14 Terrible Movies That Give The Video Games They're Adapted From A Bad Name

Few Street Fighter players play the games for their engrossing stories, so any movie adaptation is facing an uphill battle. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li came out in 2009 and offered up a standard martial arts movie plot: Chun-Li is a concert pianist who learns martial arts from her father, then discovers she has a secret destiny. Critics complained about everything from the story to the acting to the fight choreography, and in the end, it managed a paltry 3% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. By comparison, Street Fighter V has an 87% positive rating on Metacritic.

It was only a matter of time until Uwe Boll showed up on this list, and now is that time. The German director is responsible for some of the worst-performing video game adaptations ever made. This time around, Boll and company discarded BloodRayne's plot about an international vampire conspiracy in favor of a revenge flick that starts with a sexual assault. When the film went on to make just $3.7 million at the box office off a $25 million budget, Boll sued star Billy Zane for $700,000. According to Boll, Zane was responsible for distributor Romar Entertainment's failure to release the film in more theaters.

The original Mortal Kombat movie, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, came out in 1995 and managed to avoid most of the pitfalls that plagued other 1990s video game movies like Super Mario Bros. and Double Dragon. Mortal Kombat didn't try to faithfully recreate the story of the Mortal Kombat games, but it did try to recreate the feel of those games. Characters are designed to look like they do in Mortal Kombat, and the movie focuses more on martial arts spectacle than on the story itself. By contrast, the sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, was directed by Mortal Kombat's screenwriter, John R. Leonetti. It featured a convoluted plot full of cliched character arcs, some that were spoken directly out loud - "So, you finally got your confidence back, huh?" It also featured too-ahead-of-its-time special effects, including 300 shots that were entirely digital. It's widely considered among the worst video game movies ever made.

Years before video games had cinematic stories to break up the action, there were games like Double Dragon - and there still are games like Double Dragon, but stay with us here. The game is simple in its elegance: the player controls one of two brothers who use martial arts to beat up bad guys across a series of increasingly difficult levels. Successful martial arts movies have had less plot, but usually, it's made up for with top-notch martial arts. In this case, Double Dragon stars Party of Five's Scott Wolf and Iron Chef's Mark Dacascos - not exactly world-class martial artists. Oh, and there's also a boat chase down the “Hollywood River" between the brothers and some ninjas on jet skis.

The 2001 shooter Max Payne seems like it would make for a solid movie. The plot follows a police detective whose wife and daughter are murdered, prompting him to seek revenge - which means lots and lots of bullet-time gunfights. Had the Max Payne movie followed that setup, it might have worked. Instead, it injected unnecessary plots about super soldiers and Norse mythology, the latter of which was only a minor theme in the games. Worst of all, the movie only had two gunfight scenes - and only one shot that used bullet-time.

The first Silent Hill movie is considered one of the better video game adaptations ever, which admittedly isn't saying much. It was directed by Christophe Gans, who used some elements from Silent Hill games, like the famed Pyramid Head, but also wasn't afraid to deviate from the source material. When writer-director M. J. Bassett came in for the sequel, she had the difficult task of continuing where Silent Hill left off, while also making the sequel more true to Silent Hill 3. Bassett later admitted she thought she tried to please the games' fans too much without servicing the audience in general.

To be fair to the filmmakers, it's not like the Assassin's Creed games are known for their plots. While fans of Assassin's Creed, the Assassin's Creed 2 trilogy, and Assassin's Creed 3 did enjoy the historical settings, the modern-day storyline about Desmond Miles and the sinister Abstergo Corporation is considered skippable at best. Even so, the games have plenty of elements that could add up to a solid movie: history-based action, parkour, memorable characters like Ezio Auditore, and a conspiracy-fueled plot. The Assassin's Creed movie ultimately wasn't able to overcome the same storytelling issues that plagued the games, as the modern-day plot felt convoluted and unnecessary. Star Michael Fassbender even admitted the movie is flawed. “I would make it more entertaining,” he said in 2017. “The feeling of the film, I think it took itself too seriously and I would get to the action a lot quicker. I think there’s three beginnings of the film, which is a mistake.”

Plenty of Resident Evil movies could have been included here - hello again, Mr. Boll - but Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the most recent, so it makes the list. According to critics, the 2021 zombie thriller is a mostly faithful adaptation of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 - and that's the problem. The Resident Evil games can be suspenseful terror-fests or action-packed shoot-em-ups, but one thing they're not is character-driven dramas. Welcome to Raccoon City didn't impress critics - it's just 30% Fresh among them on Rotten Tomatoes. It did do much better among fans, with 60% enjoying it.

