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The wonderful fever dream that is A Minecraft Movie is a sign that, even if a film can’t entirely replicate the feeling of a video game entirely, it can certainly come up with a close approximation of the feeling of a game, with some added celebrity star power in the process. (Including Jack Black, judging by the evidence of Minecraft and Super Mario Bros.) Any arguments in the direction of, ‘Now movies can do video games right’ should take a back seat, though, because we’ve been enjoying some great game movies for years. For your consideration, dear friends: three classic video game movies from the past few decades. Yes, I said decades.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

Super Mario Bros.: Because someone thought the casts of Easy Rider, Aliens, and Roger Rabbit needed to come together

The 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie was, for many video game fans, a redemption over the live-action adaptation from 30 years earlier that jettisoned so much of what people loved about the games — like the aesthetic, the tone, and even much of the plot. But here’s the thing: 1993’s Super Mario Bros. is actually kind of a great movie, if viewed inside the context of 1980 and ‘90s cinema: it’s as if Terry Gilliam and the directors behind Delicatessen got a hold of a blockbuster movie and screw around with it. The performances from Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo — both of whom apparently were so unhappy and confused on set that they made the movie essentially drunk — are wild, and Dennis Hopper feels as if he’s in an entirely different (much more horrifying, on multiple levels) movie. It feels like the excesses of late 20th century cinema in one movie, and in retrospect, that’s a good thing.

This one isn’t available to stream anywhere, but you can buy it on Amazon

Doom: The Rock is cooking up a fantastic guilty pleasure that also stars The Boys’ Butcher

True story: for awhile, it seemed as if no-one wanted to star in the 2005 adaptation of first-person shooter Doom: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vin Diesel and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson all turned down the lead role, although the Rock took on one of the supporting parts in the feature. It’s easy to see why no-one wanted to play John Grimm before a young Karl Urban (later to be Bones in the Star Trek reboot movies, and then Butcher in Prime Video’s The Boys) came along; Doom isn’t necessarily a good movie, although it certainly is a fun movie. (In other trivia, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg were invited to work on the movie’s screenplay; they also said no.) It’s an energetic, enthusiastic mess of a movie that, honestly, is probably just about as good of a movie as Doom the game deserves. There’s something to be said for being so faithful to the original in terms of quality, let’s be honest.

Available to steam on Prime Video

Sonic the Hedgehog: Sega’s spiky hero comes to CGI life, and still seems more real than Jim Carrey

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but 2020’s Sonic somehow managed to actually bring almost everything that fans loved about the Sega game series to the big screen, mixing and messing with lore with abandon — last time I checked, former Cyclops and perpetual-actor-who-more-people-should-love James Marsden wasn’t in any of the games — and somehow still managing to come up with something that feels true to the spirit of the games where it counts. Let’s credit the voice work of Ben Schwartz as the title character, some smart writing, and… okay, really, let’s give Jim Carrey’s fearless, entirely lacking in subtlety because who needs it, performance as the villainous Doctor Robotnik no small amount of praise, as well. Without him, the movie would feel just a little bit too grounded in reality.

Available to stream on Paramount+

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