So I had this surreal epiphany while watching Sonic The Hedgehog 3.
“Here I am, in the year 2025, in an actual movie theater, watching a live-action adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast … and it’s actually kind of a good movie!”
I think even the fiercest and most protective Sega loyalists are surprised by the relative quality of the live-action Sonic movies (especially following the kerfuffle over the Blue Blur’s original CGI design.) OK, so maybe they aren’t Citizen Kane or Sunset Boulevard, but compared to the garbage we got throughout the ‘90s and 2000s — Double Dragon and Wing Commander and virtually everything Uwe Boll ever touched — they’re pretty much cinematic art.
It only took 30 years or so, but it seems like Hollywood has finally figured out how to make movies based on video games that don’t turn out utterly horrendous and unwatchable. And considering how successful the Sonic movies have been, you have to assume it’s only a matter of time until somebody rolls the dice on some other well-known and well-regarded Sega intellectual properties. The only real question, of course, is which ones?
Some franchises are out of the question (sorry, Puyo Puyo) while others seem so obvious that they’re almost too obvious (Golden Axe, Altered Beast, etc.) For a live-action film adaptation to work, some concessions and omissions are necessary and that means changes to video games lore are inevitable, if not essential. I mean, Quentin Tarantino can try his hand at a one-to-one adaptation of Decap Attack, but I don’t think the end result would be all that entertaining. So when you dig deep into the bucket of Sega I.P.s, you have to grab a series that has an established back story but can be tweaked and amended to work better with the cinematic medium. And as fate would have it, I think I’ve found the five perfect successors to Sonic the Hedgehog — and the most logical additions to the Sega Cinematic Universe as we slowly build our way to that Avengers-sized crossover spectacle Fighters MegaMix: The Movie.
Gunstar Heroes
This game has everything in it. Megalomaniacal tyrants. Eight different types of laser guns. Wacky monsters just tailor-made for CGI action scenes. And, uh, this one part where you have to survive a gigantic board game … which might have to be excised out of the live-action movie, just to keep the whole thing under two hours. It’s pretty easy to see Gunstar Heroes getting the live-action movie treatment, since it’s essentially Dune meets Star Wars meets The Matrix meets Speed Racer already. In the hands of a capable director who understands the property — imagine, somebody with the kinetic talents of a Takashi Miike or a Nicholas Winding Refn-— Gunstar Heroes *could* be a thrilling, nonstop, sci-fi/action/comedy sensory overload experience that makes 2001 look like tea time at the senior rec center by comparison. I mean, if Disney can make Guardians of the Galaxy work in live action, there’s no reason why Gunstar Heroes couldn’t likewise succeed at the cineplex.
Jet Grind Radio
In a lot of ways, the Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio games were not only ahead of their time, but a little prescient. Taking place in a world where an evil corporate overlord reigns over a retro-futuristic metropolis, the games chronicle the adventures of a rag-tag group of rebel freedom fighters, who opt to take the battle to the man not with bullets and Molotov cocktails, but rocket-powered inline skates and a lot of misdemeanor property damage. It’s pretty easy to see a live-action Jet Grind Radio take shape — you take a little bit of Blade Runner, a little bit of The Hunger Games, a little bit of Fury Road and a LOT of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and it pretty much assembles itself. Not only could it be a visual tour de force — almost 25 years later, Jet Set Radio Future on the O.G. Xbox still looks stunning — but an aural revelation, too. Considering how funky the Jet Set Radio soundtracks are, there’s no reason why this dystopian-sci-fi-political thriller-comedy couldn’t also be a bona fide musical.
Shenmue
A lot of people forget that a live-action Yakuza/Like a Dragon movie already came out … in 2007. So why not peel back a layer or two and go back to its ancestral predecessor? If you’re unfamiliar with Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue saga, it’s already quite cinematic in scope and presentation (right down to the revolutionary/infamous Quick Time Events.) One part coming of age epic, one part martial arts revenge opus and one part forklift simulator, Shenmue is a game with plenty of charm, warmth and humor — which means it’s perfect material for a live-action melodrama. Looking back on it, the pacing, flow and structure of the game is eerily similar to any number of immensely popular K-dramas you can stream on Netflix these days. Instead of holding our breath for a proper Shenmue IV video game, we might be better off hedging our bets on the series continuing through the cinematic medium. And I will fist fight people to get a limited edition, souvenir popcorn bucket shaped like Lan Di’s head, obviously.
Streets of Rage
We know a Streets of Rage movie could work because the franchise itself is based on any number of kung-fu and vigilante action movies that were super-popular in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. So in this case, it’s just a cross-medium way of paying it forward … and backwards. Surely, you know the gist of the Streets of Rage franchise by now: a sort-of futuristic city finds itself under siege from a scurrilous crime lord and only a blonde guy named after the lead singer of Guns N Roses, a brunette woman who can pull off Cirque De Soleil tornado kicks with minimal effort, a 12-year-old African American child on roller skates and a kangaroo can save society from ruin (primarily, by eating fully cooked turkeys inexplicably left in phone booths and bashing everybody’s head in with steel pipes). Sure, we’ve seen it before at the multiplex, but have we seen it with fire-breathing henchmen who weigh 400 pounds getting thrown off elevators from 30 stories up by a mysterious karate master with robotic arms? My thoughts precisely.
Vectorman
Out of all of the Sega franchises, I think this is the one that would certainly work better as a movie than it does an actual video game series. Now, we can all admire the Vectorman games for trying something slightly different, but the two Genesis titles didn’t exactly set the world on fire with their Mega Man X meets Donkey Kong Country style gameplay. What Vectorman *did* have, though, was a pretty solid concept for a longer form narrative. When you boil the game down to its essence, it’s basically the same story as Wall-E — that is, if Wall-E was armed to the gills with laser cannons and projectile weaponry galore. It’s suspiciously easy envisioning the Vectorman mythos translating to an epic sci-fi-action allegory about climate change, and there’s actually some wiggle room to instill some emotional depth and pathos that wasn’t present in the Genesis titles. Vectorman is pretty much what happens when you merge A.I., Isle of Dogs, Idiocracy and Pacific Rim into a single movie — and really, who wouldn’t want to watch that?