Adaptation Decay

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Are video game movies always bad? Is there nothing to love about old Nintendo cartoons? Are any video game comics worth reading? In this monthly premium show, Gary Butterfield and Kaye Ross look at all kinds of media derived from video games and take it apart, answering whether it's a good adaptation, and whether it's a good piece of art.

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92 episodes
Updated January 14
Explicit

Episodes92

Newest first

Nov 15, 2017 · 1 hr 27 min
Adaptation Decay 12: Pac-Man Fever
You can't help but feel a little bad for Buckner and Garcia. They wrote a fun song about an arcade game they liked, and ended up being forever branded as a novelty act and a one-hit wonder. The record label railroaded them into making an album full of video game songs to take advantage of the popularity of their single, "Pac-Man Fever". What they ended up creating was a very strange beast: full of overly literal lyrics about gameplay and embarrassingly dated musical genre sendups... but also full of catchy hooks and well-used samples. It's a bit of a stretch to call this album an adaptation, but it's a memorable time capsule from the arcade boom of the early 80s. Also, we really like talking about music.
Sep 15, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 11: Silent Hill
Let's flirt with success, as we look at 2006's Silent Hill movie. Obviously Kole is down, since this contains prolonged sequences that perfectly encapsulate the disorientation and horror of wandering around a haunted town. However, this movie falls from its high highs to shit the bed with boring cult nonsense. Tune in to hear exactly what went wrong, even though this is generally one of our most positive episodes of this show.
Aug 15, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 10: Castlevania
This adaptation came out of nowhere, but apparently it's been coming for a long time. Back in 2007, Konami reached out to Warren Ellis to write a movie script for them, adapting Castlevania to the screen. Ten years later, that movie became a Netflix series. And people seem to love it. If only it was that easy. Because what we have here is a continuation of Summer Throwdown season, where our opinion is split on whether this is a good TV show, a good adaptation, or neither.
Jul 2, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 9: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
It was supposed to be a massive achievement in filmmaking. The premier video game studio had set its sights on making a CGI movie that would trick you into thinking you were looking at actual people. But that wasn't the right thing to chase. Despite its star studded cast, we found very little to love in this movie that's both a bad story and a bad adaptation. Come listen to how this fell apart, and almost took Square with it.
Jul 2, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 8: Super Mario Bros.
This is the big one... 1993's Super Mario Bros. was the first video game movie, and it certainly set a... tone... for the quality of things to come. It's almost universally reviled, and it's been talked to death by people a lot smarter than us. However, revisiting this movie directed by monsters has revealed something surprising: While it's a horrible adaptation, it's really fun to watch. The casting is ridiculous, the set and costume design is completely wrong, and it plays fast and loose with the source material in ways that make it a fascinating watch.
Jul 2, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 7: Lara Croft Tomb Raider
Recorded to coincide with our coverage of the original Tomb Raider game on Watch Out for Fireballs!, this episode covers perhaps the best adaptation we've seen yet. That's right, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the Angelina Jolie movie from 2001, is worth watching. Of course it's brainless. The action is dumb, and the way it's choreographed and shot reeks of "The Matrix just came out". The accents are all over the place. But it's fun, breezy, and faithful to the source material in a way that has proven to be rare in the film medium. Listen in for the scoop, and maybe give this one a rental.
Jul 2, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 6: Alone in the Dark
It had to happen eventually: we'd have to cover an Uwe Boll movie. It's probable that you've read a lot of breakdowns of Boll's ineptitude, but nothing beats getting a first hand taste. This is one of the worst movies we've ever seen. Alone in the Dark is about as successful as an adaptation as it is as a film... not at all. You have a main character who dresses like Edward Carnby, and some supernatural stuff happening, but that's where it stops. Instead, we dredge the Z-list to create an action movie where Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff, and Tara Reid grapple to see who has the least charisma. Seriously, this thing is a master class.
Jul 1, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 5: Maniac Mansion
Did you know that Maniac Mansion was adapted into a television show in 1990? Did you know Eugene Levy was in charge of it? Did you know that Gary and Kole are actually pretty into the show, by and large? All these questions and more may or may not be answered. The commonalities between the Maniac Mansion TV show and its source material are scant and superficial. In that way, it's a very poor adaptation. However, you can listen in to hear us praise the show's completely bizarre tone, and strange, uber-Canadian SCTV sense of humor.
Jul 1, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 4: Pokémon Origins
The Pokémon anime from the '90s is rightfully beloved. It was a colorful and entertaining look at this magical world chock full of monsters just waiting to be your friend. We're not talking about that show. Instead, we're talking about the soulless and bafflingly-paced miniseries that was originally released alongside Pokémon X and Y. Listen to hear us talk about how Origins jettisons the humor and character of the Pokémon universe in favor of rote representations of the rules of the game.
Jul 1, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 3: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
The secret was friendship. The secret was always friendship, but we just forgot... over and over again... in this premium show dedicated to bad adaptations of video games. Or bad movie sequels to video games, like the 2005 movie "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children". A good sequel has similar requirements to a good adaptation: It must honor the source material. While Advent Children takes us back to the same world as the beloved Final Fantasy VII, and shows us many of the same characters, it ignores and squanders the good things about that world, and those characters. What's left is characters who forgot their growth, fighting the same battles over and over again through incomprehensible and interminable actions sequences. It's the pits.
Jul 1, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 2: Doom
Get your asses to Mars in this second episode of our premium show dedicated to bad adaptations of videos games. It's all about the 2005 movie "Doom". We really didn't intend to do another Resident Evil movie, but here we are. Take Doom, remove all of the action, and take away Hell. Add in ridiculous non-science about extra chromosomes encoding the human soul, and you have just another zombie movie with an incredibly ill-advised first-person segment.
Jul 1, 2017 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 1: Resident Evil
This inaugural episode of our premium show dedicated to bad adaptations of video games is all about the 2002 Paul W.S. Anderson movie "Resident Evil." Gary and Kole go in-depth on how Resident Evil fails as an action movie AND as a Resident Evil adaptation, hitting it hard for being an incoherent and insulting mess.