For those of us that enjoy playing video games, throwing yourself at the same boss battle or difficult mission over and over again to no avail is one of the most aggravating experiences imaginable. Such fruitless endeavors often feel Sisyphean, and even the most determined among us have occasionally rage quit and decided the challenge wasn’t worth the vexation. Yet, despite these difficulties, many gamers refuse to give up and continue to play on.
Such struggles adequately capture Hollywood’s persistent yet futile enterprise to make a successful film based on a video game. Movie adaptations of games have a notoriously abysmal track record. Starting with 1993’s Super Mario Bros., Hollywood has yet to produce an adaptation that was both a critical triumph and a box office hit. Despite being based on the colossal Nintendo franchise of the same name, the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. holds a pitiful 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and failed to make up even half of its $48 million budget at the box office. Hollywood’s initial foray into video game adaptations was so dreadful that Nintendo waited 26 years to release another live-action film.
That movie, Detective Pikachu, also stands as the only live-action movie based on a video game to have a fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes at 69%. And even, Detective Pikachu only holds a 53 out 100 rating on Metacritic, which is only a “mixed or average” score according to the website’s metrics. For reference, no other live-action video game made in North America has a Metacritic score higher than 50. In other words, Detective Pikachu was successful but by no means a real sign that Hollywood had finally solved its gaming dilemma.
On paper, Netflix’s The Witcher received a similar critical reception to Detective Pikachu. With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 66% and a Metacritic score of 53 out of 100, The Witcher can be described as a moderate success. However, the Netflix adaptation stands out as one of the first major live-action television series based on a video game. While the show may not have been a universal hit, the series has solved many of the problems video game films have grappled with for almost three decades.
The Witcher ultimately succeeds because it captures elements of video games that films don’t have the space to address. Given a two-hour runtime, most films don’t have time to explore secondary plots and instead stick closely to one major conflict. But video games often rely on side quests to break up the plot, allow players to discover new game mechanics, and learn more about the characters and the world they reside in. In many adventure games, tackling unusual challenges is one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences available. Similarly, television shows thrive on a case/villain of the week structure; that mix of serialized and episodic storytelling is crucial for shows ranging from NCIS to Supernatural.
The Netflix adaptation of The Witcher perfectly captures the joy of these side quests. Episodes like “Rare Species” and “Betrayer Moon” don’t have nearly as much impact on the season’s main plot as “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” and “Before a Fall,” but the former introduce fun dynamics and conflicts that would likely be cut from a film. Geralt (Henry Cavill, Justice League) playing detective in “Betrayer Moon” as he uncovers King Foltest’s (Shaun Dooley, The Stranger) mysterious connection to the shtriga is a highly entertaining fusion of horror and crime scene investigation. Watching Geralt meet a legendary, shape-shifting dragon in “Rare Species” is both exciting worldbuilding and a perfect opportunity to unpack Geralt’s moral code as a witcher. But a film version of these video games would no doubt exclude these stories in favor of a more streamlined plot about Geralt needing to protect and rescue Ciri (Freya Allan, Into the Badlands). As a result, this hypothetical movie would lose some of the video games’ sense of adventure and depth.
The makers of The Witcher also understand what parts of a video game translate well to a non-interactive form of storytelling. I would argue that using a controller to make Geralt fight a monster is more exciting than watching Henry Cavill battle a CGI creature. The exhilaration of making a character dodge incoming attacks and land critical hits can’t be directly translated into a medium in which someone is a passive viewer. As a result, action and combat should not be the primary focus of a show.
The Witcher demonstrates this lesson by instead emphasizing such elements as Yennefer’s (Anya Chalotra, Wanderlust) physical/emotional transformation and Ciri’s traumatic exposure to life outside of her castle. The show values drama, suspense, and mythology over sword fights and is the better for it. Action scenes then serve as the culmination of a storyline or a method of advancing the plot. By using battles as a means to end rather than ends in themselves, The Witcher recognizes that shows and movies can’t accurately capture the experience of gameplay. I believe this dynamic is the reason that films like Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider failed; because those games are built on interactive activities like platforming, solving puzzles, and stealthily sneaking around, presenting those tasks in a non-interactive medium would never be as exciting unless they adequately served the plot (which they didn’t).
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest advantage that The Witcher has over its film predecessors: a clear narrative based on a series of books. Games like Super Mario, Street Fighter, and Rampage certainly have stories, but I don’t consider them particularly deep. Making movies out of those games required filmmakers to stretch their source material past the breaking point. Those games have grown in popularity due to the strength of their gameplay rather than of their stories. Conversely, Netflix’s The Witcher has a number of narrative-rich games and eight books to pull ideas from. The series clearly has a strong foundation and appears to have only scraped the surface of the source material’s mythology and history. Hollywood would thus do well to actually research how much story a game has before they adapt it. Which is exactly why my hopes for Sonic the Hedgehog aren’t particularly high.
By incorporating side quests, downplaying the importance of combat, and mining its rich source material, The Witcher managed to avoid many of the pitfalls Hollywood has fallen in for decades. Season one of The Witcher is undoubtedly flawed and not a perfect video game adaptation, but the show succeeds where many of its cinematic counterparts have failed. With any luck, producers and studios will take notice of this show’s success, be pickier about what they choose to adapt, and consider if television/streaming may be a more appropriate medium than film. But the decisions of Hollywood executives will likely remain just as mystifying as the Law of Surprise.
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