Worst2First: Worst Video Game Films

Worst2First: Worst Video Game Films

Video games have been a staple of the American household for decades.  From Commodore 64 and Atari to Xbox One and Playstation 4, millions of children and adults have spent countless billion of hours in front of the screen holding a controller and escaping into a fascinating world of tomb raiding, street fighting, and plumbers who travel to different worlds.

These concepts should correlate to the big screen, yet there's very few movies that came from video games that have actually been good.  However, some are just so bad that you can't help but watch them. 

For this list, I will rank the ten worst video game films, some which are just boring, while others are simply silly and pointless.

Here are ten worst video game films, Worst2First.

**There will be no spoilers.**

#10

Hitman: Agent 47

The first film wasn't too bad, but it's the unwanted and unwarranted sequel that makes the list.  The film is a story that's been done before several times but done better - the hitman assists a woman in helping find her father and come to terms with who she is.  The action is entertaining enough, but even that can't cover a muddy story that has the old deja-vu feel.

#9

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

The whitewashing casting of Jake Gyllenhaal notwithstanding, the film is plagued by terrible CGI effects, lame action, and a story so convoluted and confusing if you actually cared about it, you'd try to look it up.  However, since it was so poorly done, you don't really care.  In the end it's just a jumbled mess of "Aladdin," "Indiana Jones" and "The Mummy."

#8

Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Once again, the first film wasn't exceptionally bad, but the sequel is far worse.  This time, the tomb raiding adventurist goes in search of Pandora's Box before an evil scientist can get his grubby hands on it.  This is one of the first films Gerard Butler appeared in, so that's a small plus.  Still, it's just a boring mess of a film with very little action and Angelina Jolie looking like she's sleepwalking through it.

#7

Max Payne

A confusing tale of a man getting revenge for his murdered family ("Punisher" anyone?), while also undergoing hallucinations of Norse warriors done in a wannabe-"300" style noir filming style.  Throw in some "Wanted" style bullet filming and you've got a conglomerate mess of a film you'll forget soon after you see it.

#6

Pixels

While this film isn't necessarily a rip-off of a video game, it's actually a rip-off of several video games.  Most of which existed during my childhood and I have a fond memory of.  Now all I think about when I think of Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Q-Bert is Adam Sandler and Kevin James.  I will despise them forever for that.  Oh, and the movie is awful, filled with plot holes, and made absolutely no sense.

#5

Resident Evil: Retribution

While the first film was actually good, the subsequent sequels just spiral it into a downward nosedive that the pilot can't recover from.  In this exceedingly unnecessary outing, Alice joins a resistance group to escape an Umbrella testing facility.  Points for Michelle Rodriguez returning and a slew of characters you'd identify from the game, but in the end it doesn't deliver the scares, story, or substance.  Mostly it's just one long action scene.

#4

Alone in the Dark

When you cast Tara Reid as a scientist, you know you've got a stinker right out of the gate.  Plus when the name Uwe Boll is attached, you know it's just going to be awful (if you don't know his work, count yourself blessed).  What comes out is something that even exceeded my already low expectations as the story makes no sense, there's no real scares, and there's a scene in the film...seriously...where you see a clearly dead agent lift their head up as it seems the director yelled "cut" but didn't stop filming.  Not even the editor noticed.  It's no wonder this film is listed as one of the worst films ever made.

 

#3

Super Mario Bros.

One of the first movies based on a video game is also one of the worst.  It's cheesy, campy, a nonsensical plot, terrible costumes, and poor Dennis Hopper as Bowser.  It also stars John Leguizamo as Luigi, but he's also been in several terrible films since then.  Basically, the plumber Mario brothers (I still can't get over the fact that the main character's name is Mario Mario) must travel to a different world to rescue a princess.  It would've been great if they kept running into Toad thanking them for rescuing him, but informing them that the princess is in another castle.

#2

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Face it, whenever you played Street Fighter you were fighting with your friends to get the Chun-Li character.  She's absolutely amazing in the game, and the one I always chose.  So when I found they were making a solo movie just for her, I was ecstatic - until I remembered video game movies typically suck.  Then they cast Kristin Kreuk as the lead, give her absolutely nothing to work with, and you've got your typical video game movie disappointment.  There's no actual origin story, and all Chun-Li does is goes on a desperate search for revenge against her murdered family.  Sounds familiar?  Plus the film tried to take itself seriously, as it turns out it's anything but.

#1

Street Fighter

You've got to hand it to Jean-Claude Van Damme and the late great Raul Julia - they were committed to their bit.  Donning ridiculous costumes, delivering the corniest of lines ("For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday"), and including the funniest action sequences ever filmed, and you've got the worst video game movie adaptation of all time.  On the plus side, they didn't take the film seriously so you can laugh at them and their ridiculous antics, because you know off-screen they were doing the same thing.