7 Hilariously Insane Video Game Sequels To Classic Movies
We've talked before about how video games often botch movie adaptations, but most games usually don't fuck around with the ending. For example, there's no Citizen Kane game where you and Rosebud win the Winter Olympics. The Home Alone Nintendo game doesn't end with Macaulay Culkin warping to Hell and murdering Japanese Satan. But some movie-themed games have totally dropped the ball, and classic endings were reduced to borderline psychotic pixelated nonsense, such as ...
Jurassic Park -- Dr. Grant Goes On A Murder Spree
The Movie:
If you ignore the three movies that came after, Jurassic Park ends pretty much perfectly -- our heroes fly into the sunset, too happy to be alive to consider how depressing their day jobs are going to be now that the focus of their research repeatedly tried to eat them.
But most importantly, the film's hero, Dr. Grant, has completed his character arc, realizing that it's more satisfying to protect children from harm than to pretend to disembowel them with fossils for his own demented amusement.
"I just mentally do that now."
The Game:
The video game Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition picks up immediately where the movie ends, but instead of heading back to the mainland to sleep or help Jeff Goldblum re-oil his chest, Grant catches sight of something unusual: The Costa Rican government is bombing the island, and a private army is looking to grab the remaining dino eggs.
Naturally, Grant's response is to abandon his friends, head back to the island alone, and run around shooting everything in sight with shotguns.
If seeing the lovable paleontologist blowing the faces off of random men isn't chilling enough, Grant even wields a fucking flamethrower, just to cement that this character has completely crossed over from contemplative scientist to bloodthirsty maniac.
A barbecue 65 million years in the making.
Sure, it's the Rampage Edition, but a lot of us kind of assumed it was going to be the dinosaurs doing the rampaging. The Super Nintendo game Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues similarly sees Grant go back to the island, but this time alongside a trained mercenary named Michael Wolfskin, because why send two mercenaries when you can somehow magically transform a middle-aged academic into a serial killer?
The Movie:
Rambo's a tricky character to fashion a video game around. Sure, he engages in a lot of kickass action, but so many of his adventures are centered around his crippling PTSD. The climax of First Blood is a hug, for crying out loud. Rambo: First Blood Part II has more action, but Rambo's emotions still run high, and the movie's final moments find Rambo angrily confronting Murdock, a jerk-ass pencil-pushing bureaucrat.
The II also stands for the deuce he drops in his underpants.
The Game:
We've talked before about how a recent video game turned the usually sympathetic Rambo into a cop-killing psychopath, but it turns out this wasn't the first Rambo game. Back in 1987, Nintendo took a whack at the story, and most of it is a pretty straightforward retelling of the movie.
The flamethrower guy was worth 1,000 points in the actual film.
And just like in the movie, Rambo meets Murdock -- but then he does something ... unusual. Presumably because the people at Nintendo watched only the first 20 minutes of Rambo, then gave up and just guessed how it ends, instead of threatening Murdock with a Bowie knife, Rambo inexplicably conjures a magic Japanese character, which turns Murdock into a frog.
"I learned this trick from a ninja."
Clearly, this means Rambo is some stripe of sorcerer, but why wait until now to bust out the black magic? Wouldn't it have saved some ammo if he could have instantly turned the entire Vietnamese army into his own personal Budweiser commercial?
Batman -- Our Hero Casually Murders The Joker
The Movie:
Tim Burton's original Batman movie ends with the caped crusader beating the shit out of The Joker for murdering his parents and for taking up so much screen time in a movie called Batman. After a powerful punch, The Joker goes over the ledge, then pulls Batman and Vicki Vale with him -- as he attempts to escape by helicopter, Batman grapples The Joker to a gargoyle, and he ends up falling to his death.
"Damn, I was aiming for his dick."
The Game:
The Nintendo game streamlines this interaction a little bit. Instead of this more understandable series of events, Batman, who generally makes it a habit not to kill anyone, tosses The Joker off the roof like it's no big deal.
"Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly dead lot."
Unlike the movie, in the Nintendo-verse The Joker survives the fall to return in a sequel -- which finds Batman ultimately defeating The Joker while simultaneously destroying an entire island. So not only is The Joker seemingly dead again, but an entire land mass has been blown to smithereens. Are we positive these games weren't Zack Snyder's source material for Batman V Superman?
The Blair Witch Project -- Those Woods Are Full Of Monsters
The Movie:
The Blair Witch Project is most remembered for its controversial ending. After a scintillating hour of three randos wandering around a national park or something, the movie concludes with a no-budget scare: One of the characters facing the wall in a creepy basement, which is a reference to a series of murders mentioned earlier in the movie (or just because the creepy cabin predated indoor plumbing).
"Stop watching. I can't haunt when you watch."
The Game:
Because the success of Blair Witch led to a frenzy of merchandising tie-ins, with everything from young adult novels to a soundtrack to the music-less movie, which was explained by the powers that be as a mix CD that belonged to one of the dead kids.
