The Besties - The Video Game Movie Canon with Kahlief Adams

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

With the McElboys on tour, Plante and Frushtick bring in a special guest, Kahlief Adams of the Spawn on Me podcast, to talk about just what makes a great video game movie, and whether we could narrow down five that best represent the medium. Also, what's up with those Goombas? Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Cleef, you know, I don't know if you, you probably might have missed our discussion in recent days about the difference between roasting, boiling, or, wait, let me start again. Oh my gosh, you don't even know how to talk about it, you're so bad. The question is if there's a difference between roasting, boiling, wait, no, oh my god. Broiling, yeah, you're messing it up too ah and baking broiling and baking yes yes and and there is yeah there is yeah and we talked about like people were bringing up like there's just a heat thing like oh baking is over 400 degrees but i have a button that says bake and you can bake things under 400 degrees. It has nothing to do with the number of degrees for baking. Oh, I'm so happy we brought you on that.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with that. It's all about, it's the difference between baking for or around a temperature. So like the temperature, the heat that is already in the box is what's cooking your food because over a certain amount of time, that heat just accumulates and then the food gets cooked. Broiling is about a heat element because a heat element, it has to be really close to the food. Sure. And basically that's it. That's amazing. That's all I needed.

Yeah, so two different, that's the two different things. It's like cooking because of hot and cooking because of direct heat. Now, what is the difference between a informative cold open and a funny cold open? Because I feel like this might be a lesson that Fresh Dick needs. I think it can be both. I think learning can be fundamental Yeah you're like a big Bill Nye Beakman's world

You want to bring back We might need a puppet or something You can just do the like You have to go through the like metric conversions It was like alright so if you're boiling water At 212 Is it actually Because you know the numbers

Are a little different from where you're at. I'm just happy nobody tried to get you with, like, so what does boiling do? Like, if you don't know boiling, then I'm mad at you. No, I know boiling. I'm good on boiling. It's all good. It makes bubbles. I'm good. I'm good. See, I'm an expert. I'm a cook.

Well, I want to thank everybody for coming and listening to the show this week. That's been another episode of The Besties. Next week, we'll be talking about saturation versus super saturation. We look forward to talking to you then. Damn, I love Mr. Wizard. Thank you to everyone who's over a certain age who remembers Mr. Wizard. Shout out to y'all.

My name is Russ Froschek and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best video game movie of the week. Ooh, I'm Khalifa Adams, and I kind of know everything else. That's all we needed. Welcome to the Besties. It's a video game club that goes all year long, and just by listening, you'll remember. And I so rarely do the introduction that I only halfway remember it, i think i got it pretty good you did pretty okay well yeah i'm okay as as folks

probably heard we have a very special guest today uh the the mackle brothers uh are on tour they're touring the midwest is my understanding and uh so we've replaced them with someone that is greater than the sum of their parts. Kalief Adams, welcome. Thank you so much for having me, boys. Kalief is the host of Spawn On Me, which is a really terrific podcast. If you could sort of introduce it, I won't do it justice. So please. Yeah, it's a show that I've been doing for almost a decade now, which is wild to say out loud.

And it's been, you know, kind of at the forefront of the conversation around diversity and inclusion in the video game space, at least in terms of spotlighting folks of color and from underrepresented groups. So it's been an interesting, interesting, interesting ride, but it's been super fun. It's been super fun. Yeah, it seems like you guys have really just, there isn't enough of that, which bums me out, but you guys are obviously holding the torch and conveying it as it becomes more and more important in not only the video game space, but everywhere. Which, quite frankly, is why we brought you on today,

because we want to talk about video game movies. Yeah. Also in need of diversity and inclusion and equity. Yeah, as in like a wider range of good versus bad. Yeah. Oh, I mean, the race is this very big valley in between the good layers of that mountain range for sure. Khalif, it does sort of seem like we're in this, before we get into the meat and potatoes

of this episode, which is indeed about video game movies, it does sort of seem like we're in this very weird period. You've been doing it a very long time, as have we. I can never, I really cannot remember a slower period of april slash may from a video game release standpoint it's it's one of those weird things where it's like you know you you're so used to like like last year was nuts it seemed like everything was rolling super super fast the beginning of this year was super wild too february was was just like unbelievable yeah and then the faucet shut off or at least the faucet that I care about shuts off.

Cause there's a bunch of stuff that drops, but I'm just like, I don't want to, I don't want to play that. Like it's a weird thing to say, I'm going back into my back catalog already and trying to get through my like, uh,

games. I just never played list this early in the year, but I feel like we're also going to say we can't take it anymore in a couple of months. So I'm like, all right,

you know, chill out and it's okay. It's fine that it's good. A little bit slow for now. Cause I know at some point it's just going to re-hit and we're just going to be like, I mean, it's so slow that Nintendo move the release date of Xeno Chronicle.

What is that? Xenoblade Chronicles 3 up two months. Cause they had like nothing else going on. That is wild. I mean, look, it's all about that strategy, right? Of like we're trying to satiate an audience that is always hungry for new stuff. I don't know. Go ahead.

I don't know if I buy that it's actually that slow because, I mean, a lot of great indie games out, right? There are. Like Perfect Tides. But more importantly, I mean, literally, right now, go to Steam, Glover is available. You can get it right now. And a new, I mean, it's barely new. I don't want to, like, overhype it here.

