n 1993, Hollywood took the bright colours, bouncing rhythms and cheerful nonsense of Super Mario Bros. and transformed them into a wet cyberpunk dystopia filled with fungus, humanoid dinosaurs and Dennis Hopper.
It was only the beginning.
For the next three decades, video game adaptations repeatedly reproduced the names, costumes, monsters and locations that players recognised, while struggling to understand the experience that made those games matter. Street Fighter tried to turn a character-select screen into a military action film. Resident Evil replaced vulnerability with superhuman spectacle. Assassin’s Creed recreated the rooftops but kept dragging audiences back into rooms where people explained genetic memory.
In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave explores why video games presented Hollywood with an adaptation problem unlike books, comics or television. Games are not only stories or worlds. They are things players do, built around movement, timing, failure, discovery and the relationship between a player’s hands and a responsive world.
From Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider and Doom to Detective Pikachu, Sonic and the animated Super Mario Bros. Movie, the industry slowly began to stop apologising for the source material. Then television pushed the breakthrough further, using Castlevania, Arcane, Twisted Metal, The Last of Us and Fallout to find new ways of replacing the controller without losing the feeling behind it.
Video game movies were never cursed.
Hollywood was simply using the wrong controls...
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