For his band tastes alone, he deserved what happened.
So, naturally, they also cranked out a few video games. Rather than give us some kind of cranky camping trip simulator, the Blair Witch video games flash back in time, showing the haunted woods throughout history. Unlike the movie, though, the monsters are not left to our imagination -- in fact, things get pretty goddamn insane. It turns out that forest is chock full of wacky creatures just waiting to pop out and attack you.
"You -- You know I don't have organs, right?"
Not only that, but in one game, the townspeople themselves turn into crazy monsters. The townsfolk interviewed in the movie should have mentioned some of this shit.
"They specifically asked about the witch. Didn't seem relevant."
The Thing -- Kurt Russell Is The Thing
The Movie:
Apart from the fact that The Thing makes you doubt everything Wilford Brimley's ever told you about diabetes and oatmeal because he might be some kind of shape-shifting monster, it's a pretty amazing movie. And one of the things people love about it is its ambiguous ending. Rather than shoehorn in some kind of happy resolution, MacReady and Childs (the last two surviving characters) share a drink together, and the audience is left unsure which one of them is The Thing.
The Game:
Luckily for people who loathe nuance and artistry, years later a video game came along to explain away the movie's enigmatic appeal. The Thing game finds a team of U.S. Special Forces investigating what the hell happened at the Antarctic outpost from the original movie.
"Except we call it 'The Object.'"
Pretty much right off the bat they discover Childs' frozen corpse, which sadly contradicts one of the coolest theories about the ending -- Childs was The Thing because you can't see his breath in the cold. Even worse, the game's ending finds your hero being airlifted out by Kurt Russell's character, MacReady.
Deus ex macreada.
So this means that either MacReady somehow miraculously and mysteriously survived or, more likely, he's The fucking Thing. So it's a depressing ending for both the hero of the original film and you, because winning the game means hitching a ride from an alien who will gleefully mutate your body into a giant adenoid. This is like if Paperboy ended with a visit to a cargo van that's purportedly filled with Mike and Ikes.
The Great Escape -- You Win! USA! USA! USA!
The Movie:
The Great Escape tells the story of a heroic escape from a German POW camp during World War II. In the end, while some escapees are successful, our handsome hero, "The Cooler King," played by Steve McQueen, is allowed only a brief moment of freedom before crashing his motorcycle and being captured by the Nazis.
He's thrown back into the "Cooler," and the movie ends right where it started, with McQueen in solitary playing catch with himself -- which doesn't seem too bad, seeing as having a glove and ball was like owning a PlayStation back in the 1940s.
Jacks and marbles were available only as DLC.
The Game:
Since a lot of video games allow us to live out the most horrifying experiences of our grandparents' generation while eating Cheetos and ignoring phone calls from our grandparents, the world was treated to a Great Escape video game. But in this adaptation of one of history's all-time great movies, the developers decided they could top the actual ending. Instead of poignantly depicting the victories of war as fleeting and ultimately futile, they just flat-out rewrote that shit.
Like the movie, the final level of the game finds Steve McQueen on his motorcycle; unlike the movie, he manages to kick Nazis in their stupid faces and even drive through goddamn explosions.
Michael Bay and Peter Berg had a sword fight with their dueling erections after playing this.
Then, he takes one last look at the Germans (who seemingly aren't chasing him anymore) and just drives away to freedom. Gobble a joy dong, film nerds!
In the Expert ending he shreds out a middle-finger drawing in the grass with his tires.
The Movie:
The ending of T2: Judgment Day sees the heroic T-800 sacrifice himself to a pit of molten metal, like an Austrian cyborg Jesus. As long as he's activated, the technology that powers him could be used to create Skynet, which would lead to Judgment Day, and even worse, Terminators 3, Salvation, and Genisys.
"My death at least got one thumb up."
The Game:
In the Game Boy adaptation of the film, the Terminator offs the T-1000, just like in the movie, the only difference being the world looks like gray blobs of crap.
It was the first game completely animated on an Etch a Sketch.
But right when you're expecting the Terminator to come forward and make his noble sacrifice, the game immediately cuts to some text stating that you saved the human race, but adds the awkward caveat: "OR HAVE YOU?"
Then, to really make you feel like a piece of shit, the game ends with an idyllic park scene that blows out to a white screen:
Which those who saw the movie probably remember from this scene:
So, the game basically goes out of its way to tell you that you accomplished absolutely nothing: Judgment Day still happens and humanity is obliterated, but thanks for playing the game, asshole!
J.M. McNab co-hosts the pop culture nostalgia podcast Rewatchability, which can also be found on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @Rewatchability.
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For more games that kind of screwed up the movie they're based on, check out 5 Video Game Versions of Movies That Add Insane Plot Twists and 5 Video Game Adaptations That Missed the Point Of The Movie.
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