But you can download Gloverver where you play as a glove from the nintendo 64 now on your pc wait a minute in perpetuity oh wait you i mean i thought you were talking about danny glover oh no no no no no and and i i i am waiting for the donald glover dlc but they it sounds like that's not happening either which i i mean i can't imagine the collabo i need to have happen danny glover and i want them to do the new uh lethal weapon movie together that is the dream uh maybe that's a good segue we're talking about movies now lethal weapon was a movie and uh we're gonna be jumping into video game movies so you know we're gonna we've we've done a few formats here we've done like tier lists and we've done brackets and stuff like that

the the focus i think today is we're gonna try to narrow down what our picks for an ideal video game movie canon is maybe they're not the top of the top but certainly movies that i think like okay if you're gonna watch five video game movies these are the movies you should watch as their representative of the whole we're gonna take a quick break and then do all the things i just said okay we're back and we're gonna do all the things i just said before we start okay i'm gonna do as a solid think it's going to help us kind of get a good frame of mind. So we want to choose the five definitive video game movies. Not best.

Yeah, these are like, well, I mean, best is never a useful phrase, right? Because, like, who even knows? Because definitive is so useful. Definitive is like, well, definitive is so useful definitive is like these are like well definitive is useful it's what we're saying if you're gonna make time for for five video game movies which is already quite the ask sure these are the ones you should do best i'm gonna give you the the five highest rated rotten tomato oh great that's a good point. That's a really good starting point. Okay. Number five. Wait, can I guess some of them?

Well, yeah. How about you try to guess? Okay. I think Sonic the Hedgehog the movie is in there. Okay. Am I right? Do you have any thoughts on one that would be in here? Best ones? Or at least highest rated? Highest rated.

Oh my god. Top critics. Doom? You will almost certainly not guess number Roll. Highest rated. Oh, my God. Top critics. Doom? You almost certainly not guess number one. I don't think either of you will. Yeah. Yeah. It's either a Resident Evil movie or a Doom movie.

Nope. Damn it. Yeah. No, it is. It's hard. It's kind of cheating, number one. It's probably one of those video game movies that wasn't really a video game movie. It was like premise of video game movie that they flipped in terms of removing canon.

What was the Sam Richardson movie? Yes. The Werewolf. Werewolves Within. What? Is that right? Yes, yes. I got it. Werewolves Within is number one. And that is part of Ubisoft's current business model that they wanted to do for over a decade,

which has become a pipeline of game IP into film. And they've been trying this forever. They had the Rabbids TV show on Nickelodeon. Obviously, they had the Assassin's Creed movie. But Werewolves Within feels like them realizing oh we can barely make something a video game and then like it can just be we will turn something that's publicly available to everybody like werewolf you know a a game we will turn it into an ip and then we will sell that ip as if it is as big as all of that that that game that everybody loves like i can't wait for them to do like mafia or something you

know like yeah sure or yeah or like yeah uh tag well that already is a movie actually yeah so we're good so you just basically said that we're going to get right as Republic the movie? Oh, I mean, we could be so lucky. You know what? You don't even need that movie. We got to pause for a minute because this is actually the best video game movie of all time right here. It is like an hour and a half long and it is literally a hundred some people on bikes at the top of a mountain doing a real riders of public going down an ice mountain. What? Into like down an ice mountain across like these like creeks that, you know, where like the water is melting through like stone paths into like kind of like desert area.

Like they're going so high to so low, so fast. And the first 10 minutes of it is people eating it. I mean like eating it so hard that you can hear the guy being like, oh my gosh, I've never seen like one of those frames of a bike actually splinter and like hit a person like that. What? It's utterly wild. I always thought writers of public

oh this is a fun fantasy no people actually do this and it is deranged i i promise i will share this link when we when we tweet the episode because i like i could not believe it was real and it's one of those things where like it's a little bit of you know like watching a pile up on the highway sort of thing or like a police chase where you're like, this isn't actually good for me. But I'm still doing it. And like my wife came in the room and she was horrified. She's like, this is just people on bikes getting destroyed. And I was like, yeah, but like it's cool as hell too, right?

It's like, look at what the human body can do. I mean, it's incredible. And people did win the race so good for them anyway tomatoes number five sonic the hedgehog number four sonic the hedgehog two number three pokemon detective pikachu oh yeah sure number surprising i like that movie number Number two, the Angry Birds movie two. Number one werewolves within. Angry Birds two. That is surprising. The fact that it made the second movie, yeah, absolutely surprising.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not shocked they made it. I'm just shocked that it was higher rated than the first one. I'm kind of shocked they made it, to be honest. I mean, money's money, money i guess money's money that's okay so we know that that what my my takeaway from that is it's kind of like just nonsense like maybe the bigger you want to say the bigger the ip the better the chance you have of being successful right Right. But that's partly true, but then Werewolves Within is number one. It breaks the entire theory.

Yeah. I do want to also ask this question. Do we consider Wreck-It Ralph to be a video game movie or just about video games? I think we'll have to talk about that. I think that's cheating, right? That's cheating.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So with that in in mind that list was really not i mean we mentioned sonic the hedgehog i haven't seen sonic the hedgehog 2 but i also as i as plant mentioned i heard it's pretty good i think i'm going to insist that we start weird and include probably the weirdest video game movie ever made and that's got to be be Super Mario Brothers of the 1990s. Right? Yeah. I think it's like a legitimately enjoyable movie

in the year 2022. I have not watched it. It's probably been eight or nine years since I've watched it. It's a joy. But it is seared into my brain. It is one of those things that doesn't leave you, especially because I haven't watched it since I watched it when Iared into my brain. It is one of those things that doesn't leave you, especially because I haven't watched it since I watched it when I was a small child.

Like a parasite. It stays there. It's like gout. It's with you for a fair amount of time until you handle it and figure it out. Khalif, I want to, like if you saw a picture of a Goomba from the video game, do you think you would make the same choices they did?

No, I'm fighting everything. It is like Ricky when he comes back from that scene in Boys in the Hood and he's punching air. That would be me at that point. I'm fighting everything. If you have to understand, I'm from the Bronx. We're like, no. Sure.

