video game movies | the m0vie blog

232. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (-#78)

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Richard Drumm and Niall Glynn, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, John R. Leonetti’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

Liu Kang, Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage have just won the Mortal Kombat tournament, saving Earthrealm from Outworld. However, the villainous Shao Kahn does not accept victory so easily. Breaking the rules of the tournament, Kahn and his army of monsters launch a full-scale invasion of Earth. Can our heroes stop “the merger” in time?

At time of recording, it was ranked 78th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: films, mortal kombat, mortal kombat: annihilation, Movies, niall glynn, reviews, richard drumm, The 250, The Bottom 100, video game movies | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Mortal Kombat – Review in 3 Minutes”

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching 3-Minute Reviews on Escapist Movies. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of the new Mortal Kombat movie that is now available in cinemas and on HBO Max.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3 minute review, 3mr, escapist, mortal kombat, the escapist, video game movies, video games | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Edge of Tomorrow” as the Perfect Video Game Movie…

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine yesterday. With the release of Sonic the Hedgehog, I figured it was the perfect chance to revisit the best video game movie ever: The Edge of Tomorrow.

Look, I freely concede that there are maybe some slight issues with that argument, given that The Edge of Tomorrow isn’t actually or literally based on an established video game franchise. However, there’s something very compelling in the way that The Edge of Tomorrow embraces the aesthetics and sensibilities of video games in order to tell its story, offering a much more faithful replication of the experience of playing a video game than films like Street Fighter or Super Mario Brothers.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, Movies, the edge of tomorrow, tom cruise, video game movies, video games | Leave a comment »

156. House of the Dead (-#8)

Posted on November 16, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Ethan Shattock and Gerard Rooney from Disconnected Talk, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead.

In this adaptation of the beloved arcade shooter game, a rave on a remote island goes horribly wrong. A small group of friends arrive late to the party of a lifetime, only to find it has become a literal dead zone.

At time of recording, it was ranked 8th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: culture war, Ethan Shattock, Gerard Rooney, house of the dead, podcast, seaga, The 250, uwe boll, video game movies, video games | Leave a comment »

Does the Battleship Adaptation Demonstrate the Problem With Adapting Games?

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Darren

I remember laughing when Roger Ebert made a shortlist of toys and games just waiting to be adapted into big screen properties after the success of Transformers 2. How far we’ve come in so little time. When Peter Berg (director of The Kingdom and Hancock) was announced as the director of the forthcoming Battleship film, we didn’t know quite what to expect (apart from that it would likely feature Jason Bateman). That’s only natural, since the boardgame it is based upon is fairly straight-forward. Well, since the news broke that it’s going to be set IN SPACE, I’ve been wondering why that news surprises me as much as it did.