The trend of video game adaptations in Hollywood have mostly been successful with movies like “The Super Mario Bros” and “Sonic The Hedgehog” movies. While some fans of Mario and Sonic have been positive about how the games have been adapted well into movies, some fans of Halo have been negative about how their most popular character Master Chief was adapted into the show.
This sort of pattern can be seen in the newest “Sonic 3” and “A Minecraft Movie” trailers with one being mostly positive among the fans and one being mostly negative. The Sonic movie franchise has had a pretty good record with their first two movies and in adapting some of their most popular characters from the game such as Tails and Knuckles. In the newest “A Minecraft Movie” the video game’s most popular character Steve being played by Jack Black, is a choice some people are not a fan of because most think that he doesn’t look like the character or much fit the character.
The Sonic movies have adapted their characters into a live action by having our regular world and Sonic’s world in the same universe. This works well because it matches the overall story in the games. In the games, Sonic and human characters have interacted with each other with Dr. Eggman being the main antagonist for the majority of the games. One of the characters we see in the trailer is Gerald Robotnik (Dr Eggman’s grandfather) and the creator of another popular character, Shadow, being played by Keanu Reeves. Meanwhile, the Minecraft movie seems to be going the route of real people being stuck in a video game’s world. This might be off-putting for some people and some would prefer the movie be fully animated. Most Minecraft fans are not happy with some of the designs of the popular Minecraft enemies and mobs.
What the Sonic movies by Paramount Pictures does right is bring popular characters to the movie screen accurately while still having some creative liberty with the original story. This works well because Sonic fans are happy and satisfied with the recent movies. The Minecraft movie by Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to deliver with bringing popular characters and the overall setting of the game to the movie screen.