You're like, you're in the silhouette of a human and you're not a human. I'm hitting the hell out of you. It sounds like you're more of the John Leguizamo in this scenario than the Bob Hoskins. Probably. In terms of those. In terms of the two choices that you've been given. What's amazing is that Nintendo has been fighting the quasi-canon that was created by that movie

for 30 years, like since it released. They've been denying the fact that anything represented in that movie was accurate to the Mushroom Kingdom. And it's great because it's... Man, yeah, that... I don't know if this is true or like just so somebody told me but when i was in um tokyo once for for tgs i went to this gamer bar that was like two in the morning way out of the way tiny tiny bar that like local devs go to and there was a super mario brothers the movie poster in it

and i was like oh wow i've never thought about how i like i just don't see any of that here at all and they're like yeah it is not spoken of like you cannot get the movie here like they have done a very thorough job of erasing this and like having this is like an act of provocation to put this in your bar and i was like great sure why not um i i have a photo i spoke with the art director of this movie for a piece that i ended up not doing because somebody else did an oral history around the exact same time but he he kind of told me about how this movie became a disaster. And I don't know if you all know much about this, but like the script started out as kind of like a serious drama.

Like that's what got Bob Hoskins excited. And then they were changing it like up until the day they shot where people involved in the movie on the actor level didn't know what's going on. Nintendo obviously didn't know what's going on. Nintendo obviously didn't know what was going on. So there are photos, like this one that I have from the premiere, where it is the art director with Miyamoto. And Miyamoto is wearing just the absolute nice, like he looks so good.

It looks like he just came from the beach. Just fine slacks. I'm picturing him in a Nehru collar. Is that accurate? No, it's like a polo shirt. It's like a very bright. He looks genuinely happy. He's about to see his creation be turned into a movie. And it's like, oh, man, this is a perfect before and after photo.

Except for we'll never get that after photo. But yes, the movie is legit enjoyable now because it is an artifact of the 90s. It feels more 90s than most movies. It reminds me of Hackers, similar vibe and tone. Yeah. And art aesthetic,

very dirty art aesthetic. Yeah. They tried to put a layer of grime on everything that felt kind of artificial even for folks who were living in the spaces that potentially folks were kind of like trying to analog. It's just like, that doesn't, that's not the

way that feels. But you know, we're going to go with it and rock with it so yeah i get what you mean in that respect one one final thought on on this movie i remember when i saw the teaser trailer for it at the movie theater and i'm like a very little kid i can't see r-rated movies and the teaser trailer for this movie is so great like it's dark and brooding and it's like nighttime i think it's like raining and there's this woman lost in the streets of New York. And then like basically right at the end, he'll turn and he's like, by the way, this is the Mario movie.

I was like, holy shit. Like, yes, I can't believe I'm going to get to see whatever this weird thriller is. to see whatever this weird thriller is. And I'm amazed that anybody was surprised when the movie did come out that it was chaos because that trailer alone just felt like we don't know what to do with this. We have some footage. We have kind of a thing that we can just make up

and try to sell this to people because we assume that they don't know what the hell Mario is. Anyway, that's probably the most that we can ever talk about the mario movie on this podcast what what what is the the game movie that you are like oh this is my tops oh my goodness i mean for me the thing that comes back all the time is is the first modal combat movie like i know people don't like that movie but first of all is that true people don't like that movie. But first of all. Is that true? People don't like that movie?

I've gotten a really interesting, like, cross-section of people when you talk about that movie. Because a lot of people universally hate the second one. Sure. They hate Annihilation. But there's a love-hate of the first one because of the camp and the layers of just awful, awful special effects that were in that movie where people were just like, I hate everything about this. Or I love Christopher Lambert. It's not a lot of in between,

but it, but it feels like for him, like, you know, he, he, he got a lot of love afterward, but at the time people,

I remember people being like, I don't like this movie at all. This is, if you're a Mortal Kombat fan and you like this movie, something's wrong with you. But I love that movie with my whole heart.

Like, as a big, huge Mortal Kombat fan and having Raiden as like my main for many, many a decade. Oh yeah.

Like seeing, seeing that actually come to life and seeing Liu Kang and all that stuff actually happened in a real way. It was the first time I had seen, uh, uh, someone do that Sonia kick in real life. Oh sure. And I was like, oh my God.

Like I'm so young and so stupid. I'm like, oh my God, she's a gymnast. And I'm like, what? Thinking back on that thought, i'm thinking about it now just like oh yeah yeah yeah we had a sun person come in she did that move and that was it kid there you go that's how it actually works there were no strings attached to that one no special effects so i love that movie it's just it has and the song you we've talked about the song in the past but it's pretty spectacular yeah because you don you don't know. That song feels like if you gave a kid Pop Rocks.

You're just like, I'm going to put this into your body, and then whatever happens, happens. We don't know what's going to go down, but it's going to be good. It's like something escaped jock jams and fell into a movie. It's like, you're not supposed to be here. You're a jock jam. You're like, no. I'm ready.

What was it? It was commercials like, the best new 100 songs that are coming to your CD collection tomorrow. Those kinds of. Yeah, it was that and Pure Moods was right after that. The transfer from Whoop There It Is to Enya was always a hard one to make. It is a hard transition to get to Knights with White Satin. What was it? Chris Point, do you have a must-include movie?

Well, before I do that, I realize right now we've got a lot of nostalgia going. Which I don't think is bad. I think that's kind of part of this but i i was hoping we could kind of talk through what what makes a good video game movie for us like is it is it nostalgia is it capturing the essence of the movie if the game yeah yeah thank you i mean my my feeling right now with like just what's available on the list is that video game movies aren't good. Not good. I don't like that phrasing.

