We know that most movies that are based on a video game are usually bad. But how bad really? I got this list from Wikipedia and I will do some basic statistics.
Title | Year | Box office rev (m) | Rotten Tomatoes “%” | Metacritic ”/100” |
Super Mario Bros. | 1993 | $21 | 15 | |
Double Dragon | 1994 | $2 | 8 | |
Street Fighter | 1994 | $99 | 12 | |
Mortal Kombat | 1995 | $122 | 33 | 58 |
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation | 1997 | $51 | 3 | 11 |
Wing Commander | 1999 | $12 | 10 | 21 |
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider | 2001 | $275 | 19 | 33 |
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within | 2001 | $85 | 44 | 49 |
Resident Evil | 2002 | $102 | 33 | 33 |
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life | 2003 | $157 | 24 | 43 |
House of the Dead | 2003 | $14 | 4 | 15 |
Resident Evil: Apocalypse | 2004 | $129 | 21 | 35 |
Alone in the Dark | 2005 | $10 | 1 | 9 |
Doom | 2005 | $56 | 19 | 34 |
BloodRayne | 2006 | $4 | 4 | 18 |
Silent Hill | 2006 | $98 | 29 | 30 |
DOA: Dead or Alive | 2006 | $8 | 34 | 38 |
Postal | 2007 | $0 | 8 | 22 |
Resident Evil: Extinction | 2007 | $148 | 22 | 41 |
Hitman | 2007 | $100 | 14 | 35 |
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale | 2008 | $13 | 4 | 15 |
Far Cry | 2008 | $1 | 12 | |
Max Payne | 2008 | $85 | 16 | 31 |
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li | 2009 | $13 | 6 | 17 |
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time | 2010 | $336 | 36 | 50 |
Resident Evil: Afterlife | 2010 | $296 | 23 | 37 |
Resident Evil: Retribution | 2012 | $240 | 30 | 39 |
Silent Hill: Revelation | 2012 | $52 | 5 | 15 |
Need for Speed | 2014 | $203 | 23 | 39 |
Hitman: Agent 47 | 2015 | $82 | 8 | 28 |
Ratchet & Clank | 2016 | $12 | 17 | 29 |
The Angry Birds Movie | 2016 | $343 | 43 | 43 |
Warcraft | 2016 | $432 | 29 | 32 |
On average, a movie will make you $110m and get you 18% on Rotten Tomatoes and 31/100 on Metacritic. I wonder if its possible to sarcastically make a movie? Paint-by-numbers for the script as a joke and it actually gets the same rating as it was made honestly.
Do ratings and revenue follow each other? Yes. The correlation is around 0.6. Closer to 1 than it is to 0. This means that the world works. Roughly. Usually, if the critics hate your movie, you will not make much money. The data somewhat agrees with that.
So how much money is each point of critic love? About $6m. So for every percentage point that you get from Rotten Tomatoes, you will make about $6m. If you have 50%, you will make $300m. The Metacritic figure is about 35% less. $3.8m is the value and on average, they tend to rate movies higher. 18% on RT and 31 on MC.
Does MC and RT rate movies similarly? Yes. The correlation is about 0.87. If the correlation was a 1, it would mean that they rate movies identically and if it was a 0, it would mean that there is no similarity.
The best movie according to RT is Final Fanatsy: The spirits within with a 44%. I think i saw it. Ming na does the voice acting? MC gave it a 49/100.
The best movie according to MC is Mortal Kombat with 58/100. We watched this last week, go check the post. RT gave it a 33%.
The worst movie according to RT and MC is 2005’s Alone in the Dark. RT gave it a 1% and MC gave it a 9/100. Thats really low. We much watch it.
I noticed that September and October are a little bit more popular with release months than the rest of the year.
Postal and Far Cry hardly made any money. $146k and $743k respectively. We must watch those junkers too.
So how bad are movies that are based on video games? Very. They don’t make too much money (recently they do) and they usually are rated badly. Bad ratings = low revenue. I think the reason for the recent history for even bad movies to make big money is that they are being released in China too. I dont know how true this is. I assume as much because Adam Sandler movies tend to make its money from non-USA sources. I think the trend will pass in a few years. The eastern audience will wise up to money grabbing movie maker. If they don’t, I’m making a Nokia Snake game.