad. The efforts of the actors and the occasional moments of ludicrous violence are a good cover, but upon seeing the bad editing in fight scenes, the lame production design, and the completely inconsistent pacing, it’s hard to deny that this film is rough. It does indeed look like it came from a director of commercials (which it did).

But overall, I’d say MK2021 succeeds very well as a video game adaptation for 3 core reasons. First of all, it’s faithful to the spirit of its video game and the wishes of its fans. Second of all, it manages to get some things right as a film, such as the acting and strong gore effects, in order to be taken seriously. And 3rd? It’s just successfully entertaining. Few adaptations can say that.

As an adaptation, it’s an A. But as a film…it’s a C+.

So overall, I’d say video game movies are certainly getting a little more respect these days than they once were. By no means are they becoming Oscar contenders anytime soon, but at least we’ve left the days of both Doom movies behind us, and can move onto that upcoming Metal Gear movie that looks really cool.

What did you guys think? Leave your answers in the comments below.