It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. It might not be the first video-game movie, but Mortal Kombat is the apex of the form, because the premise is almost impossible to screw up if you just go all in: A bunch of fighters convene in an otherworldly location and battle for the fate of the world. Our regrets to any staunch defenders of those two titles. First, some explanation: Entries had to be live action, meaning no Angry Birds, and while BloodRayne is on this list, BloodRayne: Deliverance and BloodRayne: The Third Reich had little to do with the source material, so they were left out of the rankings. So here’s every video-game movie ranked according to its place in the video-game movie canon, starting with the reasonably palatable and working down to the most absolutely unwatchable. Street Fighter is always going to suffer in comparison to, say, Die Hard, but if you look at it in the context of similar movies, it starts to looks pretty impressive. In the 27 years since the release of the first video-game movie, Super Mario Bros., there has never been, critically speaking, a good entry in the genre - until now! The Sega game turned big-screen action movie Sonic the Hedgehog has edged out a positive critical consensus and even reintroduced the singular physical comedy stylings of Jim Carrey after a long Serious Film hiatus.īut let’s be real, B-movie status is typically the absolute ceiling on these kinds of products, and it’s clearly time to stop judging video-game movies the way we judge other movies, and instead start weighing them exclusively against their peers. It’s like playing a carnival game called “Face Punches” and demanding your money back because you got punched in the face. Here’s the thing: If you see a movie based on a video game and expect it to be objectively good, then you’re the only one to blame for your disappointment. This article was originally published in 2016 and has been updated to include recent releases, including this month’s Sonic the Hedgehog.

Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture

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