It's easy to underestimate the value of a video game in Hollywood. Comic books, graphic novels and superheroes may be the big thing at the moment, but ask yourself when was the last time you saw a successful blockbuster that didn't have a tie-in computer game? Then ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a movie that wasn't based on a game? The answer to both will certainly be: a long time ago.
The reason there are so many sequels made in Hollywood is because they have a guaranteed fanbase created by the first film. The same applies when there's a hit video game. If fifty million people bought Super Mario Bros on the SNES, then surely double that would go see the movie, right? Well in that particular case, no. The 1993 movie starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Lequizamo as Luigi bombed spectacularly, making back only half of its $40 million budget. It has grown a loyal cult fanbase over the years but perhaps the main reason it failed on release was that a certain other dinosaur movie was out that summer that shall we say...Knocked it out of the Park.
Back in the nineties, video game movies were still little more than a joke. Something for kids that would never become anything credible or particularly profitable. Take, for example, Double Dragon. This was a huge console hit, but the 1994 movie adaptation starring Robert Patrick and Alyssa Milano didn't even get a release in the UK until 2002. And chances are you've never heard about it until now.
The problem seemed to be that things we loved about the games got lost in translation. Or maybe there simply wasn't enough story or strong enough characters in the games to fill a ninety minute movie. After all, Street Fighter was basically about two people having a bit of a punch up. How do you make a movie out of that? Well if you're crazy enough you cast Kylie Minogue as British army chick Cammy, and Jean Claude Van Damme (at the height of his popularity) as Colonel Guile. Released the same year as Double Dragon, Street Fighter fared a little better internationally but ultimately was a flop too. Even the video game version (perhaps the first "game of the movie of the game") was universally panned. It's a crying shame that this nonsense was Raul Julia's last film before he died of a cancer-related stroke, having been such a great Gomez in the two big-screen Addams Family movies.
A year later in 1995 the first genuine hit movie based on a game arrived: Mortal Kombat. This was only the second film directed by a young Paul W.S Anderson but went on to make well over $100 million worldwide. Anderson's knack for flashy MTV visuals appealed more directly to teens than previous movies and this boosted the film to the top of the box office in America. It's not a great film but there is an attempt at a storyline and having Christopher Lambert as Rayden was, at the time, akin to Russell Crowe playing Wesker in a Resident Evil movie. Use of a new tool known as CGI also allowed the filmmakers to create more believable game-style effects and apart from Danny Boyle with Shallow Grave, Anderson was one of the first to put techno music to use as score in a film.
Since he made his name from a video game movie, it makes sense that Anderson, a game addict himself, continued in that direction. In 2002 he brought the highly popular Resident Evil series to the screen with Milla Jovovich in the lead role. More of an action film than a straight horror, the film didn't go down well with game fans or film critics who dismissed the film as a PG-13 copout. But the Resident Evil name meant that everyone went to see it and so it made a decent profit. Perhaps more due to the continuing success of the games rather than Anderson, two more movie sequels were made (Apocalypse in 2004 and Extinction in 2007), both of which did good (if not spectacular) business on DVD. Anderson only wrote the sequels, as he was busy marrying actress Milla Jovovich and prepping another movie based on a game...
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