Honestly, either the 2007 film Hitman or 2015's Hitman: Agent 47 could have gone here. While the big draw of IO Interactive's Hitman franchise is the stealthy, sandbox-style gameplay and creativity afforded to players, the games do also have a compelling story. Agent 47 is a genetically engineered assassin who questions his origins and protects those he cares about from a series of sinister, Illuminati-like organizations. While plenty of critics criticized Hitman: Agent 47's acting, script, and direction, one of the movie's biggest sins was its characterization of Agent 47 himself. In the games, the player is rewarded for being as stealthy and surgical as possible. In the movie, 47 is a one-man army who mows down countless bad guys. Critics were unkind to the film, with only 8% giving it a favorable view. Audiences weren't much kinder, with only 40% enjoying it (via Rotten Tomatoes).

The original Doom video game has a premise that sounds like it could fuel a movie: a space marine is stuck on Mars when an interdimensional portal opens, allowing demons to spill out. And the original concept for the Doom movie might have worked. It was supposed to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle with top-notch special effects, in the vein of Commando or Total Recall. Unfortunately for the film, the project fell into development hell for about a decade. When the film started shooting in 2004, it was a slimmed-down version of the original script that eliminated most of the monsters fans loved from the games. Producers also made the curious decision to allow The Rock to play the villain of the movie and not the hero, which went to Karl Urban.

Few players come to Borderlands for its story, it’s more about the chaotic humor, wild action, and over-the-top characters that define the experience, so any movie adaptation already has a tough job capturing that tone. The 2024 Borderlands film leans into a more conventional sci-fi plot, following outlaw Lilith as she returns to Pandora, teams up with a group of misfits, and searches for a mysterious girl tied to powerful alien technology, which, while on paper all sounds great, in execution, was anything but. Critics and fans alike took issue with nearly everything from the uneven tone to the toned-down PG-13 action and questionable casting choices, and the end result was a major disappointment. The film managed just an abysmal 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a scathing 26 on Metacritic, putting it firmly in “generally unfavorable” territory. By comparison, the games themselves remain widely praised, highlighting how much of what made the series work was lost in translation.

With the Ratchet & Clank movie, the problem was in the conception as much as it was the execution. The original Ratchet & Clank game came out in 2002 for PlayStation 2 and went on to spawn 16 more games. In 2016, developer Insomniac Games re-released the original game in high definition on PlayStation 4. Along with that, Rainmaker Entertainment released a companion movie that essentially retold the story of the game, but in movie form. Besides the story, IndieWire called it “one of digital cinema’s most painful eyesores.” Fans often want their video game adaptations to be ultra-faithful to the games that inspired them, but this is an example of why that's not always a good idea.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an action-adventure platformer that's rated as one of the best video games of all time - it sits at an impressive 92% positive rating on Metacritic. The 2010 film adaptation is less a faithful rendering of the game than an attempt to spawn a movie franchise - it was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who had already turned a Disney theme park ride into the Pirates of the Caribbean blockbuster series. According to IndieWire, Prince of Persia erred by trying to be a tentpole crowd-pleaser. It also didn't help that Jake Gyllenhaal was cast in the lead. He's an Academy Award nominee, but few think of him as an action star. Only 58% of fans and 38% of critics enjoyed the game (via Rotten Tomatoes).

The 2016 Warcraft movie tried to be a faithful adaptation of the beloved game series, recreating its locations, battle scenes, and details big and small with loving care. Problem was, the film was a bit too faithful of an adaptation. In the games, players can play as humans or orcs, and the game tries to make both sides sympathetic. The movie tried to do the same. While most fantasy stories focus on a single main character, the Warcraft movie was diluted by too many forgettable ones. Still, the fans loved it, and for Blizzard Entertainment, that was all that mattered.

The Uncharted games seem like they were tailor-made for the big screen. Each one features a globe-hopping, swashbuckling story with a strong protagonist, memorable villains, and supernatural elements. Unfortunately, with characters as iconic as Nathan Drake and Victor “Sully” Sullivan, any actor is going to have a difficult time portraying them. Ultimately, Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg just weren't able to capture the Drake-Sully dynamic from the games. On the other hand, the movie did make almost $402 million worldwide - and won over 90% of fans on Rotten Tomatoes.