Video game movies aren't traditionally good in a cinematic way, like what you want to get from a movie, right? And I think there's a number of reasons for that but because they fail as movies like we i don't know we like take pleasure in them doing different things taking risks from a normal movie so that is like nostalgia or that is like oh it just has really great fighting or like really just plainly good action sequences like i think the resident evil series is kind of brilliant because none of the movies are wonderful they all do pretty great like they make gobs of money the last resident evil the final chapter made like 312 million dollars i mean ridiculous amount of money and the the benefit that it has is like it's just

zombies like people just want to go see zombies and it is it has become the brand for like hey you i don't know are you bored it's a saturday do you want to go see some zombies and they're like yeah but i don't know if it's going to be a good one and they're like well it's a resident evil movie and then the audience is like well it, it's not bad, so sure. Right. And then they go and it makes a ton of money. Yeah. I can't figure out what makes a good game movie,

I think is what I'm getting at. It's hard, too, because I think my translation of air quote good has moved a lot from like you said that initial nostalgia of being a kid and and it not being a thing in the beginnings when we were growing up of like we didn't have like it was the beginnings of video games really being taken seriously as as some as a real form of entertainment that adults can probably entertain themselves with while us growing up and seeing like all of the kind of IPs that we, that we loved and kind of grew up with kind of then get that translation into

it. So that nostalgia for me for the early nineties was very, very close to needing to be in the mix for me to like it. I need you to, I need you to understand Canon, whoever wrote this book, wrote this movie. Now it's more about like,

you know, are the acting is the acting good or or is it at least giving me a little bit of that fan service uh that i have to to know for you to hit it's like the street fighter movie right it's like i i know from my from my for my life my life career alongside jean-claude van dam Damme that he is not a good actor. He is a terrible actor. But the thing I need him to do is hit a split at 70 years old. Hell yes. That's what I need from you, Jean-Claude,

at this point. Show me what limberness is. Show me what it looks like to be twice my age with a better ass than mine. Those are the things that I need for you to do for me to like your movie so now it's changed it's like it's a little bit of like can you can you touch those

fan service parts uh and can you make it look really good i think that's a one of the interesting parts about the resident evil poll was initially it was kind of like yes we know the zombie parts are going to be here we have this new star that we're trying to make in mila uh and then also she's a badass who is in a world that that you kind of understand that was not the the formula for those movies towards the end of that that run it was like we're gonna go super wacky uh mila mila is still hot also here's a zombie like less zombies the more the more the movies that got made at that well and the game that's true of the games as well yeah right yeah you're right you're right you're right totally yeah there's like also the secret sauce of the resident evil movies so paul

w.s anderson is the director of those movies not not the the director who makes like licorice pizza paul w.s anderson makes like aliens versus predator he makes a lot of like schlocky stuff but he is married to mila jovovich and i think there's like something to that where he respects her and there there's like a collaboration there in these movies as like silly as there are that i don't know you can feel it and it it kind of rules um there's like some creative dynamic where she they are so clearly on the exact same page of what they want these movies to be like nothing more nothing less and i think that is what has made them kind of rise above their own expectations in certain ways um yeah i'm a fan of those movies though i'm i realize i should just give my third film which is you already kind of got it street

fighter the movie has to be honest i had i genuinely love this movie i realize it's a bit of a soft spot because i wrote a feature for Polygon years ago about how the film was made. And the backstory of this movie, honestly, is probably more interesting than the movie itself on a plot level. It's utterly bonkers. The dude who wrote, I mean, basically some of the best action movies of the 80s and 90s, writer of die hard finally gets an opportunity to direct a movie and it is this and basically has no time no money no help to go make it and it's just like his some of the actors are like just being utter you know goblins running around their international sets, doing things they should not do. Wrangling Jean-Claude Van Damme at peak JCVD period is an absolute nightmare.

And Raul Julia, just an astonishing actor, is effectively dying while they're making this film. And chose to make this because he thought his kids would like it um i mean just a lot going on and then you get the actual movie which is i mean pure camp classic this is this is just oh i mean john claude van damme flexing for the camera just an iconic shot it's it's so good i i i really am a sucker for this movie but again not like that traditional is it great but is it enjoyable yeah it is and and i i as i get older that is kind of the big thing that I measure success on. Like, did this, like, take me to a place? Did it make me feel something?

Yeah. Street Fighter movie did both those things. Is there a – I'm going to sidetrack us a smidge. Is there a particular movie that when you think of – because I love really bad B movies. Like, I love, love, love the dumbest, campiest, worst practical effect movies that you could find on the planet. Is there one movie that when you think of a video game movie that has an actor who you know is going to be bad and they live up to that in the best ways? Huh. As an example.

So one of my favorite dumbest video game movies is Street Fighter The Legend of Chun-Li that has Chris Klein in it yep and it is by far

one of the most amazing it is the zenith of really really bad acting in a movie where you can tell

that that person was taking it the most serious and not performing at all well in that role. This is like a Jared Leto situation. I mean, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. You know what? This is like a,

I don't know how you had ever acted in any movie ever. I'm not sure you've actually been in front of a camera before or visited planet Earth. It's unbelievable. It is some of the best things. Because you know when the person is playing it straight

and you know that the direction was exactly what was the thing that drove that performance in a way where you're just like, wow, I don't know how you have a SAG card kind of stuff. Like, I don't know how they let you say that you can be in this profession of acting without. You know, if you'll pay dues, the line is very low. I mean, look.

