Why Are Video Game Movies So Bad?

Video games with good stories usually don’t need to be made into movies

As I write, I’m cringing and shaking my head at a TV screen. I am simultaneously writing, doing work, and watching a movie — but it’s not just any movie, it’s a movie adaptation of one of the most addictive video games I ever played: Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker.

By its name, you can probably tell that the movie is an adaptation of the Dragon Age video game series, but even though I know the background of the plot and had a lot of fun playing all the Dragon Age games, I can’t help but feel that the cutscenes in the games were better than the movie.

In the movie, the plot makes no sense. The animation is bad. The graphics are subpar. It’s not funny. I feel no emotional connection to any of the really generic characters, and I could go on for hours shitting on this movie.

The nature of the adaptation gives me a startling trend: why are video game movies so horrible? Why, in the words of Paul Tassi at Forbes, does “history dictates that the movie has a pretty high chance of being bad, or at best, average”? The trend doesn’t start nor end at Dragon Age — there was Resident Evil, Warcraft, Tomb Raider, and Mortal Kombat. Sure, there are video game movies that are alright, but I haven’t seen any…