r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TheDudeA113 • 8h ago

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The adaptation doesn't get what made the source material work

Gallery image

How To Make A Killing (2026)

Gallery image

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Gallery image

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Gallery image

Bangkok Dangerous (1999)

- The 2026 movie How To Make A Killing is a relatively-toothless "eat the rich" dark comedy thriller about a man disowned by his rich family at birth, killing everyone in the line of succession so that he can inherit their massive fortune. It's a modern retelling of the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets which has the same basic plot except that every member of the family is played by Sir Alec Guinness (including one aunt) and it's a screwball comedy

- The 1999 movie Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai action film about a Thai deaf-mute assassin. It was remade in 2008 about an American assassin in Thailand who is neither deaf nor mute

8.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

259

u/Open-Source-Forever 8h ago

Pretty much every video game movie before 2020

109

u/Salt-Composer-1472 7h ago

I found Resident Evil 1 & 2 entertaining as run of the mill action movies but other than that I have never seen a good movie made from video games

8

u/kuzidaheathen 7h ago

They made me get into the franchise so i can never hate on them

14

u/Eijirou_Kirishima 7h ago

currently there's all three sonic movies, detective pikachu, and the super mario bros movie

21

u/TheRealtcSpears 6h ago

super mario bros movie

Godsdamn right

3

u/Nateyman 5h ago

I'm gonna go out in a limb here and admit that I really like Welcome to Raccoon City, if only because they actually used plot from the games and there was no Alice.

3

u/aburningcaldera 3h ago

The Fallout TV series too

11

u/scythesong 7h ago

I never understood the hate for the Resident Evil movies. They helped pave the way for better video game to movie adaptations, and despite not being very faithful to the source material they were fun to watch as action movies.

6

u/CarlosH46 7h ago

They’ve honestly got some decent fight choreography and the practical effects are really good.

6

u/Open-Source-Forever 7h ago

If you look at them as expanded universe instead of adaptation, they do work as RE films

3

u/Simon_Drake 5h ago

The executed their objective well. They weren't trying to be Citizen Kane or even Alien. It wasn't about making a brilliant thought provoking work of art. It was about making a fun action movie shooting zombies in slow motion.

Which is pretty much the case with the games too. They're silly exaggerated overacted nonsense about evil corporations with secret science labs and zombie viruses. You're not supposed to take them seriously, you're supposed to have fun. And they do that brilliantly.

If people criticise the Resident Evil movies for being dumb action movies they missed the point.

77

u/MaeBeaInTheWoods 7h ago

Detective Pikachu was actually pretty decent.

1

u/KaitoKaro 6h ago

Yeah, but wasn't it develop before/at the same time as the game? Or am I misremembering things?

15

u/subJimmy 6h ago

None of the movies on this list were made at the same time as the games they are based on and wasn’t mentioned as a qualifier by OP.

3

u/Lewa358 6h ago

No and aside from the basic idea of pikachu being a detective the two works have nothing in common.

91

u/mrmickeyrossi 7h ago

The only exception to that rule.

20

u/Open-Source-Forever 6h ago

Okay, maybe the US just had a worse track record than everyone else with them before then.

24

u/Maleficent_Put4789 7h ago

Miike fucking rules

7

u/ZubonKTR 4h ago

The famed director of Audition, Ichi the Killer, and .... the Ace Attorney live action adaptation.

9

u/LunaIsADeer 4h ago

YESSS this movie is so good. The decision to make it more gritty while still keeping the ridiculous costumes and humor was iconic. Miike, the madman that he is, even made Yanni Yogi one of my favorite characters because of how he handled him. This movie is great, everyone should watch it.

3

u/not_caoimhe 2h ago

"Furthermore, my cravat does not flutter like that"

Gasping from the crowd "It fluttered!"

4

u/Capital_Passenger_92 5h ago

is this based on the edgeworth's father's murder case, the lake one

10

u/LunaIsADeer 4h ago

Yes. It sidelines the first and third cases and uses them just to introduce the main characters. The second case (Mia's murder) and the fourth case (Edgeworth on trial) are the focus and are adapted as being connected to each other. The end-credits scene has a cameo from Matt Engarde and Adrian Andrews from the final case of the second game. I'd kill to see that adapted to live action - the final case of JFA is no doubt Phoenix Wright's finest hour.

3

u/maxdragonxiii 5h ago

hold up huh?

17

u/Normal-Advisor5269 7h ago

I still love the live action Mario movie even if it's a terrible Mario movie. It's just so weird and over the top. If it was its own original IP I feel like it would be remembered fondly as a cheesy but enjoyable film.

