The 16 most awesomely bad videogame movie moments

Features
By published

Hilariously awful scenes from horribly misguided films


Fun fact: Bob Hoskins didn’t even know he was in a videogame movie until his daughter told him


As crappy videogame movies go, DOA: Dead or Alive is probably one of the better ones. It’s an entertainingly dumb king-fu comedy with a few decent performances, and compared to most of the other films on this list, that’s actually pretty good. Plus, it’s got Eric Roberts playing a villain whose evil doomsday weapon is a pair of sunglasses that predicts his opponent’s moves in one-on-one martial arts fights.

We’re not sure what nefarious purpose these could possibly serve, unless it’s rigging UFC matches. But whatever. It’s probably a threat to world peace somehow.

DOA’s most ridiculous moment, however, comes right at the beginning, when we’re introduced to Princess Kasumi (Devon Aoki), who’s begged by Ryu Hayabusa (Kane Kosugi) not to leave her clan’s enormous ninja mountaintop ninja castle.


Above: “Look, I’ve got better things to do than stand around in a lavish tribute to the films of Zhang Yimou, OK?”

Storming out past the dozens of guards who do nothing but stand around all day in her courtyard wearing period armor, Kasumi is threatened by her friend, White Girl Who is Somehow Also Japanese (Natassia Malthe).


Above: SO JAPANESE

And then this happens:

And this:

And then this:


Above: OK, sure

Look, it’ll make more sense if you just watch it:


Another surprisingly tolerable game adaptation, the Hitman movie told the story of Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) and his attempt to escape both his own turncoat assassination syndicate and the sexual advances of Olga Kurylenko (Olga Kurylenko).


Above: NO MEANS NO, LADY

For the most part it’s a fairly straightforward action-thriller, but things start to get stupid when 47 runs into three of his fellow bald, bioengineered assassins, at which point a four-way Mexican standoff erupts for no reason other than that it looks cool.


Above: Wait, why are they drawing down on the other guy?

47 suggests that everyone in the group try “dying with a little dignity,” at which point the other agents nod and everyone empties their guns.

And then we find out that “dying with a little dignity” means having a sharp hunk of metal jammed through your torso.


Above: DIGNITY!

Here’s the whole ridiculous spectacle in motion:


Essentially just a really lame, teen-centric version of Top Gun in space, Wing Commander dished up an unpalatable mashup of the series’ various mythological elements and recast Lt. Christopher “Maverick” Blair as bland, lifeless Freddie Prinze Jr. Also, this is what the tiger-like Kilrathi aliens look like in the movie:


Above: Yes, they’re that hard to see, mainly because of the “toxic gas” that is used to “cover up shitty special effects”

Probably the silliest moment in the movie is an over-dramatic jump to lightspeed, which contains what may be the worst-ever use of the circular bullet-time camera effect made famous by The Matrix. It also tells you everything you need to know about its main characters, Maverick and Maniac (Matthew Lillard):


Above: Maniac acts like a damn monkey all the time


Above: Maverick stands around and is boring

Here, just watch the damn thing already:

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.