10 Solid Video Game Movies Which Aren't Actually Based on Video Games

Movies based on video games have never had the best rep, and vice versa. More often than not, they fail to replicate what made the source material fun in the first place.

There are some films however, that may not be based on games directly, but manage to capture the spirit of the culture. Here, Complex presents its list of 10 films that either use video games effectively in their plot, or successfully replicate their visual language.

The Wizard

Who should make the game: Shigesato Itoi.

Fun in that 80s way, with a rare lead role for Fred Savage from The Wonder Years, The Wizard is notable in internet world for its cheesy product placement of useless Nintendo peripheral the Power Glove ("It's so bad".) more than anything else. One of the first films to shine a cinematic light on post-arcade gaming culture, The Wizard is a pretty decent road movie, following three friends' cross-country rite of passage to compete in a West Coast video game tourney for the ages.

Commando

Who should make the game: Konami.

For hero John Matrix's (Schwarzenegger) outrageous disdain for human life, for its utter sparsity of plot, for its outrageously effete villain (Vernon Wells), and for its pornographic attention to weaponry; for all these reasons and more, Commando is the father to Contra, writ large for the silver screen.

Crank

Who should make the game: Rockstar North.

The second most outrageous film in Statham's action repertoire (outdone only by its sequel), Crank is heavily indebted to the style of Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto series. Protagonist Chev Chelios is injected with a toxin that will stop his heart if he goes below a certain BPM, an excuse plot allowing for intermittent scenes of the S-man giving himself 'energy boosts' through defribulator jolts and bouts of public sex, as well as gun-toting, mass vehicular carnage. A great beer-and-buddy movie.

Reign Over Me

Who should make the game: The Fullbright Company.

Reign Over Me represents an interesting turning point for games in cinema, being one of the first serious dramas to treat video gaming with a greater thematic heft. Heavily depressed after the death of his wife and child in the Twin Tower attack, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) is shown engrossed in PS2 masterpiece Shadow of the Colossus in several scenes, a game where a grieving warrior Wander endeavours to bring his lover Mono back from the dead by toppling towering beasts. Other filmmakers may have chosen any old game to communicate the isolation of Sandler's gamer character in a more stereotypical way, so Reign Over Me deserves props for its use of tasteful allegory.

The Last Starfighter

Who should make the game: Chris Roberts.

The Last Starfighter is a fun film from the era where the boys' escapism of Spielberg's Hollywood saw its peak, starting off a slew of me-too spacefarers such as Joe Dante's Explorers in 1985 and Randal Kleiser's Flight of the Navigator in 1986. The Last Starfighter is notable for the use of arcade machines as a plot catalyst as the leet gaming skills of teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) prove sufficient data for recruitment from a galactic space force IRL. An endearing fantasy that captures gamer daydreams with a nostagic fondness.

Tron

Who should make the game: Monolith has already given it a good bash.

Tron rocks, and it's not just my childhood talking. The prototypical video game movie, this Jeff Bridges star vehicle was always destined for cult status with its trippy visuals and progressive soundtrack. There have actually been several Tron videogames in the wake of the film, with Monolith's Tron 2.0, perhaps the most successful attempt at capturing the film's magic. It is also notable for having one of the coolest movie posters of all time.

WarGames

Who should make the game: Westwood.

Extremely dated but always a good time, Matthew Broderick and Allly Sheedy lend their babyfaced Tiger Beat charms to this Cold War thriller about a teen hacker (Broderick), who nearly starts World War III when he mistakes an autonomous NORAD missile simulation for a Missile Command-style computer game. It is also John Badham's best film by a mile.

Strange Days

Who should make the game: CD Projekt Red.

One of the best cyberpunk films ever made, Kathryn Bigelow's dizzying LA dystopia, set at the eve of the new millennium, features a star turn from Ralph Fiennes as sleazy black market memory dealer Lenny Nero. Set in an underground world of 'wiretrippers', who play out vicarious fantasies through another's eyes via a brain-stimulating device called a 'squid', Strange Days is becoming increasingly prescient with the onset of similarly isolating VR experiences such as Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift.

Wreck-It Ralph

Who should make the game: Double Fine.

An obvious choice perhaps, but Wreck-It Ralph nails the culture of video games in a way few films have come close to. There is cannily invoked nostalgia for the parents as well as wide-eyed wonder for the children, and crucially, Wreck-It Ralph never comes across as patronising, treating its extensive cast of familiar mascots with an appealing reverence.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Who should make the game: Ubisoft, apparently.

Plot-light and self-referential to a fault it may be, but Scott Pilgrim vs the World is undeniably a slick piece of filmmaking, and few directors both understand and command the aesthetic flourish of video games like Spaced director Edgar Wright. Scott Pilgrim contains so many video game references throughout its flashy 90 minutes that there are whole webpages devoted to them, and the entire film sucessfully carries the structure of a video game as Canuck slacker Scott (Michael Cera) overcomes his 'arrested development' (get it?) to fight through the baggage of girlfriend Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) one jerky ex at a time.