That's all they care about. Yeah. So you have to see that if that's not a thing you have not seen yet. You need to go check that out. The wild thing about Hollywood where it makes no sense and how great people can write things that become bad stuff. I've weirdly followed the writer of that movie, Justin Marks, for a while because he's friends with a writer. Now he does many other things things but who used to write games coverage and uh he he did street fighter the legend of chun-li these are movies that like

actually made it out of out into the world the next thing that comes out is the jungle book like a movie that makes like nearly a billion dollars wild right then nothing again until this summer he wrote this story for top gun maverick what are you talking about yeah and like he i mean worked lots of other stuff between that like he's done other things but just utterly wild how uh how a career works in hollywood he also i'm just pull up his his wiki uh he worked with his wife on the tv adaptation of shogun the new tv adaptation of it that i believe is coming to fx um so sure like maybe one like the most famous you know i mean james clavel wrote it but it is like this like epic of the 1970s uh that is now being adapted by the writer of street fighter the legend of chun-li i mean the fact is you gotta get work like you have to you have to get work i wonder what if that i want to see the 30 for 30 on this

dude like i want to see the espn where he's like he he puts out street fighter the legend of chun lee is a universal flop until like years later when people you know they dunk on it because it was so bad and then that gives it some prominence and you can see him just try like he's in a room black and white just writing and throwing pieces of paper away it's a really tight shot of the the hands and then the face sweating and then the hands again and then and then michael jordan is like and just the audio of of our of our guy chris just doing his line reading floating through haunting haunting knocking on his door like hey bro can you can you use me again I need some more work I need to cook it

I'm ready these American pie residuals aren't gonna last forever so what's what's our fifth we have four right yeah I included Resident Evil because we talked about it a lot and I would agree it's worth including I think I think the franchise in general but you can start with the first one I think the first one's very strong yeah what what is what are we gonna add i think the one thing

we're missing is for people that genuinely want to show other people a video game movie and not be embarrassed what movie would you show them and for me i think it's probably sonic the hedgehog but i'm curious if you guys have a different response. Ooh, that's see, that's hard because it's like, I, and maybe embarrassed is not the right word as much as it is like, what video game movie could you show to like a large swath of different people?

And at least they would come away being like, yeah, that was okay. I feel like you have to go really kind of super generic then. Like, I feel like you have to hit something that of super generic then Like I feel like you have to hit something That doesn't have any Real ties to things

Like you need a Need for Speed movie to hit Because that's so close enough to People hated that Need for Speed movie Are y'all ready? I got it, Rampage Yeah Rampage Starring The Rock

Made almost a half a billion dollars it is like the it's utterly fine it is completely fine and it's fine because like the original rampage you know classic midway games arcade game love it where you turn into giant like kaiju and you crush buildings you i mean there's like barely a story there yeah yeah it's just a kaiju godzilla movie king kong movie without like any of those ip and tells you so much about the star power and buying power of the rock it just like you can put him in anything and it makes money it is so exactly yeah yeah yeah and it's weird because i don't even know if i enjoy him anymore yeah i think

it's like he kind of takes himself i don't know there's like there was a i enjoyed it more was like i can't believe a pro wrestling star has taken over the world right and now it's more just like oh the rock's doing this again he's he's so powerful what he's in fortnight he's like a playable character and a major plot point in fortnight now yeah yeah i think i liked it when he was kind of the lovable underdog of hollywood and now he's definitely not that anymore yeah i'm out his ass like oh he does i can watch the rock and anything i i it's also like a little bit of that like you're gonna run for president aren't you oh he's absolutely gonna run and like that's i think that's the other piece of

it it's same thing with like matthew mcconaughey where i'm like the second i know that you want to be a politician i'm like i don't know now now I'm like a little worried. Well, the problem with Matthew McConaughey's layer of that is like I know someone is going to hype up so many people when he does that dumb beat the chest thing that he does. Oh, yeah. That's going to be the anthem for so many people who really did like the third Resident Evil movie. I just like that his motto is going to be like making America all right, all right, all right. Oh, shit. Which sounds fun at first. But then it's like, really?

All right. Like, that's your level of ambition? You can't even hit that, though. That's true. It is an actual thing to try to describe. Are we sticking with rampage is that our pick i think so i think so there's there's one thing i do want to acknowledge before we we go after the break a huge hole here and we can maybe talk about this after the break yeah we didn't talk about basically animated film and Japanese video game movies. And that stuff, like there's a Yakuza movie made by Takashi Miike that isn't great, but

is like pretty, pretty fun. I mean, it's Takashi Miike. You know, I've heard there's a spectacular Phoenix Wright movie that I have not seen, but I've heard it's very, very good. Also, I believe by, yep, yep yep by takashi miike because he's made like 500 movies so you could kind of name anything and he probably made it um and and there's a lot of pretty decent like you know the pokemon animated movie there's some decent stuff there but i think i think we did a good job focusing on this live action you know the weird

american hollywood system trying to bring video game movies into the world and make them a thing I think we did a good job focusing on this live action, the weird American Hollywood system trying to bring video game movies into the world and make them a thing. I love it. Okay. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. When we come back,

we're going to be talking about some game franchises that are due for movie adaptation right after this. Okay, so in the intro, we talked a little bit about, what was it writers republic as a potential video game adaptation um i certainly agree with that are there any other game franchises that you think at this point we're like missing out by not having them i'm gonna tweak this because i think i think we're like dooming ourself we think of it as movies. Because I think the answer is like no. Video games don't make good movies.

And there's two reasons for that. One is the pleasure of video games is the interactivity. And when you try to adapt that, it can result in very terrible things. Like so many popular games are shooters where you are literally shooting and killing hundreds of things over the course of many hours uh doesn't translate well to film the other thing is commando disagrees but okay what commando disagrees commando oh yeah that's true i mean yeah but we don't live in the 80s anymore but yes there was a period uh the other thing is video games are long as hell, and if you're going to make these adaptations, I think TV is the better way to go. I think that there are examples of video games working in the TV model in a way that there aren't for film.

