For a long time, it was an accepted truth that video games just didn't work on screen. Remember the quasi-cyberpunk 1993 Super Mario movie, starring Dennis Hopper? It was so bad that basically everyone involved with it has disavowed it. And TV? Kids of the 90s will remember the incredibly annoying voice of Sonic the Hedgehog on Saturday morning TV - or the permanent repeats of the Pokémon anime series - but other than that, the entertainment world never took games seriously.
Things have changed. In the past few years, Hollywood has managed to produce a few videogame films that are actually watchable, such as Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. And barely a week goes by without an announcement that another game has been picked up for TV - all of which are aimed at adults.
There's a science fiction series based on Halo from 2001 whose original fans are well into their 30s and beyond. Netflix has, in production, an adaptation of Assassin's Creed, the historical action game that makes you run around in elaborate simulations of ancient Egypt or Renaissance Italy. This is added to the streaming group's 15-rated take on The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill, which is almost as filthy and violent as its source material. And in an Inception-level example of games and TV inspiring each other, there's even a series based on Cuphead, itself a homage to early 1920s cartoons.
Denne historien er fra April 29, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra April 29, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
The concept of \"elite overproduction\" was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs.
'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
