The 13 Worst Video Game Movie Adaptations of All Time

Every genre of film has a few stinkers, but the video game movie genre has more than its fair share. Movies like 1993's Super Mario Bros. and 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation are still legendary for how truly awful they are, and for how badly they miss the appeal of the source material. Luckily, Hollywood's track record has improved somewhat in recent years, with the Sonic the Hedgehog series and The Super Mario Bros. Movie showing a better way forward. Even so, there are still some stinkers out there. We're looking at you, Borderlands...

Hollywood keeps trying, that's for sure! And it would be pretty hard to sink lower than the following 12 abysmal video game movies anyway...

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Super Mario Bros. is sort of the video game equivalent of 1987's Master of the Universe, in that it's a very flimsy adaptation of the source material and spends far too much time on Earth. We're not sure what offends us more - the ridiculous take on King Koopa and his Goombas or the fact that Mario and Luigi needed gadgets to help them jump and stomp.

Double Dragon (1994)

The Double Dragon games are about two brothers moving from left to right and beating up hundreds of thugs. That's not exactly the stuff great films are made of. We have to admire this film for its attempt to create a post-apocalyptic, punk-flavored version of Los Angeles, but every aspect of Double Dragon is so cheap and poorly executed as to make it unwatchable.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

After a string of bad adaptations, 1995's Mortal Kombat proved it is possible for a game franchise to survive the transition to the big screen. Sadly, that success was not at all replicated the second time around. Mortal Kombat Annihilation is a colorful train wreck that crams in every character from the games for no other reason than because it can. The CG effects were abysmal even by 1997 standards. At least the late-'90s techno soundtrack still holds up.

Wing Commander (1999)

Wing Commander must have seemed like a logical game franchise to adapt, given that the PC games were already notable for their use of FMV cutscenes. Yet somewhere between trading series veteran Mark Hamill for Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard and botching the look of the alien Killrathi, Wing Commander completely lost touch with the appeal of the games. What was left amounted to little more than a low-budget bundle of sci-fi tropes.

House of the Dead (2003)

Director Uwe Boll became synonymous with bad video game movies in the early 2000s, and House of the Dead was the first of many misfires. There's no doubt a good movie to made out of the games and their combination of violent zombie gore and B-movie cheese. House of the Dead, sadly, didn't come even close to realizing that potential.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

Boll followed up House of the Dead with the even more dreadful Alone in the Dark in 2005. Where the games helped birth the survival horror genre and inspired franchises like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the movie is just very, very bad. It's not just one of the worst video game movies ever made, but a clear contender for the worst film of all time.

BloodRayne (2005)

2005 may just be the worst year ever for video game movies, as Boll also unleashed BloodRayne upon unsuspecting audiences. There was precious little to salvage here, and we're still not sure how Boll roped in actors like Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen for this schlocky, oversexed vampire movie.

Postal (2007)

If any Boll film can rival Alone in the Dark as the worst video game movie ever made, it's definitely Postal. As it is, the source material didn't offer the strongest foundation to build on, consisting largely of hyper-violent action and shock humor. The film merely accentuated those qualities, resulting in the video game equivalent of parodies like Epic Movie and Disaster Movie.

Max Payne (2008)

On paper, 2008's Max Payne sounded pretty swell. It adapted a well-liked shooter franchise, featured a bankable star in Mark Wahlberg and combined the stylish gunplay of The Matrix with the visual sensibilities of Sin City. Sadly, a bloated script and lousy acting ensured that Max Payne became yet another adaptation that failed to live up to its potential.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

1994's Street Fighter is a long way from good cinema, but it has a certain campy charm. The same can't be said for 2009's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. With poorly executed fight scenes and none of the colorful excess of the games, there's just nothing about this adaptation that screams "Street Fighter."

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

Flawed though it is, 2006's Silent Hill remains one of the better attempts at translating a popular video game series to film. But like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation before it, Silent Hill: Revelation lost touch with basically everything that made its predecessor stand out. Rather than channeling a sense of terror, Revelation merely collapsed under the weight of its flashy, hollow action scenes.

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)

2007's Hitman might have made this list if not for the fact that it was eventually "topped" by the 2015 reboot, Hitman: Agent 47. Agent 47 attempts to be an over-the-top action movie worthy of the '80s classics, but it's simply too bland and formulaic to leave any sort of lasting impression.

Borderlands: The Movie (2024)

If not the outright worst movie on this list, Borderlands is probably the most disappointing. We had high hopes for this adaptation, given the involvement of big names like director Eli Roth and stars Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis. But the end result is an ugly mess of a film and a real waste of the colorful sci-fi source material. No one involved looks to be having much fun in this drab Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe.

Recent video game movies include A Minecraft Movie, which scored a 6 out of 10 in IGN's review, and Until Dawn, which scored a 5 out of 10 in IGN's review.

What's the worst video game movie you've seen? Let's discuss in the comments!

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.