5/19/2009 - Super Mario Kart : Death Race Double Dash

It seems like making a good video game movie is an impossible task. The last one I saw, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, was so bad that I think there should no longer be live-action movies based on video games. The only video game movies that I thought were decent were DOA and Mortal Kombat. They do have the greatest acting or plots, but at least they were fun and didn't take themselves too seriously. Trust me, I'd love to see a good Legend of Zelda movie, or a good Metroid movie. But I just don't think it's ever going to happen.

I can kind of see what studio execs are thinking with video game movies though. They see an audience with a pre-established brand, and that audience paid up to $60 for a game with that brand, much more than the price of a movie ticket. If they could make a quick movie of that video game, even if a sixth of those who bought the game watched the movie, they would be making the same amount as that video game publisher. The more successful the game, the more successful the movie should be, right? Wrong.

I mean it's surprising to me that there haven't been movies of some of Nintendo's biggest franchises like Zelda and Metroid. What would really be daring would be to make a movie out of Super Mario Kart. I mean, it's a huge seller for Nintendo, right? And here's what it could look like: