The video game adaptation curse has been broken, thanks to Netflix’s anime Castlevania series being certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite several attempts, Hollywood studios have continued to struggle with adapting video games into feature films and TV shows throughout the years, though creating games based on movies and shows hasn’t been as difficult for gaming developers. Still, that doesn’t mean filmmakers haven’t tried breaking the curse before.
In recent years, people have looked to video game movies such as Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed as potential curse breakers. Unfortunately, they both ended up being derided by critics and audiences alike, for various reasons, with Warcraft receiving a 28 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (though it didn’t stop the film from becoming the highest-grossing video game movie ever) and Assassin’s Creed receiving an even lesser score of 18 percent. Although their lackluster performances both critically and commercially - at least domestically - put a damper on their franchise potential, that hasn’t stopped other studios from pushing forward with their own adaptations.
It turns out, future video game adaptations may find it easier to break the stigma surrounding gaming movies and TV shows thanks to the curse being lifted. Rotten Tomatoes has reported that Netflix’s Castlevania, an anime TV series based on the long-running video game series of the same name, has been certified fresh (achieving a critic score above 60 percent), something that no gaming adaptation - be it a movie or TV show - has ever done before. The series, which was created by Adi Shankar, currently has a score of 91 percent.
It’s worth noting that while Castlevania technically breaks the video game adaptation curse, there’s still the fact that there hasn’t been an acclaimed video game movie yet - though it’s certainly a step in the right direction. This news may calm fans about Shankar’s plans to adapt Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed into a TV series, an announcement that came just a few months after Justin Kurzel’s movie, starring Fassbender in the lead role, hit theaters. It’s unclear how that decision to move forward with an anime series will affect the future movie installments, should 20th Century Fox choose to move forward with a sequel.
Regardless of whether or not there will be another Assassin’s Creed movie, there are plenty of video game movies on the way - and, hopefully, those adaptations will boast high critic ratings like Castlevania. The thing is, one of the many issues that filmmakers face when trying to adapt video games onto the big screen is translating an active experience (playing games) into a passive experience (watching films); it’s something that differs significantly from adapting books or comic books - two forms of media that don’t empower audiences with creating their own unique experiences - into movies or TV shows.
Castlevania is currently streaming on Netflix and it has already been renewed for a second season, which will consist of eight episodes instead of just four, as was the case with the show’s first season.
Next: Every Episode of Netflix’s Castlevania Season 1 Reviewed
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
