The release of “Five Nights At Freddy’s” has sparked a debate amongst loyal video game fans as to whether Hollywood should keep bringing famous games to the big screen or strictly keep them in our gaming consoles. Providing long-time fans of these games a movie allows them to have a nostalgic experience, and can be beneficial for the movie industry. The recurring problem is that most video game adaptations underperform expectations. With low box office sales and poor reviews, this isn’t just a small-scale problem: nearly every video game-inspired movie has disappointed fans and will continue to do so in the future.
Some movies based on video games like “Sonic The Hedgehog 2” did well, receiving a 69 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96 percent audience score, while also bringing in 405.4 million dollars at the box office, demonstrating the potential these movies have to perform well. The issue is, that most of these movies cannot achieve this potential due to bad execution.
As an avid gamer and moviegoer myself, I think the main reason for this poor execution is that the writers don’t have a real understanding of the characters in the movie that they are making.
A few examples of poor adaptations include “Assassins Creed,” “Uncharted,” and “Warcraft,” all of which weren’t received well by fans. “Uncharted” was the only adaptation that made a notable profit, grossing 407.1 million dollars. I believe they made those earnings as a result of Tom Holland’s large fanbase and not due to the quality of the movie. It only scored 6.3 on IMDb and a mere 40 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Another movie that veered from the game’s original script, “Assassin’s Creed,” scored 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 42 percent on the fan score. This is what we’re given to represent a famous franchise like Assassins Creed. This movie put a stain on the reputation of the Assassin’s Creed franchise that was very hard to remove because of how badly the story was written, paced and its inability to capture the essence of such a popular game like Assassin’s Creed.
Being a fan of this franchise I was very excited to see this movie. I grew up playing the Assassin’s Creed video games. I thought it was awesome to go see it on the big screen, but they managed not even to have an understandable story. I don’t even think the people who made this movie played the games because there was no tie to the games at all. It’s like they made a movie just and put “Assassins Creed” on the cover, having to leave the movie theater that disappointed at a young age was very saddening.
This demonstrates that even though some of these movies can be successful, most of them have proven to be a complete waste of time, money and worst of all, excitement. Imagine the disappointing look on these fans’ faces when they leave the theater after entering with their heads high, excited to see their most treasured characters on the big screen, just for the movie to be underwhelming. This is not what fans should expect when going to see a movie. Based on audience ratings, the bar is set low for any producer daring enough to make a movie on another beloved video game.
Even the new “Five Nights At Freddy”s movie is receiving a similar score of 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, so hopefully, the critics are mistaken. I hope as time goes on that the quality of movies increases, so that optimistic fans can enjoy seeing their favorite games on the big screen.