And the answer there is anime, like the Persona animes. the answer there is anime like the persona animes like i think i think there are ways that you can stretch out a video game across tv especially these like long something like uh the last of us which is getting adapted for hbo that feels like yeah i could see how you could stretch that across a tv show also again tv show know, right off the bat, you know that you're going to be just kind of making it your own thing to fill that time. So if you're okay with it, Fresh, I think we should adjust this to what would we adapt to television

rather than film? Yeah, I mean, or just TV or movies. Okay, okay, okay. Either one. I'm cool with both of them. And it's funny that you mentioned TV because we are in the midst of arguably the most anticipated TV transition from a video game,

and that's The Halo Show, which I have not watched yet, but I don't know. It sounds like people don't like it. Before we jumped on that hole, I would say as an honorable mention to all of this, I think would be something I think has been really cool to see has been, you know, as a lover of horror movies, I think the Man of Medan series could be both. It could be a really awesome. It's already like halfway a TV show.

Kind of, right? It could be a really awesome. It's already like halfway a TV show. Kind of, right? Where you're in vain of the Bandersnatch stuff that Netflix did a couple of years ago, which is actually pretty interesting. Yeah, I think the Man of Medan stuff, the way that they've kind of segmented out those stories would make a really good, cool TV series a la like Friday the 13th or Tales from the Crypt or something to that effect or, you know, kind of just super scary sci-fi-esque show that you get a chance to see in the USA. For people who aren't familiar with this necessarily, Man in Medan is one of the dark pictures anthology.

And this is from a studio called Supermassive. They did stuff like Little Hope, House of Ashes. Was that one of them yeah and then before that the thing that they made that i think a lot of people remember was until dawn which was like probably the first original like horror adventure game that was trying to be both game and movie you're right this this does feel like it would be quite easy but again why why adapt it into a movie because it's that weird thing of it it itself is borrowing from movies right right right right it's it makes the full circle i think but but i know what you mean in that respect yeah

it's it's already aping something that is that is a tried and true thing and adapting it and then readapting it back to the thing that it pulled from doesn't really make that much sense i get that it's the uncharted problem right yeah it's like uncharted just wants to be andiana jones right and then or tomb raider too you know you you adapt these and it's like okay now i'm getting a facsimile of a facsimile this is this seems kind of just doomed to begin with. Yeah. So you kind of need something more vague that has a lot of room to play in that is not necessarily going to be locked into a format.

Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Or it could be very story-driven but its own thing. I think Last of Us works, for all of my not loving The last of us story for either of those games it it does have a story with like very clear emotional beats sure um and it does have i think very strong characters i like the characters a lot i just don't always love

what they do to them yeah um and it has a great setting. Like it has the pieces. And that's the juice that a great TV writer could come in and make it into something special. I think weirdly a good example of this is Station Eleven, where this, I know it's not a video game, but that book is a really good book. It's a really good book. I don't want to discount it whatsoever. And the author has an amazing new book out called sea of tranquility that people should read if they like it but the hbo max tv show for me is like so much better because it had that freedom to like take all the pieces all the characters

the setting and everything take the reaction to the book take all of that into account and then be like okay now how would we do kind of a second draft of it? How would we make this work for television in a really compelling way? And I think like that's – those are the things that I'm looking for. I think something like Silent Hill kind of has some of that. I think it has some interesting characters. I think it has a good setting. But even then, like the characters, the protagonists aren't, like, that likable.

Yeah, they've never really, like, they've always felt like kind of default characters wrapped around a weird story. Like, I don't think most people really are, like, looking for the canon of the folks who were in Silent Hill 2, right? Like, they fit within those specific worlds, but when you extract them out of it, they're not really that interesting in that way. Yeah. Because it is like a random person thing happened to you. And now we'll tell you the backstory and fill in those pieces that make you, you. So those parts are interesting. I think one that missed the boat that could have been a perfect connection to what you talked about plant was the assassin's creed uh version

of stuff because you have a lot of you a lot the thing that i i missed about the initial games that i feel like they took a really crappy turn was when they moved away from and i know people hate this part because they hated the outside of the animus stuff. But I think the story around the kind of Illuminati layers that were in the Assassin's Creed series give you so many places to play that they never really engaged with. And that would be really cool already layered story with some lore in it that you could easily translate to TV or movies in that way. Did the Assassin's Creed movie not do that at all?

I don't remember. Yeah, it's a problem. My theory for the Assassin's Creed movie is that the director made that in order to get the money to make Shakespeare because he made a Shakespeare adaptation. Oh, I have to pull this up. But he made a shakespeare adaptation

like right alongside this i think with like basically the same people um yeah it's like one of those things and the assassin's creed movie is quite beautiful like it actually looks pretty nice um and like i like the way that they designed the animus there's a lot to like in that movie it just doesn't it doesn't all come together oh my gosh so okay so he made macbeth and assassin's creed back to back macbeth 2015 assassin's creed 2016 they both star um uh what's his name? Magneto. Yeah. Magneto. They both star Magneto. And even the like posters on IMDb, nearly identical. They're both this like half black,

half white with like the title in red. I mean, they look, and they're both Magneto half profile. It is, it's actually kind of incredible how much they look alike. I'm going to put this segment to bed by saying one movie that i think needs to happen i think it would be a very good movie if they got the right writer and they got a good director and i even have a director suggestion and that

movie is portal and the director would be dan tractenberg dan tractenberg started he has actually filmed a portal short that is pretty spectacular if you've never seen it it's really great um before he did 10 cloverfield lane and um and now he's made the boys yeah so he knows how to make tv and he knows how to make tv but i think it works great as a movie there's a lot of humor in the Portal games. There's a lot of characters in the Portal games. Even though they're robots, they're still characters. And action, too. There's plenty of room for action and stuff like that. I'm going to modify

it just a little bit for me. Not for you. For me. I would say Trachtenberg, great. I think the boys, I mean, I have mixed feelings about it. I've watched all of it it's a lot um but I would love a tv show set in the half-life universe so including portal including all of that stuff but very much its own thing because there's so much great lore and mythology and i think characters like alex are

interesting um but i i don't i don't need a recreation of any story i've seen in that universe no yeah i'm not looking for a retelling of the portal story but i think just apertures universe is enough i think the second you're talking about fucking headcrabs and aliens coming down from space it's like a different thing entirely all this is like a corporate show just announcing a show called aperture yes would be great where we get like an episode that's like severance we get i mean right yeah there's tons oh man i'm i'm very i'm very into that idea here here's a quick question for both of you yes and. And this is going to be one of those like does this even make sense? But would Grand Theft Auto V as a television series in your mind work?

