‘Super Mario Bros’ and ‘The Last of Us’ make history and inaugurate the first golden age of video game adaptations

That video games were not well adapted to the cinema is a refrain that we have been hearing for decades. However, the same was said twenty years ago about superhero comics (except Batman and Superman) and, if we go back much further, about science fiction in general. The truth is that the Holy Grail, the secret of success in Hollywood has changed a lot, if at one time they were the western and musicals, in another it was historical films, then science fiction and infantilized fantasy, lately they have been superheroes and connected universes such as television series. But just as Hollywood praises you, it also kills you. The truth is that most of these currents of success have been synonymous with failure in other times. Now everything points to the fact that the future of Hollywood is video games, and it’s neither bad nor good, it just is.

Video games have been the entertainment industry that moves the most money in the world for several years. They have spent so many years being so that it is no longer just a thing for young people, it is a thing for young people and those who were young twenty years ago. It was, therefore, only a matter of time before such an industry took over, always speaking in economic and market terms, its older and weaker older sister, the cinema and, by extension, television. It only took one product to hit the target, but there have been two at the same time. The series of the year is ‘The Last of Us’ and the movie of the year, at least in terms of success, ‘Super Mario Bros: The Movie’.

The success of Mario and Ellie, the beginning of the reign of video games

Although video games are an absolutely massive industry, one that moves more money than movies and music combined, there are many viewers who have no idea of ​​the medium. Something similar happens with anime, or you are initiated or you have no idea, there is a barrier. Of course, this barrier is getting weaker, and although there are people who still consider video games something “for children” or “for geeks”, we can already say very clearly that anyone who thinks that is completely outdated. It is, not to entertain us anymore with them, an asshole like Mario after a big mushroom banquet. Anyone who doesn’t play video games and brags about it is like everyone else who doesn’t read and says it with pride, an uneducated bragging about his embarrassment.

That video games are an immense and complex art, although still young, is demonstrated by the disparity in the sources of these two successes. Mario was born in the eighties by the Japanese Nintendo, and is a colorful IP for the whole family. ‘The Last of Us’ did it just ten years ago by the American company Naughty Dog (under the aegis of the Japanese PlayStation) and gives us a dramatic story full of complex characters and adult plots. And both have conquered the public at the same time.

‘Super Mario Bros: The Movie’ was released just three weeks ago and has already surpassed $700 million. It is going for a billion at a great pace, a figure that has not been achieved by much less ‘Ant-Man 3’, by Marvel. In fact, the two films that follow Super Mario at the box office are Chinese productions, but to not complicate this too much, let’s continue to focus on the Western market with Hollywood as the axis. Neither Amazon’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’, nor ‘The Mandalorian’ and Disney’s Star Wars universe, much less all the content fast food from Netflix have overshadowed ‘The Last of Us’ both in criticism and in number of viewers or as a viral and social phenomenon. Not only that, within HBO itself, ‘The Last of Us’ ended up surpassing ‘House of the Dragon’ in audience, a derivative of the success of television hits, ‘Game of Thrones’.

The two installments of Sonic and ‘Uncharted’ gave good box office figures despite being very poor products. For some reason Netflix insists on releasing horrible ‘Resident Evil’ series… The interest was there, you just had to hit the target. With ‘The Last of Us’ the secret has been the fidelity and good dramatic work of HBO, which has surprised locals and strangers by transferring the story of Joel and Ellie to television without losing an iota of complexity. At the other extreme is Mario, who has successfully transferred his massive and familiar character to the big screen thanks to the formula of ‘The Minions’. The first one also conquered the critics, the second one did not, but both have shown that the adaptation of video games can be the new fever of the market.

Of course, there will be adaptations of video games that do not conquer the public, after all, finding a successful product is not even easy. But just like Marvel makes several hundred million from its worst movies… Look at what Sonic has grossed.

And what will happen to the superheroes?

Nostalgia and the fan phenomenon is causing the falls of kings not to be as drastic as they were historically. Just as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or the Addams Family continue to be successful products, so superheroes will always be. But it escapes no one that the Marvel phenomenon has been showing signs of exhaustion for several years (all of Phase 4 to be exact), and that the massive number of products does not favor that feeling. His numbers will still be good, but Mario has made it clear to Disney that his reign is no longer untouchable. Thirty years ago, few imagined that the kings of the box office were Black Panther or Wonder Woman, that you could ask anyone who has not read a comic in her life if it was more from DC or Marvel. In ten years it is easy for us to imagine that someone who has not picked up a controller in their life can answer whether they are more PlayStation or Xbox based on whether they like the new ‘Halo’ movie or the new ‘God’ series better. of War’. The same happens with family cinema, Disney and Nintendo. We can’t think of a future in which ‘Frozen’ and ‘Moana’ have marked more childhoods than Mario and ‘Pokémon’.

Is it a bad thing, a good thing? It’s the market friend (sorry, I couldn’t help it). If you are a fan of westernPerhaps you are angry to see that the market gave it up more than half a century ago, if you think that superhero comic book adaptations are the best in the world, we understand that you disagree. If you like video games, you may be excited to see movies and series from ‘God of War’, ‘Halo’, ‘Gears of War’, ‘Resident Evil’, ‘Silent Hill’, ‘Uncharted’ coming to fruition. , ‘Ratchet & Clank’, ‘Zelda’, ‘Final Fantasy’, ‘Bioshock’, ‘Diablo’, etc… If, like us, you simply like good movies, all you have to do is watch them and give your opinion.