Ranked: Every Video Game Movie I Marathoned Instead of Going Outside This Month

Let me describe the scene: Saturday morning, 9 a.m., a pot of coffee large enough to have its own gravitational field, a laptop, and a spreadsheet. Not a fun spreadsheet. A spreadsheet with a column labeled "Regret Level (1-10)."

I had done it. I had queued up every major video game movie — the good, the bad, and the Super Mario Bros. (1993) — for a single marathon. My wife left to visit her sister. She did not say when she'd be back. She took the dog. The dog knew.

What follows is the power ranking. I suffered for this. You will enjoy it.

10. Super Mario Bros. (1993) — A Hate Crime Against Fandom

I want to be very clear: this is not the Mario movie. This is a dystopian thriller that someone slapped Mario branding on after a séance gone wrong. Dinosaurs evolved into humanoid people. Goombas are 7-foot-tall leather daddies with tiny heads. There's a devolution gun.

And yet. And yet. There's something hypnotic about it. It's the most 1993 movie ever made, and by the end I wasn't sure if I hated it or if it had simply scrambled my brain past the point of hate. Regret Level: 3, and honestly that's the movie's fault for being fascinating.

9. House of the Dead (2003) — Uwe Boll Enters the Chat

This movie features — and I promise this is real — footage from the actual arcade game spliced into the action scenes, as if the director saw the movie was bad and decided to show you the better version mid-film. It's like a chef bringing out the menu while you're eating the food.

8. Alone in the Dark (2005) — Also Boll, Unfortunately

At one point I checked whether I had accidentally queued the same movie twice. I had not. The movies are just like this. Tara Reid plays an archaeologist. I have no further notes because my notes at this point just said "why."

7. DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

Look, I'm not going to pretend this is good cinema. But it knows exactly what it is, and there's a fight scene on a boat involving flexible bamboo that has no business being as choreographed as it is. Somewhere in this movie, a stunt coordinator cared. That's more than I can say for most of this list.

6. BloodRayne (2005) — The Boll Trifecta Is Complete

Yes, I watched all three. Yes, my spreadsheet has a section titled "Boll Fatigue." Michael Madsen swings a sword like a man who has never seen a sword but has heard about them. Billy Zane is here for reasons known only to Billy Zane.

5. Mortal Kombat (2021) — Competent, Which Is Somehow Insulting

This one is fine! It's fine! It has decent fights, a great Sub-Zero, and the soul of a mid-tier fast food combo meal. It commits no crimes and creates no memories. It is the beige sedan of video game movies.

4. Rampage (2018)

Dwayne Johnson punches a giant gorilla he loves. A giant alligator eats Chicago landmarks. This is a movie where The Rock says "I'm gonna need a bigger jet" and nobody stopped him. It's dumb in the way a theme park is dumb: expensively, and with a smile.

3. Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) — The Redemption Arc

Remember the original Sonic design? The one so cursed the internet revolted and the studio actually delayed the movie to fix it? That alone makes this a historical document. The final product is genuinely charming, thanks almost entirely to Jim Carrey's Dr. Robotnik, who is clearly being paid by the scene-chew and earning every penny.

2. Warcraft (2016)

Here's my trivia flex: Warcraft made over $439 million worldwide — the majority overseas — making it for years the highest-grossing video game movie ever. It flopped in the US and crushed it in China, which is the most Warcraft thing possible. The orcs are motion-capture marvels. The humans are... present. Watch it for the orcs. Be the orcs.

1. Detective Pikachu (2019) — Actually Kind of Fine, I'm As Shocked As You

I fought this ranking. I fought it hard. But Ryan Reynolds as a fuzzy little detective Pokémon with a coffee addiction is the single best piece of casting in the genre's history, and the movie has real noir atmosphere plus a third act that doesn't completely collapse. It respects the source material. It has jokes that land. I laughed multiple times, voluntarily, with witnesses.

Post-Marathon Debrief

By Sunday night, my Regret Level column averaged a 6.2. My search history included "how many Uwe Boll movies is too many" (trick question, it's three, I checked) and "is it normal to dream in grainy 2003 film grain."

Here's the thing, though: the genre's arc is genuinely hopeful. We went from devolution guns to a talking Pikachu with genuine emotional stakes in about 26 years. The Last of Us show proved the ceiling is even higher on the small screen. The nurdles in the rough era of adaptations might actually be ending — and part of me, the part that loved the Goomba leather daddies, will miss it.

Nah. I won't. Detective Pikachu forever.