Why Video Game Movies like "Mario", "Sonic" and "Pokemon" are Designed to Fail.

Normally I would ramble about something related to animation, but due to my desire to keep things fresh as well as my crippling ADHD, i'm going to mix things up a little. I usually I like to stick to animation on this page, but instead I’m going to discuss some characters that are about to be animation.  Today we are diving into Sonic The Hedgehog, Detective Pikachu and Mario and problems ahead that could cause all these properties to crash and burn at the box office. It’s fun to make fun of these movies as cash grabs and dismiss them as memes but there is an oddly consistent pattern of bad video game movies. As I write this the highest Rotten Tomato rating for a video game movie is a whopping 51%. “Tomb Raider (2018)” has the lackluster honor to be placed in that spot. Video game movies are notorious for shameless fan service and such a lack of understanding of the source material, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out George Lucas somehow had his hand in all of them. So why is this? Why are video games making so much money on their respective consoles but falling completely flat when it comes to the box office, a market that loves shoveling familiar trademarks down everyone’s throats. So I’m going to explore the 3 video game “big boys”, Mario, Sonic and Pokemon, and see if they have what it takes to make a half decent movie. 

Let’s start with Sonic the Hedgehog, the blue anthropomorphic speed demon that, I think is going to crash and burn the hardest during his transition to the silver screen. But why was Sonic created in the first place? Sonic was originally created as a cool alternative to Mario. While Mario was jumping around with to jazzy music and hills with smiles on their faces, Sonic was racing through rollercoaster-like labyrinths. This totally worked in the 90’s. Thanks to Sega, Sonic single-handedly knocked Mario off his throne and made him share his video game spotlight. The problem with that is “cool” is not timeless. What is cool in the 1991 is not the same as what is cool in 2019. We are constantly defining cool differently throughout the seasons, however Sonic remains the same. He’s a bight blue animal mascot with red shoes and I guess now he has a scarf? Through the years in an attempt to keep Sonic as a marketable franchise, there have been 4 American cartoons, 2 anime cartoons , 2 comics (each of which have their own cannon), and a wide variety of games that spans over 5 generations of consoles. All these pieces of media appeal to a different type of fan. To quote Ian Danskin, “Sonic doesn’t have an audience… …he has like 20, and they don’t get along”. So How does sonic stay true to himself while also becoming a fully realized character that a cinematic experience requires? Personally I have no idea. And I feel really badly for the folks that have been tasked with the responsibility of doing so.  So far from what I’ve seen from the leaked marketing of the Sonic movie, they are just going to stick with the “cool” formula that Sonic was created with. He’s probably just going to be some rebellious guy that’s “gotta go fast”. He’s not going to care about anyone else until he does and then he saves the day with the help of his newly made friends. That is clearly a simplification but I feel like it fits so well, some hack producer has absolutely thought of it and pitched it as a good idea. What does it take to make Sonic a success? More on that later, first let’s move on to the king of video games himself, Mario. 

Mario is single most well known video game character of all time. The symbol of his hat is so universal that even some loser that’s never played a Mario game will still know what he is and what he does. That’s because Nintendo has done the exact opposite with Mario that Sega did with Sonic. They have kept everything as simple as possible. Mario is a man that jumps. That’s it.  Sure he occasionally spins, dives, hovers, any flies to space, but there is only one thing you are required to do to beat a Mario game, and that’s jump. Excluding the hundreds of Mario spin-off titles, Nintendo has always been able to bring a bubbly and straightforward attitude into the way we play Mario games. But that is the core of the problem when it comes to creating a movie around our mustached man. Nintendo has never distinguished any kind of personality for Mario. Ever. You could say he’s determined or able, but those aren’t real character traits. When you’re creating a platformer that is meant to test acrobatic skills, the way the character feels doesn’t matter. You’re too busy trying to keep away from the lava underneath you.  Nintendo focus has always been to create an experience that is fun to play, and the rest can come later, if at all.  So when creating a story about Mario do you make him the blank slate he is now or do you give him a character that might alienate some of the audience due to their lack of familiarity with the source material? We’ve suddenly wound up in the same spot Sonic is in. Everything about Mario was created with the intention of putting him in a game, and none of those specific aspects translate naturally to the big screen because it’s a completely different medium. I just hope the story we get isn’t another Mario saves the princess story. It’s been done so many times in so many ways to dwell on that plot line now would be predictable and boring. Before I go on about Mario and Sonic we have one more video game titan to discuss. Pokemon. 

The nostalgic value behind Pokemon is so immense it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around sometimes. I haven’t played the original Pokemon games in years but I find myself drunkenly googling Pikachu plush dolls on amazon at least once a month. So what made these games so immersive? In part, I think it was because it was the first of it’s kind to create a vastly customizable RPG that allowed people to really connect with their characters they were playing with. But more importantly, Pokemon was able to create one specific through line between all of its media. If you watched the anime show, you could probably learn something about the game that you could apply and the same goes for comics, toys, movies, games, handbooks, trading cards, etc. Having everything work together is a genius marketing move and has no doubt aided in Pokemon’s success for over 2 decades. So now, in 2019, what does the new Detective Pikachu movie do? They make Jigglypuff look like a hairy thumb. Its not to say that the Pokemon movie will be bad for that reason, I think it has a lot going for simply for the wide variety of themes and characters they can explore (not to mention the trailers they have put out look really incredible). It could easily go south very fast but It looks like everything is on the path to success. But they definitely have a lot of work to but as long as the themes of the movie connect with how jarring most of the Pokemon look, "Detective Pikachu" should be a jam. 

Here’s the thing. These movies are all virtually guaranteed to make money simply because of what names they have attached to them. But whether they will be entertaining films is still up for debate and will be for quite some time. The most important thing to remember is that these games were developed to be played and not watched. If I was creating a movie from a video game like Mario or Sonic I would want to center around a character learning that Mario has never been the amazing one, it’s been the player. Mario, Sonic, Rayman, Crash Bandicoot, Knack, Bubsy, Gex, Banjo Kazooie, Pac Man, and Mega Man are just tools to be used to complete a task. The real hero is the player because they are the one who finds taking down the bad guys fun. That’s what makes you unique and special. They are the one that picked up the controller, they are the one that did the work. At the end of the day, its not about the mascots, it’s how you use them. I’d love to see at least of these movies touch on themes of determination and grit overpowering the feeling that you don’t matter in a flashy colorful world that seems overbearing and crazy. We will see. 

Let me know what you think about my nonsensical ramblings. 

Thank you so much for reading! I love writing for you guys and can’t to get you more content!