Recency bias. There’s always been good video game movies and shows, mixed in with bad ones. Most basic example: the Tomb Raider movies were pretty great (for their time). Pokemon has been running so long that people have forgotten it was created as a cross marketing opportunity to sell the game. Mortal Combat and Resident Evil are always overlooked. Hell, even the super campy Street Fighter movie is fun.
My personal favourite is Steins;Gate.
“Entertaining” and “high quality” are meaningfully distinct characteristics. Mortal Kombat came out in the same year as Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Shawshank Redemption. Tomb Raider came out with Gladiator, Crouching Tiger, and Chocolat. Resident Evil was the same year as Fellowship of the Ring.
None of your examples compare, even for their time, with the higher echelons of what is considered (by general critical consensus rather than personal preference) artistic achievement in their medium. That’s what “good” means in the context of the article. That being said, the article points to the Mario movie as evidence of its claim, and my personal preference would consider that movie cheaply derivative (sprinkled with passion for its source material as it may be).
Thorgi’s most recent video on the Street Fighter movie is great, even for casual- or non-gamers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63M0rmeAXU
I agree on the recency bias. We tend to forget about older series and films, or watch them without considering the context of their time. This article even mentions Castlevania: Nocturne, but not the other great Castlevania series.
Was MK a dud? Maybe. But I saw that in cinema and owned it on VHS and had the soundtrack on cassette. It was a little bit of a phenomenon, same goes for the SF movie.
What I think has changed is that now they have decided to throw a little more money at these productions (actors, sets, etc.) and do the right thing by hiring consultants that know the franchise. Give the audience a little more of what they expect. Like with the NieR séries. It is essentially a walkthrough of the game and it is lovely.
Arcane was 2021 and that was amazing
I think The Last of Us is the only truly new, groundbreaking achievement the article lists. And by groundbreaking, I mean it managed to both carve out a space artistically in the “prestige TV” category, while also breaking into the pop-culture zeitgeist, as the article notes.
You’re right that Arcane was amazing, but it mainly caught the attention of game and animation fans. The Last of Us may be the property that finally convinced studios to take video game adaptations seriously and stop giving them out to commercially promising but artistically bereft filmmakers like Paul Anderson.
When Brandon Sanderson has talked about possible screen adaptations of his books, he’s started to hear people talking about an Arcane-style animated adaptation as an option they’d like. He’s mentioned that the unfortunate reality of it is that Arcane’s budget ($10 million an episode) does not match its audience - the large majority of Arcane viewers are existing League fans, and it doesn’t get the new/outside-viewer audience that a lot of producers would want to see.
As a Calgarian, it was a joy to watch the Last of Us. After years of stumbling across the sets throughout the city, the anticipation was something else (plus I really love the game). It somehow exceeded all expectations. Bummer about it going to Vancouver for season 2 though #vancouversoft
:(
