Video game movies. Some are good, most are bad, like shockingly bad. From Street Fighter to Uncharted there’s been some awful adaptations, and, in this list, I'll try to narrow them down to the five worst of all time.

5. Doom (2005)

As a sci-fi action film, it’s tolerable. But, for a Doom adaptation, it’s awful. The biggest flaw it has is that there's no hell and no demons. Thats the selling point of Doom! You're a space marine fighting demons from hell! The Rock does what he does best, smoulder at the camera and be an action star, but really, that’s all he can do. Karl Urban is the best part, but unfortunately, he can't save the film, and that's why it comes in at number five.

4. Borderlands (2024)

Based on the hit action RPG, this monstrosity came out last year, and I bet you completely forgot about it already. It took beloved IP and totally butchered it. The dialogue is total rubbish, and the film looks disgustingly computer-generated. It features Academy Award winners Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis, whose talents are wasted, not even they could redeem this one. While the casting of Jack Black as Claptrap was promising, both he and Kevin Hart let the video game franchise down. It was a total disappointment for fans, and that's why Borderlands makes it to number four.

3. Uncharted (2022)

Tom Holland is not Nathan Drake. He’s a big hit actor right now, but in this case, he was completely miscast. He looks nothing like the original character, and he lacks the charisma to pull it off. Mark Wahlberg should have been cast in his place rather than as Sully. The film is an extremely generic action-adventure film, with none of the charm of the video games. It feels like they made this film unrelated to the game, and to guarantee an audience, they decided to slap the Uncharted IP on it. A complete waste of a beloved franchise, and that’s why it comes in at number three.

2. Super Mario Bros. (1993)

This film was completely panned when it was released, and for good reason. The adaptation bears no similarity to the Mario games, granted, at the time, the games would have been hard to adapt, but they still could have stayed true to the original. A post-apocalyptic mushroom kingdom is a great idea in practice, but the outcome fell completely short. The script is terrible. Whose idea was it to have Mario and Luigi’s second names as Mario? Dennis Hopper plays an over-the-top King Koopa with a massive lizard tongue, and yet that’s not even the most insane thing about it! Goombas who are 6ft tall and Toad plays the guitar! This film butchers Mario to the extreme, and that's why it takes second place.

1. A Minecraft Movie (2025)

This film is the latest release on the list, and not only is it one of the worst video game adaptations of all time, but simply one of the worst films ever made. Minecraft is a game about creativity; it centres around building whatever you want, yet this adaptation manages to be one of the least creative things I have ever seen. It’s packed full of cliches and unimaginative writing. The “jokes”, if you can even call them that, are completely devoid of humour and come across as though they were written by Chat GPT. My 10-year-old sister thought A Minecraft Movie was bad, and she liked The Emoji Movie. An atrocious waste of a beloved video game, and it's shocking that it was ever released.

The Five Worst Video Game Film Adaptations