Since late in the 20th century, video games have started to become more and more popular. Making a form of media that is highly interactive naturally began to draw attention as higher immersion could be created when the player feels like part of the experience. However, since they were so popular, merchandise was created, as were books, shows, and eventually movies. While the success of books varied heavily from franchise to franchise, as was true for shows, movies had a different stance. 

In general, movies are not interactive, meaning the level of immersion was taken away, and though this allowed for more precise storytelling, more effort had to be put in as a compromise. While books were entirely story-based without any visual or auditory input, movies still had to keep this part in touch. Shows had the benefit of only needing to keep the viewers’ attention for a short amount of time, with less time put into each episode, but movies needed everything done at once. Because of this, it became difficult to port the games to the movies. At the time, many early games had minimal stories, so a lot had to be added or changed to give the movie structure. A good example of this would be the movies based on Double Dragon or Mortal Kombat. Since those were only really about fighting, to port it over a lot had to be changed. Another issue was the graphics. In the early 1990s, it was difficult and very expensive to have full-length animated films, and since the game companies were on lower budgets, it was hard to make movies like this, while shows were often much easier. Because of this, many series became live-action, which worked decently well for games with realistic art styles, but not so much for stylized ones. The original live-action Super Mario Bros movie is a perfect example of this, as so much had to be changed that it wound up completely different from the games and faced extreme backlash. That being said, many designs did look very unnatural and creepy. 

Because of the extreme flops that most video game movies were, many studios stayed away from making them for many years. While some games such as the Resident Evil series or Tomb Raider faced some success in the film industry, none of them were huge successes or box office breakers. This was the case until around 2019 when a certain blue hedgehog appeared in trailers. In the original trailer, the design used for Sonic was met with extreme backlash, and it seemed like it was going to be the same as all the other movies. Thankfully, the design was changed, and the world was quickly filled with hope; maybe there was a chance it would be a success. When the movie was released, I’m sure half the world could’ve heard SEGA’s sigh of relief as it turned out a huge success compared to previous movies. With CGI technology more advanced, and SEGA having a higher budget at this time, the movie was much better off. This huge step wasn’t just a change for SEGA though, as now that the perspective of video game movies had changed, studios began making movie deals left and right. Soon many companies started to plan out possible movies, and with the gaming industry more advanced, there was also much more variety in options, meaning Ugly Sonic was unlikely to be repeated.

With many more successful releases, it seemed like it couldn’t get much better until Nintendo announced a new Mario movie. Despite the previous movie’s failure, as well as some initially questionable casting choices, most people had high hopes and expectations for the movie. 2023 had many popular releases, from Barbie and Oppenheimer to Spider-man Across the Spider-Verse to Wonka to Godzilla-1 and many many more, meaning the Super Mario Bros movie faced fierce competition. However, despite this, the Super Mario Bros movie was a huge success, completely opening the floodgates for video-game movies to release. Now it’s likely that most major franchises will get a movie, and many more are already in the works. Not too long after the Super Mario Bros movie was released, so too did the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie, and announcements have been made indicating a Minecraft movie will also be made in the near future. I do have to say, I’m worried what a live-action creeper may look like.

With all of these new successes, there’s little doubt that video game movies will become more and more popular in the coming years. There’s no way of knowing if they will fall once more, or if they will continue to be a popular form of media for decades. All we can hope for is that we never see those real-life goombas again.