Sonofoma wrote out a post about upcoming movies and how anticipated they are at about the exact same time I was coming downstairs to write a post about how bad they are.  Now, I’m not one for censoring posts, but a few of his movies that are “highly anticipated” have either already come out, or have been suspended indefinitely, so I unpublished the post.  Sorry man.

The reason for this sudden post is I finished watching “Hitman” with Timothy Olyphant.  It was bad.  Really bad.

I tried really hard to like it, and I know I’ll probably get flamed for bashing it (from even my close friends), but I had problems even making it through the movie.  I loved the games, I loved the premise of the story, I loved the character of Agent 47, I loved a lot of what constitutes a good “Hitman” title.

Too bad the film makers either didn’t share my thoughts, or had never seen a Hitman game in their life.

• I have no idea why “The Organization” (no longer “The Agency”)decided to randomly turn on their best agent, except for the sole purpose of creating some drama for this movie.  It is NEVER explained!  “Hey, a load of these assassins look like you!  Have you gone rogue?”  “Dunno, let’s just keep killing!”
• Olga Kurylenko had no purpose in the film what-so-ever except to annoy both Agent 47 and the audience and can only seem to justify her role by walking around topless.  Evidently, she’s considered an actual actress by many people in the industry (she can be see in the new trailer for the upcoming Bond film), however the director was obviously not one of those people.
• Hey look, our Russian actors can’t speak English in any sort of intelligible manner.  No one should notice these voice dubs . . . right?
• Hey look, our traveled gun for hire can’t speak Russian either!  Why were we shooting here again? Oh yeah, the cost.

I wish I could say Hitman was alone in this genre, but it’s not.  We all know them; the video game movies.  The films that some guy in Hollywood thought would be a really good idea after he noticed how addicted to the video game his kids were.

“Man, my kid can’t get enough of this ‘Ecco The Dolphin’!  We could totally make a movie out of it!”

Here’s the inherent problem with making a visual representation of a video game in a cinema format: we have already stepped into the shoes of the main antagonists, and we’ve probably done much cooler moves in game than the actor is ever going to do on screen!

So, allow me to attack this list:

• Super Mario Brothers:  When my parents took my brother and I to see this movie, they were rather surprised to hear us say “eh, it was okay”.  That’s right, a 12 year old and a 6 year old who are die hard fans of the franchise couldn’t even say it was a good movie.  Weren’t we supposed to be the target demographic?
• Double Dragon: I’m almost certain this was a “direct to video” (code for “we know it sucks”) release.  If you could cross “Big Trouble In Little China” with “3 Ninjas” this is what you get.  BTILC was at least entertaining with it’s tongue in cheek humor.  This movie just ended careers.
• Streeet Fighter: Stomach cancer didn’t kill Raul Julia . . . Street Fighter did.  Nuff said.
• Mortal Kombat:  Cheesy, but not so bad you can’t sit through it.  Of course, knowing that they failed in their goal of making the worst movie ever, the studio recast everyone and made a sequel to “FINISH IT”!
• Wing Commander:  Maybe the producer thought that if it wasn’t a well known game series, people would give the movie a chance.  It backfired and people who had never even known of the game’s existence before this movie absolutely hated it afterward.  Interesting note: If ever Freddie Prinze Jr and Matthew Lillard are in a movie together, IT WILL SUCK.
• Laura Croft: Tomb Raider: Remember what I said about Mortal Kombat?  Same applies here.
• House of the Dead – Alone In The Dark – Bloodrayne – Postal – Far Cry – Zombie Massacre:  Uwe Boll should be shot.  I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if people in the video game industry considered him to be the Anti-Christ.
• Doom – You know it was going to be bad when they showed a “First Person Shooter Cam” sequence in the trailer.  Like that, and the fact that it had “The Rock” in it were all that mattered.

I don’t know if there will ever be a reputable video game movie.  People had such high hopes for Halo, but then it got put on perma-hold and our dreams just died there.

It really says something, though, when you realize that “Mortal Kombat” and “Tomb Raider” are about as genre-defining as we can hope to get!