The video game movie genre is definitely full of hit or misses with most misses either gaining ire from fans of the original game or performing poorly at the box office. But there have been some unexpected gems to come out of the genre that typical audiences and even fans of the game have loved in recent years.
The “Sonic the Hedgehog” video game franchise from SEGA is widely considered to be a video game classic and is loved by millions of people worldwide.
The beloved blue anthropomorphic hedgehog Sonic is the titular protagonist of the game and stars in his first big role on the silver screen in “Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)” alongside comedian Jim Carrey, who took on the role of Dr. Eggman, the primary antagonist of the Sonic universe.
The first trailer of the film released in 2019 featured a weird-looking human-like Sonic the Hedgehog with human teeth and the internet was not happy. Following this negative reaction, Paramount delayed the film by three months to redesign Sonic.
When the film was finally released, it became the sixth-highest-grossing film worldwide of 2020, gaining praise for its action, humor, visuals and iconic performances from Ben Schwartz, the voice of Sonic, and Jim Carrey.
The success of the first film led to the creation of its sequel “Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)” which met even bigger success, becoming the fourth highest-grossing video game film of all time and the 10th highest-grossing film of 2022. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” is scheduled for release in 2024.
Arguably one of the best Pokémon film adaptations to come out in recent years, “Detective Pikachu (2019)” was the first live-action Pokémon film and starred the charming Ryan Reynolds as the voice of everyone’s favorite yellow, electrifyingly cute Pokémon, Pikachu.
The film is a loose adaptation of the 2016 video game of the same name and gained praise for its world-building, visuals and Reynold’s performance and soon became the second highest-grossing video game film adaptation of all time.
More upcoming highly anticipated video game adaptations like HBO’s “The Last of Us” series starring Pedro Pascal and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” starring Chris Pratt are in the works. This goes to show that the video game movie making machine isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Whenever Hollywood actually does a video game movie right, fans and audiences are in for a fun watch.