The streaming wars have brought a lot of negatives — shorter seasons, longer hiatuses, ever-rising subscription fees, and an endless succession of franchise spinoffs — but one of the upsides has been the proliferation of prestige video game adaptations. Video game adaptations have been notoriously terrible for as long as they’ve been around. Between the Bob Hoskins Mario movie and all those Uwe Boll atrocities, some of the worst movies of all time have been based on video games.
Even a well-made movie just can’t recapture the thrill of holding the controller for yourself, and we’ve seen that in the Doom movie, the Uncharted movie, both of the Hitman movies — they recreate the action of the games, but it’s just not the same when you’re not the one doing the shooting and climbing. But shooty-shooty gameplay isn’t the only thing the medium has to offer. A big, sprawling video game like The Last of Us or Shadow of the Colossus or Ghost of Tsushima has literary storytelling, vast cinematic landscapes, and deeply engaging character development worthy of a premium TV drama.
Over the past couple of years, masterfully crafted, emotionally resonant TV masterpieces like Arcane and The Last of Us and Fallout have lifted the video game adaptation curse. Now, when our favorite video games are picked up by a Hollywood studio, we don’t have to dread the inevitable disappointment, because HBO’s Last of Us TV show has proven that it won’t necessarily be a disappointment.
HBO is following up The Last of Us with a Baldur’s Gate 3 series, so the network is clearly trying to become the go-to place for prestige video game adaptations on the small screen. And so far, it is. But a different streaming service is coming to challenge HBO for its video game crown: Prime Video.
Amazon Is Cornering The Market On Video Game Adaptations
The Last of Us proved that a video game adaptation didn’t have to be a let-down. But The Last of Us already played like a prestige HBO drama in video game form; it has some of the most cinematic cutscenes, and some of the strongest writing and character work, in the history of gaming. The TV series copied some of the game’s cutscenes verbatim, because the dialogue was already good enough for HBO.
But not every video game is like that. The real test was whether a game like Fallout — where the player’s imagination decides everything — could be adapted for television, and Amazon was up to the challenge. Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy managed to create a Fallout series that feels like the definitive Fallout experience, despite the fact that, by the very nature of those games, everyone’s experience of Fallout is different. Prime’s Fallout show recaptured the gonzo Mad Max-infused post-apocalyptic visuals, but it also recaptured the anti-capitalist satire at the core of the games.
Prime Video did something truly spectacular with Fallout, and it’s just getting started. The streamer is also working on two more big-budget shows based on two more video game franchises — and they’re two of the biggest, most recognizable, most cinematic I.P.s in gaming, so they seem like a safe bet.
Prime Video is currently in production on a God of War TV show, based on the Norse-era games, and a Tomb Raider TV show, starring Sophie Turner as Lara Croft. Both of these shows have the potential to be as big as The Last of Us and Fallout, and if they are, then it’ll solidify Prime Video as the best place for video game-based television. It’s a very specific niche, but billion-dollar-grossing Mario and Minecraft movies have made video games Hollywood’s hottest new commodity.
The Last of Us
8/10
- Release Date
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January 15, 2023
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Craig Mazin
- Directors
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Craig Mazin, Peter Hoar, Jeremy Webb, Ali Abbasi, Mark Mylod, Stephen Williams, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, Nina Lopez-Corrado