Watchcast Schedule for April 2023: These Ain't No Games!

Greetings, Nextlanders! Hope you all enjoyed Michelle Yeoh March, and are ready for a new slate of films to consume. This month we're "celebrating" the release of the upcoming Mario animated film with a quartet of early cinematic video game adaptations. The first film is the required pick given the theme, but the remaining three were each chosen by one of us. Here's what we chose!

Monday, April 3rd: Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Our first entry (which will go up later this afternoon) is the first big budget adaptation of any video game ever! We are of course talking about the uncomfortably slimy and intensely regrettable spin on Super Mario Bros, as directed by the folks that brought you Max Headroom. As bad and ill-advised as this movie is, just about everyone on the podcast found a little something to admire about this deeply weird attempt at putting human people into a fantastical video game setting. And one of those folks is special guest Abby Russell, who had just happened to watch this movie for the first time shortly before we recorded this. We have a lot of fun discussin' this one, and we hope you'll enjoy the conversation.

Monday, April 10th: Street Fighter (1994)

Our second film is my personal pick for the month, and another adaptation that seems to have very little affection or even understanding of its source material in Stephen E. de Souza's Street Fighter. Someone got it in their head that they needed to G.I. Joe the whole Street Fighter universe, and the resulting film is a slapdash Van Damme vehicle that goes absolutely nowhere while drawing rough sketches of every major SF character of the era (except poor Fei Long) while going as far out of its way as possible to make sure almost none of these people ever get into a street fight. That said, if you're a lover of movies thick with cheese, this one is the gorgonzola of video game adaptations, and at least we've got that final Raul Julia performance to enjoy. 

Monday, April 17th: Mortal Kombat (1995)

This one's Brad's pick, and to put it in his words: "This is just a good movie." Still widely considered one of the best video game adaptations there ever was, Mortal Kombat succeeds mostly by A. Understanding both the source material and the kinds of movies that the people who made the game watched before doing so, B. Understanding that Mortal Kombat is fuckin' dumb. Paul W.S. Anderson's movie leans all the way into the grindhouse martial arts stupidity MK trades in and the resulting movie is pretty much exactly what you want. Yes, the special effects have aged like milk, the acting is non-stop cornball, and rubber Goro gets way too much screen time, but even now, following a more recent reboot of the film franchise, this one still stands up as a lot of fun. 

Monday, April 24th: Resident Evil (2002) 

Oh my S.T.A.R.S. and garters, it's a double shot of Paul W.S. Anderson (far preferable to even a single shot of Uwe Boll) as we tackle the movie that somehow spawned five sequels of increasing ridiculousness in Resident Evil. Vinny picked this one, I'm assuming because we won't shut up about that laser grid scene. Also, this movie's not bad! It's not great, either, but it's got a few entertaining action sequences and some of the most laughably leaden exposition ever delivered in a movie that is allegedly about zombies. I think this'll be a fun one to round out the month with, especially with all the Resident Evil games and remakes we've been consuming over the last few years.

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And that's the month! As I said, Super Mario Bros. will go up later this afternoon, and despite us being off next week, we'll have Street Fighter recorded and ready to go so you won't have to miss a week! As always, thank you for listening and watching along with us. We'll see you at the movies!