Season 1 of Fallout seen already? Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic series in which good Lucy MacLean leaves her safe nuclear fallout shelter to search for her kidnapped father among the radioactive ruins of Los Angeles 219 years after World War III? It is a direct hit from showrunner Jonathan Nolan, brother of Christopher Nolan.
The success of Fallout is a new indication that video game adaptations are in the (near) future in Hollywood. Last year, cinephiles did not carry the superhero to the grave without harm. We hoped that the demise of its blockbuster would force Hollywood to experiment. But of course it avoids it at all costs; Hollywood always looks for and finds stories that are both new and familiar. Only new scares viewers. Only familiarity bores them. Barbie was new and familiar last year.
Which brings us to video games. Game heroes and their worlds are known to billions of players who may buy a movie ticket when Master Chief or Kratos does a new trick on the silver screen. Yet the video game adaptation seemed to be under a curse for a long time. Bob Hoskins’ live action version of Super Mario Bros. became a cult film of the ‘so bad it’s good’ type in 1993, elsewhere the result was mediocre at best: Angelina Jolie as sexy archaeologist Lara Croft. The curse of the failed video game adaptation continued into the 21st century: the gray Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander. At most, gamers were enthusiastic about animated films with their heroes.
That now seems to be changing. On streaming, video game-based live action series are now often the flagships: think of fantasy series The Witcherzombie calypse series The Last of Usto a lesser extent alien shoot-em-up Halo. And so now Fallout. These games take place in unlimited worlds with unlimited series potential. And they may soon be able to translate their success on streaming into a feature film, because a change also seems to be happening in cinema: The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the biggest film hit after last year Barbieand follows the success of Detective Pikachu and two films with the old one Sonic the Hedgehog – although half of the Internet was initially in stitches about the dentures the animators had fitted for him.
A blue porcupine fighting with actor Jim Carrey no longer looks crazy
That success is often attributed to a new crop of directors who grew up with video games and therefore ‘really understand’ them. That seems like nonsense to me: at least two generations of filmmakers grew up with video games. Of greater importance is the advancement of digital technology that makes video games more realistic and live action films less realistic.
Cartoon heroes who – like Pikachu or Sonic – operate in a ‘real’ world are as old as Walt Disney or a movie hit Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But at the time that was the fruit of laborious fitting and measuring, cutting and pasting, which made those films look a bit stiff. Now you can manipulate animated and live action pixels behind the computer screen with equal ease. This bridges the gap between video games and films: both take place in unreality. Where a blue porcupine like Sonic fighting with actor Jim Carrey no longer looks crazy at all.
So it stands to reason that the void left by Marvel and DC Comics will be filled in the coming years by Fortnight, Zelda and Minecraft. Let’s see how happy that makes cinephiles.
Coen van Zwol is a film critic.
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Tags: Column game characters superheroes