But the caveat is you wouldn't just pull random folks. You wouldn't just pull random folks. You would actually pull those three characters that are the main characters as the three folks that you're kind of following through in their stories as day-to-day folks within that world. I mean, it already feels very much inspired, not by TV, but by Lethal Weapon. It has that tone, so it's not that far off.

Right, it's just Michael Mann. It's Miami Vice. Michael Mann has always been the core inspiration tone so it's not that far off right it's like it's just michael mann like it's huge it's miami vice like michael mann has always been the core inspiration uh i mean so i i think if you if you it was just like what if we had these three characters right and these kind of three like tropes yep of of film and television and we made a show where you kind of bounce back and forth between those tropes i think that could be good that but that would mean like gutting literally everything else i think you would have to get rid of all of like the like half-baked satire yes sure that just doesn't play anymore it would have to be a real world not a world where you have all

the dumb stuff on every billboard and then every radio station. But I do think if like, what would it be like to have a show where you have these three different ideas of crime and like classic crime TV, classic crime film, and you're constantly kind of switching between them. That could be cool. Right. I can be into that.

Plant. You had any questions from readers yes uh let's do a couple of these uh i mean a lot of these are folks just saying the right things you know like becca said why do people pretend to hate the mario movie when it's clearly the best video game movie ever made i mean amen strong agree this one's from uh michael what games do you think did the best job adapting uh of adapting their films even if the game itself wasn't great what about great games that barely had anything to do with the film i i let's talk about the second half of this because we haven't talked

about that as much i think what he's getting at is games based off of films. Have there been any good ones, those for y'all? I mean, Goldeneye is like the most well-known one. Probably. I know Goldeneye hasn't aged super great, but certainly when it came out, it was pretty mind blowing.

Yeah. That would, yeah, that would make a lot of sense in that, in that respect. Uh, I think Tomb Raider movies were pretty all right. Like I know people poopoo on those.

I think the Tomb Raider movies are pretty good, no point. Oh, no, no. I mean, are there games based on movies? So things that started out as a movie, and then we got a video game adaptation. Oh. Oh, you know what I heard was very good, but I haven't played it yet?

The Mummy, which starred Tom Cruise, and this was like 2012 or so. there was a game called the mummy demastered which i as i understand it is a side-scrolling metroidvania based on tom cruise's the mummy supposed to be pretty good i haven't played it yet but i i've heard good things yeah i. My big picks would be, in terms of stuff that, like, the game probably is bigger than the movie at this point, The Chronicles of Riddick. Oh, yeah. I would put up there.

Yeah. And then in terms of, like, oh, these are huge movies that then had games that are really good, Spider-Man 2 is the kind of, like, obvious pick. People love that game. Less obvious, I don't know if this quite counts, but Indiana Jones and the Fate of like obvious pick people love that game less obvious i don't know if this quite counts but indiana jones and the fate of atlantis oh the point and click adventure game yeah where it's like it's kind of like a spin-off from a movie um other other stuff i'm the the peter

jackson's king kong video game that's kind of like come back around as being a thing that people like it was i think it's like three hours long but yeah i love short games so it can happen yeah there aren't many that i can think of yeah yeah that was great it's true yeah yeah one last question uh this is for actually well actually i've got I've got two very quick from Lily. What are your predictions for the new upcoming resident evil show on Netflix? That's going to, it's not going to be great.

I mean, I mean the, the good thing is that it will be on Netflix. Like I don't, again, I don't think this could be a thing that they should go back to the well and do another movie, but Netflix,

I think the Netflix formula of giving you either something really bingeable will work or if they wind up piecemealing it out and it seems to be decent it'll get it'll get enough buzz either good or bad that people will continue to kind of push through it yeah i'm sure they're trying to just have their their own walking dead success yeah yep but i don't know i want to see fucking wesker do stuff like wild like wild super wesker yeah wild super wesker i want him to fly through the window with a cape yeah and fucking start punching people into distress have y'all seen the trailer for the northman yes uh yeah i have in the trailer there is a scene where I swear people are fighting on a volcano. And if somebody doesn't turn whatever that scene is into the Wesker fight made real,

I will be disappointed in the internet. Because I can't believe that we're actually getting a volcano fight in popular entertainment. Final question here from Chris. Why are the best video game movies about video games instead of movies based on video games? Movies like Scott Pilgrim, War Games, The Last Starfighter, Tron, or Free Guy seem way better than adaptations

like Super Mario Bros., Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, Doom. Yeah. Yeah, they don't have baggage, is the short answer to that question. There's not an obligation to constantly refer back to one source material scott pilgrim obviously makes references to tons of different games but because and the comic book that it is based on but because it's not like oh this is a zelda adaptation you

don't need to have like oh there's the blue boomerang or whatever the fuck um it's much easier to make that movie even though you know movies are hard to make but that's my short answer yeah i think that that that canon crutch is is just hard to have to deal with you have to always appease to the folks who are who are at the highest peaks of the fandom in a lot of those ways and sometimes when you have those uh movies that just kind of like touch upon video game things then you don't have to worry about a lot of that stuff, which is great. Yeah. I think also all of the,

the stuff that aren't, aren't based on video games, they're, they're based on, it's this wild thing called stories. And, and the video games, video games have gotten better.

