It’s no secret that video games have not always been of the best quality when adapted to the big screen. Thus, many are under the pretense that if a show or movie is based on a video game, then it won’t be worth watching. However, times do seem to be changing, and perhaps a new era for video game adaptations is upon us.

The franchise that has always set the standard in gaming is “Mario.” But when it came to movies, the bar was set low. The original Super Mario movie, titled “Super Mario Bros,” is a total joke. There is hardly any correlation between the games and the movie besides some of the character names. It not only fails at being a good “Mario” movie but is a chore of an experience to get through.

This trend of awful adaptations continued into the 2000s with some examples being “Doom,” “Silent Hill” and “Hitman.” While not all of these were terrible, they had a tendency to stray from the source material. It was as if Hollywood felt that the stories and worlds video games presented were lesser than that of movies and TV shows, so they needed to be altered.

However, going into the 2020s, video game adaptations do seem to be improving. Three of the most notable instances of this are “Sonic the Hedgehog,” “Arcane” and “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.” All of these take the original source material and expand on it in interesting ways that still pay respect to what they’re based on.

But video game adaptations still do appear to be on a bit of a bumpy road with two less than stellar adaptations recently releasing, these being “Halo” and “Resident Evil.” While “Resident Evil” seemed to just try and bank off brand recognition, “Halo” once again followed the trend of Hollywood workers believing they can tell a better story than the one told in the game.

Nevertheless, 2023 has proven that adaptations don’t need to change the source material to be successful, with two of the biggest pieces of entertainment of the year being “The Last of Us” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Both of these accurately adapt the source material while still adding a bit of their own flavor to differentiate them from the games.

With the high performance of these projects, the future of video game adaptations looks bright. Although one can only hope that they’ll continue to pay respect to what they’re based on instead of just being soulless cash grabs.