The last 2 years have been weird and fuzzy. The world got hit with a pandemic that no one saw coming and that we all thought would just last a couple of months. And now here we are around 3 years later still talking about covid. But even though a pandemic struck and stopped everyone on their tracks, the world of entertainment couldn’t be stopped. Actually, this was a perfect opportunity for them. People were stuck at home with nothing to do, and bad reality shows were needed more than ever. We all wanted a shitty dating show and poorly written Netflix series to keep us from losing our minds. And god damn it we got what we asked for.

Along with movies and TV shows, the gaming world also saw a massive growth and influx of people thanks to the pandemic. And it makes sense, ya know? If you are no longer able to go out with friends to a bar or travel around, or hey even going to the office, all the money that you would spend on that is now just sitting there, creating interest or some stonks thing. But the good part is that instead of using it to pay for gas to go to the office, or buying a six-pack for your friends party, now you can buy the new graphics card you wanted for your gaming PC or finally buy a Nintendo Switch. Because now you have the money to do it and god knows you have the time to play it.

During 2020 there was a massive growth in sales for all things tech. Smart TVs, tablets, phones, laptops, and yes, also a ton of gaming related tech was sold during that year. The Nintendo Switch was a pretty good selling console since it came out, selling about 13 million units in 2017 when it first came out. And the sales for the Switch kept growing each year selling around 19 million units in 2019,  but during 2020 – you know, the year when the pandemic struck the whole world – switch sales sky rocketed to around 28 million units by the end of 2020. 

And I want you to REALLY take this in, because while yes, the Switch is a very good and fun gaming console for the whole family to enjoy (#notsponsored), it had already sold something like 50 million consoles in the previous years worldwide. That’s a heck of a lot of consoles sold just by itself, but then came the pandemic and that year they sold more than half of the units they had already sold in the previous 3 years… IN ONE YEAR! That is absolutely crazy. And of course, all this massive growth in sales applies to everything. Sony with the PS5 coming out, Microsoft with the Xbox Series S and the PC gaming scene with their super overpriced graphics cards. 

But all this is to say that people were at home a loooot more and had way too much time in their hands, and yes they started watching movies and series on Netflix and Prime Video and what not, but they also started gaming, a heck of a lot more. And look, the world of entertainment already knew that people loved watching adaptations of books or games they love. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, we all know those, but the thing is, now Netflix was looking at the gaming world with funny eyes, seeing a lot of new characters and stories that they could bring to the big (TV sized) screen.

ONE ADAPTATION TO RULE THEM ALL

With shows like The Witcher releasing in 2019 and receiving a kind of good reaction from the public, Netflix and other media outlets were starting to brew plans of the worst and most feared kind to all gamers and fantasy book readers… Adaptations.

And look, I’m not saying that movie or TV adaptations of beloved books or games can’t be good. In a time before series like Arcane or the 2021 Dune movie, there were amazing adaptations like the before mentioned Lord of the Rings or animated series like The Batman series or even The Witcher games, being themselves adaptations of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski – boy aren’t you glad that you’re reading this and not listening to it. Great adaptations of amazing books and stories already existed, but Hollywood also had a bit of a history trying to adapt more complex stories, or on the contrary, trying to adapt very simple ideas like that Super Mario movie in the 90’s.

And with this new upcoming Super Mario Bros movie I’ve been thinking a lot about adaptations in general. Not only movie adaptations of books or games, but adaptations of all kinds. The most common one is of course the book to movie adaptation, but let’s not forget about the beautiful world of movie to game adaptations that plagued the world around the 2000’s. This beautiful era that brought us titles like The Bee Movie Game and Chicken Little The Game or the Shark Tale video game. And of course we have the slim world of book to game adaptations like The Witcher – although this world might start growing thanks to stories like Mistborn and Dune starting to gain attention and clearly having an easier translation into the video game world, with whispered game projects in the horizon.

And last but not least, game adaptations into the big screen. I think a lot of us gamers (queue pro-gamer horn SFX) have had a bad experience seeing our favorite games come to the big screen, or even the medium sized Netflix screen. Projects like The Witcher had good promises, but then ultimately would fail to deliver whatever it is that makes us love the story. And every once in a while we get things like Arcane, that deliver everything we would want from a video game adaptation to a TV series and they do it splendidly. 

And you know, then there’s also things like the Monster Hunter movie that are just goofy and can be pretty fun to watch, just as it is fun to watch Sharknado 2. And don’t get me wrong, I love the Monster Hunter series and have played them for quite a while now, but that movie is just goofy and shouldn’t have been made.

But hey, I appreciate its existence and how bad it is. I shall always appreciate being given the sight of Ron Pearlman in a goofy comic-con cosplay with fake hair and a comically large great axe. I am forever in your debt Sony Pictures.

Ultimately I’m trying to get to the point of saying that it’s not easy doing adaptations of any kind. And it is especially hard to get the most hardcore or passionate fans to love said adaptation, because maybe what makes them love the story or world in question is not portrayed how they would’ve liked. Let me ask you something, how many times have you seen a movie adaptation of a book with some friends for the first time, to have one of them who read the book say “yeah it was good, but I imagined that character to be way different…”. 

IT WILL NEVER BE LIKE THE BOOK… TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

Adaptations seem to miss the point of the story of a character like 70% of the time, but every once in a while, it brings a new perspective that makes us love the franchise or story even more. I know I speak for myself when I say that the 2021 Dune movie is an incredible adaptation of one of my favorite books. It has some errors here and there compared to the book of course, and to someone who doesn’t know the story it can be a pretty boring almost 3 hour movie. But to me, it was great because it captured what I love most about the world of the books and made it look cool as hell with awesome music, sets and costumes. And if I’m ever too angry about them not getting a character or story beat right, I can just go back and read the book again.

At the end of the day adaptations are just that, an adaptation. A bad movie based on an awesome book or video game doesn’t make the original material bad or change it, if anything it just makes you want to go back to the original and re-experience it. 

I think that book adaptations into other things, be it a game, a movie or a TV series are a bit easier, because it is an already established world with rules and characters that inhabit it. What people are usually the most disappointed about these type of adaptations aren’t necessarily the story beats, but the way a character or a setting is portrayed, and the main reason for that is because it’s different from the head cannon they created about the world in their head. So of course you would be mad at that, but also, it’s a compromise some people are willing to make to enjoy such adaptations.

Now, the problem with adapting a video game into something else is that you are taking a key part of what makes a video game a video game, and that is that… Well, that it’s a game. You are meant to play it. Interact with it and explore at your own leisure and pace. One thing is to cast an actor that gives off the right vibe for a character because the only description you get of such a character in the book is reading its name. But another thing is to see an actor or actress that portrays a character in a world you know by heart in a completely different way than how you saw or experienced a world first hand. YOU explored that world. YOU fought that dragon and saved the princess. And YOU are the one who discovered the hidden treasure in an abandoned tomb. But in a movie or TV series, you’re just sitting there being forced to watch an actor “trying to solve a puzzle” for 15 minutes instead of just glitching through the wall and killing the boss in two hits like you did.

Playing a game is fun, hell, watching someone play a game is fun. But watching someone “play” through a game while making dumb decisions to make drama is boring, more so if you already know what’s coming and how the story ends. And thanks to this, sadly not all game adaptations will be good and we just have to deal with that and enjoy what we can. 

And I think we can all agree The Last of Us is the pinnacle of what adaptations can be. So take a hint Netflix. Stop trying to make shitty live action adaptations of anime.