The Right And Wrong Lessons From ‘Super Mario,’ ‘The Last Of Us’ Adaptation Successes

If this wasn’t happening already, after decades of the so-called “video game adaptation” curse, not only has that curse been broken (and honestly, it has been well before this), we are about to see a gold rush for video game properties unlike anything the TV, film or gaming industries has seen before. Dozens upon dozens are already in production, and after seeing Super Mario Bros. set global animation records and The Last of Us score high ratings and higher critic scores on HBO, this is about to be a whirlwind.

However, I think we have to keep expectations in check to a certain extent here, and a few high profile examples does not mean we are necessarily about to enter some golden age of video game adaptations. This is not the dawn of an MCU-like era where Kevin Feige guided one, unified universe to a decade plus of near-constant success.

These are many, many adaptations spread out over dozens of disparate games and different studios working on them. Already in this current climate, we are content to ignore the truly bad adaptations that exist in this same era. Just recently we had a truly awful Resident Evil series on Netflix, plus the ongoing monstrosity that is Paramount Plus’ adaptation of Halo. It’s more like a 50% battling average lately when you take all projects into consideration, though I suppose that’s better than the maybe 5% average we had 10+ years ago.

The main lesson, using those four adaptations as an example, would largely be that if you’re going to adapt a game, try to stay faithful to the game as much as possible. The totally new and bizarre takes on Resident Evil and Halo have been quite bad. The Last of Us, meanwhile, is recreating scenes from the game 1:1 and has the director of the game on board making the show with everyone else. The Super Mario Bros. Movie may be jam-packed with Nintendo references but that’s…still a pretty faithful adaptation of the plot-nebulous game.

And if you’re not sticking with the exact plot and storyline and script of the game, at least make sure you’re getting the tone right. Here, I’m referencing projects like the Sonic movies, League of Legends’ Arcane, Castlevania and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. None of these are direct adaptations of the games, but rather adaptations of those worlds, and they still found great success doing that. So there are multiple paths forward here.

I think we have to understand that there are going to be some misses, but those misses are more likely to come from projects that believe they have to totally reinvent the source material to “fit” for a TV series or movie. The “cursed” era of adaptations was often like that, trying to turn things like Assassin’s Creed or Prince of Persia into four-quadrant traditional blockbusters. Over the years the only franchise that got it mostly right was Milla Jovovitch’s Resident Evil movies, absolutely absurd productions that were at least a lot of fun for their specific audience, hence why they made a zillion of them.

We are going to see some very, very high profile misses to come here. Don’t expect otherwise. Yes, I do have my bets on what will work and what won’t. Of the big productions on the way, I would say I have a lot of faith in a Ghost of Tsushima movie that’s coming from the director of the John Wick series, which seems like a perfect fit. I have less faith in Netflix doing a Horizon Zero Dawn series as they constantly cut budgets and doing that right would cost a ridiculous amount of cash. Amazon may have the cash for the God of War series they’re making, but from Rings of Power to Wheel of Time, they do not have the best track record for high-budgeted fantasy adaptations.

Sure, I think studios are excited to find a new genre that isn’t superheroes to try to adapt, given that Marvel and DC are tied up with Disney and Warner Bros. But before we call this a golden age, I think we need to manage expectations about the range of projects we’re about to get here. And there is still going to be a lot of trash to sift through, believe me.

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