There have been countless great films adapted from books, but video games, not so much. In the three decades since the release of the first major video game-to-film adaptation, 1993’s Super Mario Bros., the genre has grown to include dozens of films, most of them not very good—and even the best of them are rarely critically beloved. But that’s not to say none of them are worth watching, if you can appreciate them for what they are. With those caveats in mind, read on for the the 20 best movies based on video games.
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1 | The Wizard (1989)
Though technically not based on a specific video game, this glorified commercial still belongs on this list, if only because basically every kid who grew up amid Nintendo’s pop culture dominance in the ‘80s and ‘90s can quote it chapter and verse. Something of a kid-friendly take on Rain Man, it stars Fred Savage as a boy who breaks his little brother Jimmy out of a psychiatric hospital and takes him on a cross country trip to compete in the Nintendo World Championships. Along the way they meet an independent girl (future indie music star Jenny Lewis) who teaches them to live on the road, dodge a bounty hunter, and try to get to the root of Jimmy’s mental trauma. Everyone they meet in their travels is obsessed with Nintendo and happy to show off the latest games and accessories (like the then-novel Power Glove). It’s a deeply weird, but weirdly entertaining film seared in the memories of a generation for offering the first exciting glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3.
2 | Super Mario Bros. (1993)
There was no easy way to adapt the pipes-and-fungi world of the Mario Bros. games to live action–but Max Headroom co-directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel’s sci-fi tale of two plumber brothers (Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo) battling humanoid dinosaur descendants from another dimension in pre-hipster Brooklyn wasn’t what most 10-year-olds had in mind in when they headed to theaters for the movie adaption of their favorite franchise. Critics likewise panned it, and the film bombed—but it has since been reassessed for its quirky cyberpunk charms and embraced by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and the now-grown generation of original fans.
3 | Street Fighter: The Movie (1994)
The other fighting game movie of the mid-1990s isn’t quite as faithful to the video games, but what it lacks in fidelity it makes up for with a supremely cheesy script and super hammy performances that make it incredibly fun to watch (in that so-bad-it’s-good way). The cast includes Jean-Claude Van Damme, pop singer Kylie Minogue, and Ming-Na Wen as members of a fighting force sent to infiltrate a military dictatorship led by the drug lord M. Bison, played by a deliciously over-the-top Raul Julia (Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Addams Family) in his final film role. It has almost nothing to do with the games (which admittedly don’t have a great deal of story beyond “fighting tournament”) and was a critical and commercial failure at the time, but 30 years later, it has become a camp classic—watchable for all the wrong reasons.
4 | Mortal Kombat (1995)
When it comes to films based on the Mortal Kombat fighting games, the 1995 original is still the best. Despite the sometimes dated CG effects, it’s still the most faithful representation of the video games’ rather absurd lore, assembling its cast of colorful heroes and villains (led by the thunder god Raiden, played by Christopher Lambert with tongue firmly in cheek) for a deadly martial arts tournament in a hell dimension, with the fate of humanity on the line. It’s all deeply goofy, but treated with just the right level of sincerity.
5 | Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Angelina Jolie seemed to be such perfect casting for the character of adventuring archeologist/aristocrat Lara Croft that Hollywood couldn’t resist turning Tomb Raider into a movie, despite game-based movies' limited success up to that point. The result was a genuine blockbuster and a fairly faithful and fun translation of the game’s treasure hunting, puzzles, and traps into Indiana Jones-style entertainment. The 2018 reboot starring Alicia Vikander tried to be more serious, but this isn’t material to be taken all that seriously.
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6 | Resident Evil (2002)
The first film based on the games about a genetically engineered virus that turns people into zombies isn’t exactly faithful to the source material, but its storyline—following a team of special agents who become trapped in a deadly medical laboratory overseen by a psychotic artificial intelligence—at least gets the general tone of tense survival horror just right. Milla Jovovich plays an amnesiac who awakens inside the facility and has to figure out who she is, who to trust, and how to get out. Little does she know that all that is waiting for her on the outside are enough zombies to populate five increasingly unhinged sequels.
7 | Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
This CGI sequel to the Final Fantasy VII game was created for fans of the PlayStation hit who, in the words of the filmmakers, “loved this world and knew friendly company therein.” Taking place two years after the game’s end, it follows hero Cloud Strife, now infected with a mysterious disease called Geostigma, as he finds himself facing off against a new incarnation of his nemesis Sephiroth. While it’s light on plot and character development, the superb music, character designs, and battle scenes make Advent Children a worthy side quest for fans.
8 | Doom (2005)
Doom is a video game about a marine who is transported into a hell dimension and must fight off hordes of demons. That’s a bit too weird for Hollywood, apparently, so instead, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his fellow soldiers travel via wormhole to an ancient city on Mars, which also happens to be inhabited by gruesome monsters (albeit with more mundane origins). But if the story is standard sci-fi action movie stuff, the sequence in which the camera takes on Johnson’s point-of-view as he runs through the city gunning down monsters perfectly captures the game’s first-person shooter milieu.
