Obscure Sega Title To Get Film Adaptation as Video Game Craze Continues

I didn’t see the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie until a few weeks ago, but I had a pretty good time. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much when it came out, as I was childless at the time, but sitting down and enjoying it with my kids was a real blast. It was also pretty impressive to see a movie based on a video game that wasn’t terrible or too filled with references. It isn’t void of nods to its origins, but it controlled itself more than I expected.

The movie also did pretty well, and, unsurprisingly, Hollywood executives have seemingly taken the wrong message from it. What has followed is a spew of hyper-accurate video game movies that seemingly get worse with every entry. The most recent example is the Super Mario Bros. films. The first one is fine, but it certainly leans too heavily on references to the games. The follow-up is a mishmash of nonsense that seems to be fueled only by pointing out that it was based on a video game.

It won’t stop there, either. The two recent Mortal Kombat films are laden with in-jokes and references, and have both kind of petered out. The first came out at a time when everyone was stuck at home, but the sequel wasn’t strong enough to get folks into theaters. A Street Fighter adaptation is due later this year, and people have been celebrating the accuracy and fun tone of the trailer, but I am skeptical, to say the least. Still, video games are in right now, to the point that even more unrecognizable titles are getting adaptations.

A movie based on Streets of Rage has been announced, with Jeymes Samuel (director of The Book of Clarence) at the helm. The script will be written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, the duo behind the Sonic movies. While I’ve only seen the first one, that does give me a little bit of confidence about something truly baffling. For those who aren’t familiar, Streets of Rage is a pretty standard beat-em-up side scroller. There is a character in one of the sequels who fights while wearing roller blades, and I think in one game you get to fight as a kangaroo, but I genuinely don’t know what else from it could feed a film adaptation.

To be fair, maybe there is a story I’m not aware of. There are certainly years of lore to Sonic, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter, so there could be lots to draw from. And Miller and Casey also do a great job casting aside a lot of lore and trying to tell an original story in Sonic (at least the one I’ve seen), so they could do the same with Streets of Rage. If anything, the biggest obstacle seems to be (in my mind) that most people won’t know what the hell Streets of Rage is.

It’s a great title! And if there are trailers with thugs getting beaten up by kangaroos and rollerblading children, that could be enough to entice audiences, but this feels more like a Jonah Hex situation. A studio is trying to hop onto a new craze by plumbing the depths of its IP library for something they can slap an idea onto. Hopefully, it works out better for them than it did for ole Jonah.