You know, you could adapt to JRPG and you could probably get something pretty nice, but stuff like super Mario brothers, it's not about anything you know it's it's about like going from left to right um prince of persia not a whole lot more there either doom i mean again these aren't you know great examples of of story uh assassin's creed has a ton of story a ton and then yeah it gets into that opposite problem of canon crunch i think the the games that are listed here or the movies that are listed here like scott pilgrim that's just about a guy who's dating somebody way too young and and then also like it has to fight you know like through the trauma of another girlfriend's, you know, exes.

Like, these things are about something. Free Guy, which I think is probably the weakest of the stuff listed, but it's still pretty decent. Like, that's about, like, your existence, right? It's just using games as a, a like metaphor for whatever it's talking about so i think like that's the big thing and i and i think that's what we'll need to see for video game adaptations in the future is like first and foremost they have to say something they have to have themes they have to have a reason to exist and then the gaminess of it all that's just like that's a cherry on top.

So basically you just wanted to say that Dead or Alive was the best movie video game. Oh no, I actually want to say Dead Alive, the Peter Jackson movie is the best game movie ever. I think that's where I'm going. Cleef, is there anything else

you are watching and or playing that you would want to recommend to people watching and or playing um i'm doing a lot of stuff well watching i am i just finished watching the netflix banger the ultimatum which i think actually is something that you should watch just when you're when you're, really inebriated. What is this? I don't know anything about that. What is the hook there? It's literally a 20-something dating show.

Oh, my gosh. Where one person has given the other person an ultimatum to get married or leave. Oh, cool. So it's sloppy. It's a messy show. It's all about – well, I'm also like down. I'm waiting for – I want Severance to come back because I need that in my life. But playing, I'm playing a bunch of stuff on my Playdate, which is an awesome new little handheld device.

So I'm playing a bunch of stuff over there. But watching, I'm watching nothing but dirty, messy, terrible TV at this point. The cast of the ultimatum is Nick Lachey and Vanessa Lachey. Yes. I love this. They are the hostess with the mostess who are watching these 20-year-olds do all the things that 20-year-olds do. And you know what? They've been together for a very long time at this point.

So good for them. They made it work. Shout out to that. Shout out to love. Stay out of it, Nick Lachey. He has the worst advice too. He has the worst dating and marriage advice. He's just like, yeah, I'm a guy and I'm sitting here.

I suppose. Talk to your wife once in a while. I love it. I like to use Nick Lachey. I've been watching Our Flag Means Death on HBO Max. A lot of people recommended it to me. I would say for those of you that might have watched it and kind of bounced off after the first episode or two,

stick with it. I thought by episode four, they kind of reveal the actual premise of the show and everything really clicks together, but it does take a few episodes to get there, but it's pretty fantastic. Taika Waititi and Reese Darby and great ensemble cast and really, really good.

Highly recommend it. I've been watching the same thing. I've been bouncing back and forth between that and The Righteous Gemstones, which you've been demanding I watch for a long time and I'm finally doing it and I feel like a clown that I waited this long. There's a kid, like a young man in it, who is also in Licorice Pizza for only a hot minute,

but is great also in Licorice Pizza. And yeah, I mean, the cast of that show is just incredible. Everybody is like a game. It's pretty great. So we chose our top five video game movies not top five our our five definitive video game movies and those are super mario brothers the movie the first mortal kombat live action movie street fighter the movie not to be confused with fan favorite street fighter the legend of chanel so we want to make

sure that you don't zig where you should zag and and on i mean we're saying the first resident evil movie but really if it's resident evil and it has mila jovovich in it you're good you know oh and one more rampage starring the rock who i i feel like I defamed and I'm going to just eat bad comments about for the next five years. Someone's going to say, he went to Juilliard, Plant. What the hell are you talking about, bro? How dare you disrespect him? He's a delight. He's a delight.

I just hope he doesn't run for office. That's all I'm saying. I just want him to keep being a delight in my films and maybe, you know, popping up at WrestleMania now and then. And that's it. I mean, we talked about a bunch of other stuff, but that's the bulk of it. We did. Kalief, where can people find you? You can find the work that I do on the internets all over all the podcast platforms.

At Spawn On Me, we drop a new show every Friday morning. Podcast platforms at Spawn On Me. We drop a new show every Friday morning. And our live shows are recorded on twitch.tv slash spawnonme around 6 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday evenings. So you can check out the live show there. I'm also hosting an NBCLX fan control football show. Oh, yeah. You can check out on Saturday mornings, 9.30 a.m. PST, where we talk all about the week of fan control football and have some folks from the league come on,

talk about all the stuff that they're working on and all those things within. I have a genuine question about fan control football. What happens if, like, you know how, like, they do the votes online and they name the boat Boaty McBoatface? Yes. And, like, so what's preventing

that from happening in fan control football so luckily there is a curated list of plays that you can pick from their situation got it got it got it so some of them are like there's one that's named after the konami code right so it's like the actual konami code sure written out uh there's one called sex panther so there have been some names that are, you know, coming from various parts of pop culture. But I'm sure that they will not be the, like, dirty, dirty named of a play. Yeah, it's not just going to be like the Little Giants play over and over again. No, no, no, no. I mean, it actually, it has been in a couple of weeks where people are like, we're picking

this play because this is the play that actually works. So, yeah, there's been a little bit of that too. So it's great. Check it out. And I'm having fun with that stuff over at NBC. I love it, but I am mildly sad that I can't force Johnny Manziel to punt. Fake punt like every play. Like how I used to play Madden.

I was like, I don't get it. Fake punt. I'm so far in the back of the field. It's going to take them forever to get to me. I'm not realizing. I've seen Johnny Manziel run last season and you want him to fake punt at this point.

Throw in Johnny, please. Well, thank you, Khalid, for joining us. That was awesome. And thank you to everyone for listening at home. For listening to the besties you can find us at the besties pod on twitter um send us answers to our questions and you might appear on an episode always great to uh have y'all cooperating and sharing the show

and we really appreciate it that's gonna do it for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!