That story, or one like it, comes out every year, it seems. I wonder who makes money off these IPs. With Mario, I think we all know, but for other properties, I'm clueless. Do the original writers of the games get cuts?
Because when I played The Last of Us, I'm telling you that as a lifelong gamer, who literally grew up on arcade machines (literally, dad owned and ran them, and Pong, Atari, and onward at home), it was set apart from what is generally a whole lot of crap. The gameplay and writing combined to make a masterpiece. When I heard it was being adapted to the screen, I immediately thought that they kinda had it too easy. As long as they didn't mess with it too much, everything was there, for at least a film.
But most games are not like that. If you do something like, say, download a rom pack of every NES and SNES game (which I may or may not have done, I am admitting nothing), what you see is just an absolute ton of nearly unplayable crap. You might try one out, but you quickly go to a familiar favorite. Could nostalgia be partly playing a role there? Yeah, I'm certainly not immune, but I don't think it's what I primarily seek out. I played a lot of these games the first time around, with little cultural influence, and they weren't good then, either.
So what we have with the gaming industry is not just a built-in fanbase - we have decades of heavily filtered output. There are simply a massive number of games, with most older games not having turned into a franchise, the way Mario and Donkey Kong (who appears in the Mario movie, and has often been tagging along behind Jumpman) have become household names. We have continued new output, but with advanced graphics and, in my eyes, better writing, to find new fans. In the end, it always comes down to writing. And you might say, well, what writing was there in a Donkey Kong game? A glance at the very first level told you the story, a somewhat familiar one for most audiences of those days. Even Pac-Man, whose film has been put on ice, and already made an appearance in one disaster (Sandler's "Pixels") has a story that many of us can tell.
I enjoyed this analysis. And not just because it rhymes with my own. The core issue to resolve is synchronizing video game development with film production. Both are very different processes, and getting them to line up remains the core challenge. Even without that, it's proven to resonate with audiences and deliver outsized financial results.
Upon reflection, I think we may be prone to overstate just how many successful "original" movies that there *ever* were. Maybe because the movies that stand the test of time are often, but not always, originals. But the box office often tells a different story.
Take 1939, widely considered the greatest movie year in Hollywood history. It was topped by two book adaptations: "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz." The former is still the biggest ticket seller in film history.
Other massive hits throughout Hollywood history: "Sound of Music" (Broadway adaptation), "The Ten Commandments" (Bible), "Doctor Zhivago" (novel). Even some of the most popular films during the New Hollywood of the 1970s were adaptations of popular books: "The Godfather," "The Exorcist," and "Jaws."
And let's be honest: How "original" is "Star Wars" or "Avatar?"
So it's not so much that there was once a "Golden Age of Original Blockbusters." More like, the source material for said blockbusters has shifted.
This shouldn't be surprising. Less Americans go to plays or read novels, so the source material has transitioned to hybrid visual-written media (comics) and now purely visual (video games, YouTube series).
But remixing has often been the source of originality. One thing we fail to appreciate, usually because we lack the context, is how often literary works are playing off the melodies other authors created. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it requires scholars to explain, but most of us just lack that perspective, and this is more true as you go back further in time. I'm sure Kurosawa was inspired by something, but as I'm ignorant of much of the culture of that era (outside of Kurosawa), I simply can't talk about it.
My guess: no
You've written in the past about the struggles of the film industry, but I think some context of the struggles of the game industry would be nice to tackle in an addendum: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2026/03/07/the-game-business-is-bigger-than-ever-so-why-are-so-many-having-problems/
That story, or one like it, comes out every year, it seems. I wonder who makes money off these IPs. With Mario, I think we all know, but for other properties, I'm clueless. Do the original writers of the games get cuts?
Because when I played The Last of Us, I'm telling you that as a lifelong gamer, who literally grew up on arcade machines (literally, dad owned and ran them, and Pong, Atari, and onward at home), it was set apart from what is generally a whole lot of crap. The gameplay and writing combined to make a masterpiece. When I heard it was being adapted to the screen, I immediately thought that they kinda had it too easy. As long as they didn't mess with it too much, everything was there, for at least a film.
But most games are not like that. If you do something like, say, download a rom pack of every NES and SNES game (which I may or may not have done, I am admitting nothing), what you see is just an absolute ton of nearly unplayable crap. You might try one out, but you quickly go to a familiar favorite. Could nostalgia be partly playing a role there? Yeah, I'm certainly not immune, but I don't think it's what I primarily seek out. I played a lot of these games the first time around, with little cultural influence, and they weren't good then, either.
So what we have with the gaming industry is not just a built-in fanbase - we have decades of heavily filtered output. There are simply a massive number of games, with most older games not having turned into a franchise, the way Mario and Donkey Kong (who appears in the Mario movie, and has often been tagging along behind Jumpman) have become household names. We have continued new output, but with advanced graphics and, in my eyes, better writing, to find new fans. In the end, it always comes down to writing. And you might say, well, what writing was there in a Donkey Kong game? A glance at the very first level told you the story, a somewhat familiar one for most audiences of those days. Even Pac-Man, whose film has been put on ice, and already made an appearance in one disaster (Sandler's "Pixels") has a story that many of us can tell.
I enjoyed this analysis. And not just because it rhymes with my own. The core issue to resolve is synchronizing video game development with film production. Both are very different processes, and getting them to line up remains the core challenge. Even without that, it's proven to resonate with audiences and deliver outsized financial results.
Amazon's release of Fallout did wonders for its publisher, Xbox. https://superjoost.substack.com/i/47825083/big-read-uncharted-the-movie-breaks-no-new-ground-for-games-biz, not to mention Nintendo's success with the two Mario movies.
Anyway, great write-up.
Upon reflection, I think we may be prone to overstate just how many successful "original" movies that there *ever* were. Maybe because the movies that stand the test of time are often, but not always, originals. But the box office often tells a different story.
Take 1939, widely considered the greatest movie year in Hollywood history. It was topped by two book adaptations: "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz." The former is still the biggest ticket seller in film history.
Other massive hits throughout Hollywood history: "Sound of Music" (Broadway adaptation), "The Ten Commandments" (Bible), "Doctor Zhivago" (novel). Even some of the most popular films during the New Hollywood of the 1970s were adaptations of popular books: "The Godfather," "The Exorcist," and "Jaws."
And let's be honest: How "original" is "Star Wars" or "Avatar?"
So it's not so much that there was once a "Golden Age of Original Blockbusters." More like, the source material for said blockbusters has shifted.
This shouldn't be surprising. Less Americans go to plays or read novels, so the source material has transitioned to hybrid visual-written media (comics) and now purely visual (video games, YouTube series).
Star Wars was directly inspired by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress#Influence. Jedis are samurai.
But remixing has often been the source of originality. One thing we fail to appreciate, usually because we lack the context, is how often literary works are playing off the melodies other authors created. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it requires scholars to explain, but most of us just lack that perspective, and this is more true as you go back further in time. I'm sure Kurosawa was inspired by something, but as I'm ignorant of much of the culture of that era (outside of Kurosawa), I simply can't talk about it.
So, a footnote, in agreement.