9 | Silent Hill (2006)
The film adaptation of the hit Konami survival horror series brought the games’ unnerving atmosphere to the big screen while taking more than a few liberties with the plot and lore, including swapping genders on the protagonist—from single father Harry Mason to mother Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell). In both the games and film, the parents search for their adoptive daughter, gone missing after an apparition causes the family car to swerve and crash a little too close to an eerie, fog-shrouded town filled with nightmarish creatures and dark secrets.
10 | Hitman (2007)
Vin Diesel was originally cast in this adaptation of the groundbreaking PC series about a lethal hired killer. When he dropped out, Timothy Olyphant stepped in to star as 47, a genetically-engineered elite assassin caught up in conspiracy. While the plot isn’t a high point, the film delivers satisfying action sequences and a dead-on portrayal of the iconic character by Olyphant.
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11 | Ratchet & Clank (2016)
The movie version of the PlayStation series brought the titular last-of-its-kind lombax (think: humanoid feline-rodent creature) and his robot companion to the big screen for a quest to stop Chairman Drek’s plans for planetary destruction. Aimed at younger audiences rather than those who grew up with the games, it’s a charming reboot of the title duo’s origin story that includes a few easter eggs for longtime fans.
12 | Warcraft (2016)
The film adaptation of the immensely popular online roleplaying franchise brought the epic conflict between humans and orcs to the big screen and set new global records for a film based on a video game with its 2016 release—mostly thanks to China, as it all but flopped in the U.S. Co-written and directed by Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie), the movie blends CGI and live action for a compelling dive into the WoW world and the ongoing war between orcs and humans, albeit one that works better telling the orcs’ side of things than the humans’.
13 | Rampage (2018)
Dwayne Johnson’s second stab at a video game movie is just as dumb and just as fun as Doom. Admittedly, the 1986 arcade game, in which you take control of a giant monster and set out to destroy a city by punching down as many buildings as you can, is an odd choice for a decades-later adaptation, and the film’s story is nonsense—a primatologist (Johnson) teams up with a mutant gorilla to stop a trio of giant monsters attacking Chicago. But it has it where it counts: Those giant monsters sure do knock some buildings down.
14 | Detective Pikachu (2019)
The long-running Pokémon franchise had already spawned a card game, an anime series, an augmented reality game, and more than a dozen animated films when this 2019 live action film put Ryan Reynolds in the voice (and facial motion capture) of its adorable title character, who, yes, wears a cute little detective hat as he teams up with a troubled teenager (Justice Smith) to unravel a conspiracy involved enslaved Pokémon. The film is impressive for being accessible to Pokémon newbies without disappointing longtime fans, its mystery set in the more-or-less real world where humans and Pokémon co-exist.
15 | Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Almost 30 years (and some serious CGI revisions) after Sega introduced a speedy blue hedgehog who could run circles around Nintendo’s Mario, Sonic hit the big screen, voiced by Ben Schwartz. Teaming up with a local sheriff (James Marsden), he must thwart an evil scheme by Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) in this satisfyingly speedy, high-energy, family-friendly adventure.
16 | Werewolves Within (2021)
This whodunnit horror-comedy based on the online game of the same name brings supernatural murder mystery to the picturesque yet politically divided fictional small town of Beaverfield, Vermont, where the residents waiting out a snowstorm begin to suspect one of them is a werewolf. With an 86 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it tops the site’s list of the best-reviewed video game movies.
17 | Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Even rarer than the good video game movie is the good video game movie sequel. Released just two years after the original film, and with Jim Carrey back on board as Dr. Robotnik and the addition of Idris Elba as Sonic’s echidna frenemy Knuckles, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 takes everything the first film did right—nostalgia, family-friendly charm, and game-like action sequences—and does it all even better.
18 | The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
After the disaster of 1993’s Super Mario Bros., Nintendo took pains to do things right the second time around, even if that ended up taking decades. Finally, they partnered with animation studio Illumination (Despicable Me) for a CG cartoon take on the adventures of Mario and Luigi in the Mushroom Kingdom. A super faithful (if narratively unimaginative) game-to-film translation, it’s packed with in-jokes and references to decades’ worth of Mario history, beautifully animated, and equally enjoyable for kids and the adults who grew up alongside the games.
19 | Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story (2023)
This one is sort of based on the racing video games, as it is indeed about racing cars, but it also adapts the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a British teen who parlayed his skill at playing Gran Turismo into a career as a real race car driver. The story trades on familiar sports movie tropes and a healthy degree of wish fulfillment, but the racing scenes—kinetically staged by director Neill Blomkamp (District 9)—are the real draw.
20 | Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
The 2023 film adaptation of the internet-famous game series plunges viewers into the chilling world of a security guard (Josh Hutcherson) who must battle to survive a night locked in a derelict pizza parlor inhabited by its own haunted animatronic mascots. Combining suspenseful horror with the franchise's signature jump scares and nods to its surprisingly complex lore, the film delivers an amusing if not always scary ride.
