As 'Warcraft' Makes Box Office History, Video Game Movies Are Still 'Waiting For Superman'

Warcraft is going to become the biggest video game adaptation ever made. That much is certain. It may hit $500 million, or it may crawl to $450m or less, but its place in cinematic box office history in terms of overseas might alongside domestic failure is assured. As of this writing, the Duncan Jones adaptation has earned $306m worldwide. So by today, it will be at or very close to the $311m global total of The Angry Birds Movie to thus become the third-biggest video game movie ever made. Actually, if the $160 million Universal/ Comcast Corp. release didn’t pass Angry Birds to take the silver medal yesterday, it certainly will today.

Speaking of which, Sony's  The Angry Birds Movie is just the second (in a group that now includes three) video game adaptation ever to earn over $300 million globally. And when it hits $100m (it's at $98m now), it will be only the second video game movie to cross said milestone. At this juncture, we may see a situation where The Angry Birds Movie is the second-biggest video game movie in America (behind Tomb Raider's still untouchable $131 million cume from way back in 2001) and worldwide (behind Warcraft). At worst, the $73m Rovio production will end the summer in second place domestically (sorry, Warcraft isn't getting to $100m over here) and third place (behind Warcraft and Prince of Persia’s $336m total) worldwide.

So yes, it is interesting that after 23 years (since Super Mario Bros.) of mostly whiffed/underperforming video game films, we have two $300 million+ grossers (and presumably the first $400m+ grosser) opening overseas within two weeks of each other. And yet, looking at the top three such films around the world, they are arguably successful only in comparison to other video game movies.

You've got a mega-budget fantasy that was saved from utter disaster by China. You've got a $200 million fantasy adventure from Walt Disney that still qualified as a bomb. And you've got an animated feature based on an obscenely successful and well-known property that, while still successful thanks to its low-ish budget, still pales compared to other animated features from the same studio such as Hotel Transylvania and The Smurfs. And of all the thirty-seven video game adaptations we’ve seen since Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper did the Mario, none of them have been well-reviewed in the slightest.

Angry Birds has the second-best Rotten Tomatoes score of them all with a whopping 42%, just behind Sony’s massive 2001 flop Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (44%).  Nearly 25-years after Hollywood tried what would be the first modern video game adaptation, the sub-genre of video game movies are still “looking for Superman.” We’re still waiting for that video game adaptation that gets strong reviews and snags big box office bucks and offers Hollywood actual proof that this thing can work.

To be sure, there are plenty of movies that used video game language and/or plotting (Edge of Tomorrow, John Wick, Inception, etc.) to relatively strong reviews and/or solid box office. And the Resident Evil franchise is an unquestionably big success in the all-too-rare realm of B-movie franchises while the first Tomb Raider was a hit. But in terms of an outright video game adaptation that basically offers undisputed evidence that such a thing can be a critically-acclaimed box office hit, well, we still haven’t gotten that. And we haven’t gotten that despite our current generation of film critics being the very adults who grew up with a steady diet of video games as thus without the automatic disdain for the art form that came from the previous generation.

Even if you argue that Warcraft is the first big-budget blockbuster video game adaptation that may spawn the first blockbuster video game franchise, the fact remains that critics did not take to it while the massive front-loading even in China (it earned $91 million in the first two days but yet just $169m in the first week) indicates that paying consumers aren’t exactly thrilled with the results. So the question, as we await Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, and whatever else is coming down the pike is this: Why can’t Hollywood somehow make a universally acclaimed (or at least universally half-heartedly endorsed) action movie that just happens to be based on a video game?

Hollywood has made acclaimed and successful movies based on theme park rides, action figure lines, and kids’ building block toys. We’ve made great movies based on bad books, blockbusters based on cult comic books, and any other would-be source material adaptation under the sun. Why is the video game the one source material that continuously eludes us? It’s not source fidelity since Batman Begins was no more “accurate to the comic” than Batman & Robin. It’s not the legitimacy of the originating material since The LEGO Movie was a critically-acclaimed blockbuster just two years ago.

This is the part where I spend a paragraph explaining “why” this is the case, but I honestly couldn’t tell you. You’d think in all these years that Hollywood would have accidentally made a universally appreciated genre film that happened to be based on a video game. With the caveat that I’m sure you have a couple offerings that you enjoy more than the critics did (I famously enjoyed Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life), that 0% batting average along with general box office rejection almost defies scientific probability.

Will we ever get that would-be Superman: The Movie or Spider-Man that sends the genre into supernova? Or will the proverbial powers that eventually decide that 25-30 years is enough time to spend on an idea that has never actually worked as intended? We all hoped that Angry Birds and/or Warcraft might have broken the spell. And while they will both gross lots of money around the world, they are still added to the pile of poorly-reviewed and poorly (or indifferently) received video game adaptations. Your move, Assassin’s Creed.