The Rise of 'Inspired By' Video Game Adaptations

Video Game Adaptations Are Officially Dead

Ella Purnell in front of the New Vegas sign

By Sean Morrison Published 3 minutes ago Sean is a senior writer for ScreenRant and has been writing about new TV releases since December 2023. He has received multiple advance screenings of popular shows and ideated his own coverage read by hundreds of thousands of readers. Sean is a self-published author of a Western novel. Sean has also written award-winning opinion pieces related to local politics while getting his Bachelor's degree in journalism. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

Video game adaptations are officially dead, and the upcoming Far Cry show proves that; let me explain. Disney and FX recently announced an upcoming Far Cry TV adaptation of Ubisoft's long-running open-world first-person shooter game. It is, in fact, just the most recent television show or movie that is based on a video game in recent memory. Some other notable examples include Fallout, The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog, and many more.

So, movies and TV shows based on video games are clearly alive and well. Video game adaptations, however, are dead, and there's an important distinction to be made. There are direct adaptations of video games, movies or shows where the story of a game is directly translated from an interactive format to a passive one, and there are adaptations that are inspired by video games. The latter has surpassed the former.

“Inspired By” Video Game Adaptations Are Replacing 1:1 Adaptations

In recent years, movies and television shows that are inspired by video games are replacing direct adaptations of them. The proof is plain to see in the history of movie adaptations. Since about 2000, when video game movies began becoming more prominent, there have been quite a few big flops. Uncharted, both Angelina Jolie's and Alicia Vikander's Tomb Raider movies, both Hitman movies, Max Payne, Street Fighter, and more underperformed.

All of these video game adaptations have either been critically panned (Hitman: Agent 47 has 8% on Rotten Tomatoes) or secured abysmal box office returns (the 2008 Far Cry movie made less than $800,000 on a budget of $30 million), if not both. These flops all have something in common: they either were or were supposed to be direct adaptations of a game's story. Borderlands, for example, focuses on the main characters from the games and puts them in a slightly new situation.

Video Game Adaptations

Title

Year

RT Critics Score

RT Audience Score

Far Cry

2008

N/A

12%

Mortal Kombat Annihilation

1997

24%

Borderlands

2024

10%

48%

Street Fighter

1994

11%

20%

Hitman

2007

16%

57%

Max Payne

2008

15%

29%

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

2004

18%

60%

Assassin's Creed

2016

18%

42%

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

2001

21%

47%

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

2023

59%

95%

Sonic the Hedgehog

2020

64%

93%

Twisted Metal

2023

79%

89%

Werewolves Within

2021

86%

80%

Fallout

2024

96%

Arcane

2021

100%

87%

Castlevania

2017

94%

90%

In recent years, movie and TV studios have begun moving away from the idea of rehashing an established story in a different format. Aside from 2024's Borderlands, there hasn't truly been a direct adaptation of a video game in years. Yes, shows like Arcane and movies like Sonic the Hedgehog use familiar characters, but they use them to tell a completely different story from anything in their respective games.

Moving away from 1:1 adaptations and towards telling new stories has also been working wonderfully. Except for 2024's Borderlands, which was a huge bomb, many of the best video game movies of all time have come from the past 10 years. In fact, eight of the top 10 best movies are from 2019 or later. What do they do differently than older video game adaptations? They tell a new story.

Far Cry’s Television Show Continues The Trend Of Video Game Adaptations Telling New Stories

Vaas pointing at the ground in Far Cry 3.

Now, the announcement of FX's Far Cry show and the new details revealed about it have confirmed that "inspired by" video game adaptations are the new norm. Far Cry is set to be an anthology series focusing on a new protagonist, location, and story than any of the games. It will not be a direct adaptation of any Far Cry game, and is basically just taking place in the same world and using the same themes and stylistic elements of the games.

Far Cry is also just the most recent example of this trend of video game adaptations telling a new story using familiar intellectual property. Fallout, Arcane, A Minecraft Movie, Castlevania, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Twisted Metal, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Five Nights at Freddy's are just a few examples of video game adaptations that don't directly adapt the events or stories from specific games.

Even HBO's The Last of Us is an example of this trend, with its significant departures from The Last of Us Part II. All of these shows and movies are using the foundations of these familiar video games to tell new, unique stories. They add to the lore of their franchises rather than simply taking old lore and putting it in a new format. Traditional 1:1 adaptations of video games are dead; now, video game adaptations push their franchises in bold new directions.

FX's Far Cry cements it: Hollywood is done with direct video game adaptations and has fully bought into "inspired by" adaptations. The showbusiness industry has stopped looking at video games as pre-made scripts that simply need to be tweaked. Instead, Hollywood is looking at games as sandboxes with pre-built elements that you can do really wonderful things with. These aren't even video game adaptations anymore, they're more akin to video game spinoffs.

Video Game Adaptations Have Done A Complete 180

Cal sits on a rooftop with a woman in Assassin's Creed Movie

Cal sits on a rooftop in Assassin's Creed Movie

This change in approach to video game adaptations also marks a complete shift in how gamers and viewers respond to them. In the past, video game adaptations were frequently criticized for being too different from their source material. The Resident Evil movies and Michael Fassbender's Assassin's Creed, for example, caught a lot of flack for not simply adapting their acclaimed games to film.

Nowadays, it's the opposite. The Borderlands film was criticized for many reasons, but one of them was that it misinterpreted classic characters like Lilith and Roland and should have instead told a new story. Meanwhile, shows like Fallout and Arcane are praised for their ability to reinterpret their game worlds and push the franchise forward in a way the games haven't or, in League of Legends' case, can't.

Til Schweiger as Jack Carver sitting on a boat in Far Cry

Related FX’s Upcoming Far Cry Adaptation Can Redeem The Forgotten Movie Flop

Far Cry is officially receiving a new video game adaptation via FX, and the upcoming show can finally redeem the franchise's 2008 cinematic disaster.

Posts By Kyle McLeod 2 days ago

I don't know exactly why this shift has occurred, but I can think of a few theories. In the early 2000s, video games had much lower quality graphics, and there was a real desire to see their great stories put to the screen with all the production value and movie magic a live-action film could afford. Nowadays, however, video game graphics have improved to the point where they already look like interactive movies. There's no reason to give a game like Ghost of Tsushima the movie treatment when it already looks phenomenal as is.

Additionally, more recent games don't rely on interactivity as much as older games did. In the past, games would create emotional connections to their characters by having the player make choices for them. Think of how devastating Aerith's death is in Final Fantasy VII because you could play as her. Nowadays, games rely more on long cutscenes and dialogue to form emotional connections, the same way movies do. Modern games are basically already long movies, so a movie adaptation would just feel like watching cutscenes you've already seen.

Again, I don't know exactly why video game adaptations that tell new stories are doing better than 1:1 adaptations, but they are. The proof is in the pudding. We're in a golden age of video game adaptations (or spinoffs). These shows and movies no longer feel like cheap cash grabs, they feel like worthwhile expansions of their franchises that are just as good as any other movie or show. Hopefully, Far Cry can keep that trend going.

8/10

Far Cry 6

10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed Action FPS Systems PC-1

OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 77/100 Critics Rec: 74% Released October 6, 2021 ESRB M For Mature 17+ due to Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mild Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol Developer(s) Ubisoft Publisher(s) Ubisoft Engine Dunia 2 Multiplayer Online Co-Op Franchise Far Cry

Genre(s) Action, FPS Powered by Expand Collapse

Far Cry

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