I went out to watch “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” this weekend.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one. The blue blur’s second theatrical outing had a $71 million opening, the highest opening for a video game movie on record. Sporting a modestly fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating among critics and a near unanimous praise among audiences, the eternal question of “Has Hollywood finally made a good video game movie” has cropped up… again.
It feels like this is a conversation that comes up every time a video game adaptation doesn’t turn out to be a raging dumpster fire. Nearly 30 years later and somehow we’re still collectively dealing with the trauma of early video game movie flops like “Super Mario Bros.,” “Double Dragon,” and “Street Fighter.”
Bad video game movies are pretty easy to identify, but what makes a good one? What measure of success are we looking for here that will finally allow us to definitively declare that a good video game movie has been made?
Financial success seems like it should be a universal metric, but I think we’re all aware that bad movies can still make a buck. “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” starring Angelina Jolie, crushed it at the box office even though it was a mediocre action flick propelled by Jolie’s star status over anything else.
In a similar vein, the Resident Evil film franchise has always been inexplicably profitable in spite of even its fans recognizing it as a guilty pleasure at best.
So, it’s not just money.
What about critical reception? Well, that’s a whole other can of worms. The disconnect between critical reviews and audience scores could be an entire column by itself. Movies made to appeal to specific audiences generally aren’t well regarded by the so-called professional reviewers.
Having thought about it for a minute, there are four distinct audiences that could be considered when trying to figure out if a movie is “good” or not.
The Movie Critics: The people more interested in the craft of filmmaking than anything else. These people are looking for technical proficiency in writing, acting, cinematography, etc.
The Existing Audience: The whole point in making any movie adaptation is to leverage the interest of a pre-existing fanbase. They aren’t necessarily there for the movie itself so much as seeing the characters and stories they’re already familiar with represented on the big screen.
The General Audience: These are the people going in blind, just there to be entertained for a couple hours. Their sensibilities are going to be wildly different from the other audiences, which is unfortunate because they will be the least invested in the movie, yet are still crucial because they are where the money is at.
The Target Audience: One would think that the Target Audience would overlap with one of the three previously mentioned, but sometimes movie makers decide to forego all three and work to carve out their own niche. Again, see the Resident Evil movie franchise, which has never attempted to appeal to anybody but fans of cheesy action horror.
So we have four demographics to consider, each approaching any particular movie with a different set of priorities. The more you pander to one, the more you may alienate another. If you’re aiming to make a dumb and silly movie for a target audience looking for dumb and silly movies, you’re probably going to lose the critics. If you go so deep into the existing lore of a franchise that only hardcore fans will understand what’s happening, you’re going to lose the general public.
Historically, a lot of video game movies fail to hit the mark with any of them, leaving everybody wondering who exactly the movie was for. For years, even the most successful video game movies were qualified successes at best.
Lately though, I feel like the bar has been sufficiently raised. Movies like “Detective Pikachu” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” have found critical and financial success while also striking a balance between fan service and general appeal.
Meanwhile, even the worst offerings of the last few years haven’t been the disasters we’ve traditionally been subject to. “Uncharted,” like 2018’s “Tomb Raider” reboot before it, was middling at best, but I didn’t hate it. “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” and 2021’s “Mortal Kombat” reboot both made some story choices that were beyond questionable, but at least some effort was made. Even 2018’s “Rampage” was a dumb fun Dwayne Johnson vehicle.
Then there’s last year’s “Werewolves Within,” a movie I’ve never heard of based on a game I’ve never heard of that only got a limited theatrical release but somehow scored in the 80s on Rotten Tomatoes for both critics and general audiences, making it the most highly rated video game movie on record by a wide margin.
What does that mean? I don’t know, I just thought it was interesting.
All in all, I think it’s gonna be a while before any video game adaptation hits the cultural significance of the Lord of the Rings trilogy or Harry Potter movies.
At the same time, I think it’s also safe to say that the days of video game licenses churning out unwatchable schlock that appeals to nobody may at last be over. From here on out, if we’re lucky, the average video game movie will be just that. Average.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and should track down “Werewolves Within” to see what all the fuss is about.
