10 MOST popular movies influenced by video games

It is a universally unspoken but agreed upon law among gamers that they ought to hate the films based on their beloved video games. After the critical failure of Assassin’s Creed (IMDB: 5.9, Rotten Tomatoes: 18%) despite its talented cast, it appears that these two industries just can’t get along. While the top-notch graphics and enticing storylines of modern video games continue to make billions in their industry, the films following the same path continue to be hated among critics. However, over the years some films have managed to make a good impression on their perfectionist fans through cleverly followed storylines and/or techniques from video games. Here’s a list of films that are based on video games, and loved by the fans as well.

Edge of Tomorrow | Call of Duty

Tom Cruise gave face to this sci-fi film which follows the storyline of a soldier reliving a day over and over again. The story started as a Japanese comic series named All You Need is Kill. The writer came up with this idea after noticing how video games used death to train players- turning them from beginners to veterans- just like this film’s hero. As if the video game inspiration wasn’t clear enough, the film included the use of robotic exoskeletons which were introduced in the famous video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare which was officially released just a few months later.

District 9 | Halo

An original adaptation of the popular video game Halo is yet to be made. But when Peter Jackson was producing District 9  back in 2006, he saw Neill Blomkamp as the perfect director for the project. Blomkamp turned heads by making CG characters with low-fi camera work and realistic sets instead of massive green screen spectacle only. But when Halo movie plans were cancelled, Jackson decided to produce Blomkamp’s District 9 instead featuring aliens, weapons, conflicts and action scenes from a first person shooter’s perspective. The film was based on one of the short films of the director but many argue that this is as close a vision as any to a Halo adaptation by Blomkamp.

Crank | Grand Theft Auto

No game series has taken as much heat as Grand Theft Auto, embracing violence, destruction and general carnage in the name of fun. The movie Crank took that dedication to heart literally – with a hero who needs to keep his adrenaline pumping just to stay alive. The directors made the similarities to chaotic gaming obvious, including nods to video games throughout the movie, and even going completely into the digital world in the film’s final credits, putting star Jason Statham exactly where his character belongs: a bullet-fueled 16-bit shooter.

Zombieland | Left 4 Dead

Pitting four survivors with a sense of humor against an army of the undead made Zombieland a hit, but one video game series was using zombies for fun, not fear long before. The zombie shooter Left 4 Dead followed the same formula, even shaping its campaign and marketing to resemble a Hollywood film, but fans soon turned the game into an online sensation, where hilarious kills were the top priority. Zombieland kept the sense of humor and tension, and even “Kills of the Week” competitions intact, not to mention a finale set in a zombie-filled amusement park - a location included in Left 4 Dead 2, released shortly after the movie.

Die Hard / Dredd / The Raid | Gears of War

Modern gamemakers can dream up entire universes, but games made in the ‘80s and ‘90s had to rely on levels, and chains of boss battles for success. Die Hard may be the most famous movie to actually take the idea of fighting enemies from level to level literally, but the original writer’s idea for the story was basically a live-action version of Elevator Action, a game released just a few years earlier. Since then, films like Dredd and The Raid: Redemption have embraced the same structure, sending heroes up against gangs of enemies, mini-bosses and one massive final battle to achieve victory. The confined settings and levels may just be a way of keeping a story simple, but the solution is one that game developers were the first to really exploit.

Pacific Rim| Mechawarrior/ Rampage

The story of giant mechs fighting giant monsters pulled from decades of Japanese anime and films, but director Guillermo del Toro didn’t copy any one movie when developing his own. But as a die hard gamer, it’s no surprise to see futuristic pilots in virtual reality helmets working in unison to launch special attacks, taking on more and more difficult enemies. Del Toro even called on a star of the Portal game series to supply the voice of his own futuristic combat robots.

Sucker Punch | Final Fantasy XIII

Zack Snyder’s adventure of female warriors was an original idea, but Sucker Punch took its influences from 20th century warfare, steampunk, Japanese mecha and anime as much as any modern fantasy game. Whether it’s Nazi Zombies made famous by Call of Duty, or mixing bullets and blades with dragons and orcs like Final Fantasy and too many role-playing games to count, the source material is clear. Snyder stated that he wanted the movie to be less chaotic than a video game, but the constant need to defeat waves of enemies or steal key quest items was spotted by critics and their comparisons to one massive video game adventure weren’t usually meant as a compliment.

Act Of Valor | Call of Duty 4

Some of the most popular and profitable video games in history have followed elite soldiers into battle, with the Call of Duty series painting the picture of modern war for a generation. So when the minds behind Act of Valor turned to real Navy Seals, not actors to show audiences what war really looks like, video games were impossible to ignore. With millions of gamers experiencing combat down the barrel of a gun, the directors made sure to recreate that sensation in live-action. You could say that video games simply copied the real tactics of the soldiers, but filming and editing them to look like a game is something else entirely.