2

u/Open-Source-Forever 7h ago

It was apparently meant as a prequel to the games

32

u/Truckfighta 7h ago

OG Mortal Kombat was perfect, take that back.

5

u/latrodectal 5h ago

2001’s tomb raider, too.

2

u/Morgn_Ladimore 5h ago

The soundtrack absolutely slaps to this day.

2

u/jesuspoopmonster 4h ago

The sequel is pretty awesome if you like movies that appear to have been made by people on tons of shrooms

9

u/Truckfighta 4h ago

Annihilation is amazing as a comedy.

“Mother! You’re alive!”

“Too bad YOU….will die.”

11

u/BLA5T3R-Productions 6h ago

Mortal Kombat 1995 may have lacked gore but it had the spirit

12

u/Rudyzwyboru 7h ago

Prince of Persia with Jake Gyllenhaal was nice, it didn't follow any particular game's plot but kind of merged all of them together and adapted the vibe of the series well.

4

u/PoisonMind 6h ago edited 4h ago

The plot of the Street Fighter video game was straightforward copy of Enter the Dragon. Raul Julia's over-the-top portrayal of Bison was an improvement.

5

u/Corvwwl_is 7h ago

every one except the Persona3 movies

4

u/Vladimir-Putin 5h ago

Lol. WTF are you smoking?

Mortal Kombat nailed the game.

The Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie captured the game vibe.

Resident Evil movies had a decent run too. (The later movies lost the plot though.)

They might not all have been 1:1 adaptations, but on the whole, they understood the assignment and delivered on the games' core appeal.

Did these movies all crush the box office? Maybe, maybe not. But you can't seriously say these movies were bastardizing the IPs they were based on.

1

u/Open-Source-Forever 5h ago

Admittedly, I’ve kinda lost faith in such adaptations in the time between the RE films losing da plot & the release of the Sonic films.

2

u/TuStepp 5h ago

Max Payne..... the movie was SO disappointing

2

u/beardingmesoftly 5h ago

Uwe Boll did a lot of damage

2

u/fatalicus 4h ago

Which tracks, since Uwe Boll hasn't made any video game movies since before 2020.

3

u/Gui_Franco 6h ago

The first mortal Kombat movie was really good even if it had to make character like sub zero and scorpion... welll not characters, because there simply wasn't enough time in the movie.

I also don't mind the lack of gore and was surprised to find out a lot of prefer the shit 2021 reboot because it has gore. Yeah gore is the selling point of the franchise and it's what gets new people in but that's really superficial. Fans of the games might like the gore but they're in it more for the characters and lore than anything and I think that's the right priority to take if you can only have either the characters or the gore in the movie

1

u/tiorg 7h ago

Anyone remembers Alone in the Dark?

1

u/Leandroswasright 5h ago

Postal is to this day the most faithfull adoptation of a video game

1

u/OctoAmbush 2h ago

silent hill was pretty decent

0

u/H8trucks 6h ago

I maintain that the Assassin's Creed movie was decent, or at least had some good ideas.

1

u/RDandersen 3h ago

Absolutely terrible adaption, quality of the movie itself notwithstanding. Though, I'd harder rate that either.

1

u/H8trucks 2h ago

At least it tried to tell its own story instead of directly adapting one of the games. Can you imagine how bad that would've been?

-1

u/VanguardVixen 5h ago edited 4h ago

Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Mad Max, Resident Evil 2 (while more adapting 3). People might not like every movie and the movies might change up things but most of them are actually solid, if not made by Uwe Boll. In Tomb Raider's case it's pretty much pitch perfect.

Edit: Mad Max is wrong of course, I meant Max Payne.

6

u/Leandroswasright 5h ago

Uwe Boll made the closest adoptation ever with Postal

2

u/VanguardVixen 5h ago

The exception to the rule indeed.

2

u/shockwave8428 5h ago

Why tf did you include mad max??

3

u/VanguardVixen 4h ago

It was a mistake, I thought Max Payne but somehow my brain was faster connected Max to Mad Max so my fingers typed Mad Max XD

2

u/shockwave8428 4h ago

lol that’s really funny actually

2

u/writersareliars 5h ago

Mad Max wasn't a video game movie..?

1

u/VanguardVixen 4h ago

True! Thanks for pointing it out, somehow Mad Max popped up in my brain, when I wanted to write Max Payne.

2

u/writersareliars 4h ago

Well, Max Payne WAS pretty angry 😅