Video Game Movies: Mission Complete!

I have finally finished watching all of my planned 64 video game movies! So now the next step is to translate all this into an actual video! Meanwhile, here are all my remaining reviews for every movie!

• Far Cry (2008) - Another totally uninspired action adventure totally devoid of character, but now with forced comedy beats. It’s not as offensively bad as other Uwe Boll films and there’s finally signs of improvement, but it’s just as dull.
• Max Payne (2008) - A stylish, gritty, cop drama that sets up mysteries only for it to be ultimately resolved, not by outsmarting the enemy, but by a lot of gun fights. Overall, it just felt dreary and drab.
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) - Say what you want about the 1994 Street Fighter, it at least had personality. This attempt at a reboot and the start of a new movie franchise was dull, uninspired and had the most cliche dialogue, my eyes almost rolled right out of my skull.
• Tekken (2010) - This is a surprisingly fun film. It’s by no means perfect, many of the characters and set pieces feel a flat and the story is so by-the-numbers it probably wrote itself, but by embracing more of its influence and allowing the central characters to have more personality, this is a blessed relief in the swath of mopey and dull video game movies at that time.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) - Generally regarded as "one of the better ones" (not that it's much to boast about at this point), it is a sufficient watch. The action and performances just about manage to hold up the slack of the unremarkable story and utterly bizarre choice of whitewashing. The all important time travel aspect is kept to minimum which is a huge shame as that had so much more scope for exploration. Perhaps something they had naively reserved for the sequels they never got.
• Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) - It lacks the interesting locations of Extinction, but provides more exciting set pieces. Weirdly it has vfx that looks worse than the first film (I think because it was made to be 3D), but overall this is a fine watch. It's surprising however this franchise has thus far maintained itself with a "just fine" approach.
• Ace Attorney (2012) - This is an absolute joy! It boldly captures the absurdity of the games whilst being unafraid of showing real dark moments and emotions. It's certainly longer than it needs to be, which can cause it to drag, especially towards the end, but it is so much fun!
• Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) - It honestly beginning to get hard to care about anything that happens in this franchise. Efforts are made to evoke the first film but its all lip service to facilitate action set pieces that feel less inspired. But it also serves to be a kind of filler movie to set up their big finale. Let's see if it's worth it.
• Silent Hill: Revelation (2012) - I dig the rusty boiler room aesthetic but this does very little in terms of scares outside of gimmicks made for 3D. The nurse scene was the only cool part but even that was only very brief. I enjoyed the first film apart from the cult stuff, this was almost entirely the cult stuff.
• Need for Speed (2014) - God, this film is long and depressing. For a film that's about car chases, wild stunts and high speed races, it's slow! And it's dripping with so much melancholy I just wanted this to be over. Get over yourself Ned for Sped, you're a bloody car movie!
• Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) - It is an improvement over the first Hitman movie, with better pacing, but it's still mostly a generic action movie with dull characters and abilities not fully explored. It's not terrible, just feels like a lost opportunity.
• Ratchet & Clank (2016) - It's by no means a bad film, in fact it ticks all the boxes it needs to that could have made it great. It's lively, it's got humour, it's got action, and thankfully it has the majority of the game’s cast present. But it has this constant need to make noise, like its entertaining a much younger audience, or like it has no conviction in itself. Sentiment and character moments are often undercut by a silly joke or one-dimension character saying something stupid so there's zero emotional hook. It's just shallow.
• The Angry Birds Movie (2016) - For what the source material is, this is more fun than it should be. It tries to pull a Shrek/Minions vibe with pointless pop songs for the kids and tonally off jokes for parents, neither of which particularly land well, but I found myself pretty entertained overall, especially during the slingshot section.
• Warcraft (2016) - We witness a world of wizards and orcs, but we are not taken there. The film wants to wow us with its scale as it carries us from place to place, through multiple characters and huge lore dumps, but it doesn't make us care. The orc chieftain is the only one given an emotional hook, but he unfortunately has to vie for attention with a swathe of other underdeveloped characters. Also fuck Blizzard.
• Assassin's Creed (2016) - A load of pretentious crap. Utterly boring, plot laid on thicker than the amount of bloom effects, and because of the constant alternating past vs present day stuff, even during the rooftop chases and parkour, I felt completely desynced to anything going on.
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017) - And after everything, all the prior 5 movies, it builds up to this. A total anti-climax. So much of the earlier films get totally undermined by this, and there’s zero closure on many of the established characters. One again it attempts to recapture the first movie but without any of the well constructed suspense that made it so special.
• Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017) - This corny gore fest has action sequences so utterly bonkers, this feels more like watching a collection of cutscenes, rather than a movie.
• Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel I. presage flower (2017) - While I believe movies should be self-contained, even if they’re based on a big franchise, I know I’m missing a lot of context for this going into the movie. While broader Fate elements are dropped in without explanation, I think I was still able to get the general grasp of this. I found the emotional blossoming love story way more interesting than the abrupt magical power and fight scenes, almost like it started telling one story and then someone suddenly played an entirely different movie midway through. I really wish it had been more of the former, but perhaps that’s better fleshed out in the later installments (and I’m sticking to this one for now). Either way I was able to enjoy it, especially the stunning animation and backgrounds.
• Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! (2017) - A reboot that takes multiple cues from the original anime series, this tries to lay it on thick with emotional weight, and I appreciate they wanted to treat situations more seriously than previous movies. However, much is left underdeveloped, especially the side characters (it's strange they didn't use the much more fleshed out Brock and Misty here), and trying to do so much at the same left this falling short.
• Tomb Raider (2018) - In this grittier and grounded take of the franchise, Lara is no longer a super-cool millionaire who can do no wrong, but someone who barely survives situations and stay one half-second ahead the bad guys. It leads to a much more thrilling adventure than the Jolie movies.
• Rampage (2018) - This big, dumb and a lot of fun. The action was goofy but still pretty exciting and there's a lot of emotion given to the big monkey boy. The villains were too flat for my liking and never really pose a threat other than making things worse. But given the super simplistic source material, this turned out to be a decent popcorn blockbuster.
• Dead Trigger (2019) - Cheaply made. Wooden acting. Awful VFX. Zero suspension. Badly written. Badly directed. Badly made. A total bore.
• Detective Pikachu (2019) - This is one of the finest video game movies. Full of charm, humour, emotion and character. The Pokemon flirt with uncanny valley but that only adds to the darker detective noir side and creepier moments. In many ways I wished it was pushed further, leaning on more of the unique elements that make Pokemon special wrapped in a more engaging mystery to be unravelled, like the Mr Mime scene is excellent for this. The finale’s scrappy CG squabble makes for a weaker third act, but the strength of the whole film more than makes up for it. Great fun!
• Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution (2019) - This CG remake of the first movie is faithful with almost all of its story beats. But it pulls back on the overwhelming sense of despair and tragedy that made the original so special, making this merely a pale imitation. The CG, while very nicely animated, provides no real advantage other than realistic water and fire which was never a fault in the first place. This is an inferior clone.
• Dragon Quest: Your Story (2019) - A quirkly, light-hearted fantasy epic that attempts to fit in way too much story than it can handle. Massive story beats are skipped over and character arcs get pushed aside for narrative. All in all, this would have made for a film that was "just fine"... were it not for the ending. The ending of this film does something so utterly batshit crazy, I was left floored by it. It tanks the entire film, betrays the audience and totally ruins the whole experience. A completely baffling choice.
• The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) - It's more of the same young-skewing high-energy comedy-adventure as per the first film, but that's no bad thing. In some ways it has improved with its comedy style, and in others ways some grandfathered characters don't have much to really do, as is commonplace in animated sequels. The hatchling subplot plays like Ice Age's Scrat, adding very little other than brief comic relief, but the sharper pacing makes this work. Overall, this is more fun that it should be.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) - This film had everything going against it. A franchise with a mixed history, in a world of unsuccessful video game movies, further compounded by the infamous early character design. This could have, and dare I say should have, been a disaster. But it is far from it. I'll readily accept my own Sonic fan bias here, but the surprising emotional hook helps the performances shine to create a film that is family-friendly fun and a delight to see. It's far from a masterpiece, but given how close it was to being a disaster, this is a victory nonetheless.
• Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (2020) - This ultraviolent origin story doesn't offer anything new. Despite the premise, Scorpion takes a backseat for massive chunks of the movie which is effectively a retelling of the original film but Scorpion is kinda with them now. The animation is gloriously bloody but even that starts to feel repetitive. This feels more like a HBO adult animated series squashed into on 80 minute film.
• Monster Hunter (2020) - An incoherent mess. The direction they chose to take with this premise is absurd and any sense of build-up or suspense is totally undercut, leaving it feeling completely unsatisfying. Somehow, they took a world of cooking cats and vivid locations and turned it into something devoid of character, life and colour. Being this bland, I can only imagine what a betrayal this must be to the fandom and their beloved world.
• Mortal Kombat (2021) - A refreshing take on the franchise that imbues it with a lot of charm, character and soul. And blood! I'm surprised to say I especially liked Kano! It takes similar cues from the origin story seen in Revenge Of Scorpion, but the fights work much better here. There's certainly underdeveloped parts, especially due to the amount of characters involved each needing some form of resolution (conveniently, it typically means killing someone). Even with the two hour run time, it still needed to rush the ending but it kept me engaged, invested and entertained throughout. I had a lot of fun!
• Werewolves Within (2021) - This was an utter delight! It's like Knives Out except there's a werewolf involved. Incredibly charming with an array of fun characters in this dark comedy. The whole mystery element starts to fade away in the third act as the body count piles up in rapid succession, but it does keep you guessing until the very end.