Lisa Laman FINALLY Found An AMC Location She Likes

I don't like fascism. I ain't a fan of Burger King's crummy food. And I certainly don't like AMC Theatres locations.

Perhaps that AMC distaste is based around a silly sense of "hometown" pride. I grew up in the Plano/Allen, TX area where the only nearby theaters were Cinemark locales. AMC multiplexes existed, but you had to drive 30-45 minutes to get to the ones in Dallas and Frisco. Meanwhile, Front Row Joe, the XD auditoriums, and Cinemark Legacy's Charlie Chaplin statue were all less than 10 minutes from my house. I grew up on Cinemark, which always projected films efficiently with no technological hassle and constantly delivered the yummiest popcorn imaginable. 

That didn't mean I turned up my nose at the chance to visit Studio Movie Grill, iPic, Moviehouse Eatery, Alamo Drafthouse's, or other nearby theaters. However, Cinemark was king. Perhaps that loyalty and familiarity informed my AMC disdain.

Still, doing some Googling, it's clear others feel passionately about AMC being the worst. David Ehlrich repeatedly used AMC as a go-to reference to the nadir of cinematic experiences in his recent IndieWire piece about Alamo Drafthouse's dismal modern form. Surely all these people couldn't have had the same Cinemark-centric upbringing as me! Perhaps they've also endured the bad theatrical experiences I've encountered in my time at AMC locations. Like the time I saw Evil Dead Rise and they kept the lights on for the first half of the feature (who needs darkness for a horror film?). Or when I saw The Wedding Banquet last year, and the audio in the theater made it sound tinny and distant. Don't forget when I saw Hoppers in IMAX a month ago, and the lights remained on for the first five minutes (including the looming, vibrantly bright IMAX logo on one of the side walls).

It's not just technical shortcomings that have informed my AMC hostility. It's also food. Only get pre-packaged candy at an AMC location, good Christ. For some reason, this is the one theater chain on the planet that can't make edible popcorn. A reliably yummy treat at the Angelika Dallas, Texas Theatre, or any other big screen location is cardboard at an AMC theater. Meanwhile, I still have nightmares about innocently chomping on AMC chicken fingers during my IMAX Star Trek Into Darkness screening...only to then spend the next day vomiting the "delicacy" up.

Let me be clear, by the way: any of the employees I've encountered at AMC locations have been the nicest people, doing their best and hardest to make the theatrical experience work. These shortcomings are because of bad corporate decisions or the employees being handed faulty food/equipment. Working-class AMC employees are not why I have hostility towards this theater chain. There's greater external dark magic at work within these cinematic domiciles.

However, I must come clean and eat crow when the time calls for it. I finally found an AMC location I like. Yes, Lisa Laman was enamored with an AMC multiplex. It must be the end times.

To watch the new Tamil-language historical drama Neelira on the big screen, my best buddy and I traveled to the one Texas movie theater playing this project: AMC Grapevine 30. Established in 1997, this theater might hold the record for most auditoriums in a single theater in the North Texas area. It's got so many screens that, when we went, they were still playing The Bride!, even though Warner Bros. has stopped tracking that film's box office numbers. Upon entering this location, it was immediately clear that this theater had a spaciousness and vibrant color palette that eludes other nearby AMC locations, like the AMC Northpark. The vastly distant rooftop made this space feel instantly roomy, a great ambiance to walk into.

Even better, though, is that there's a specific atmosphere to the AMC Grapevine. Everything inside is outer space themed! Specifically, it's rooted in a mid-20th-century Jetsons/Buzz Lightyear vision of the cosmos. Colors abound, everything is a little chunky-looking, and the floors are often draped with fuzzy rockets/planets carpeting that wouldn't be out of place in a pizza joint. Yellow is a dominant color throughout the location, while places like a toppings station have cutesy cosmic-themed names. Tiny blue planets (complete with adorable spiraling wiring holding them up) adorned with various white numbers indicate which auditorium you're next to. I've never been in an AMC that looks like this. Heck, I've never seen a movie theater that commits to this old-school cosmic ambiance.

Look at those cute spirals holding up the "planets"! And all those colors!

Maintaining that specificity even as the AMC Grapevine has embraced some modern accentuations (like those Coke Freestyle machines in the concession area) does wonders for the place. It just looks so inviting. Compare these decorative details to the Studio Movie Grill on North Central Expressway in Dallas. Inside this place, everything is so sparsely detailed. White backgrounds litter the entrance space, as do generic couches and a routine-looking bar area. A friend of mine remarked that it looked like an airport lounge, and that's totally it. Nothing about it screams "movie theater" or fun showmanship. God forbid a place making its money showing Sinners and Project Hail Mary have any dynamism in its architecture.

Meanwhile, the AMC Grapevine 30 feels very much like a space specifically put aside for spectacle and fun. The cosmic theming and bright colors are so unlike the typical movie-theater ambience (especially in the modern world) that they suggest anything is possible. What a fantastic mirror of how endlessly varied cinema is as an artistic medium. There's even charm in the deeply lived-in aura exuded through this place that has existed for 29 years. Everything still functions nicely and doesn't feel remotely delipidated. Instead, the AMC Grapevine 30's age excitingly makes it feel like you're stepping into something historic. You're now watching movies in a space that's housed everything from The Emperor's New Groove to Get Out. It's the best kind of time capsule that makes the past come alive rather than calcifying the present in constrictive nostalgia.

This theater's also shockingly easy to navigate despite its massive size, another major win for the complex. Easy-to-find and read signs help visitors navigate which of the 30 auditoriums they're visiting today, while splatterings of bright colors on the walls and fun cardboard standees littering the hallways make it a joy to just walk around the complex. The latter element was pretty much a given at any movie theater I went to as a kid. Nowadays, even places that used to be bursting with theater standees, like the Cinemark 16 in Allen, have largely eschewed these entities. How lovely to see these standees enduring at the AMC Grapveine, another visual signifier that you're in a movie theater, not an airport bar.

Even the auditoriums themselves are nicely done. Me and my friend were situated in one of the auditoriums that didn't have recliners, but that's fine by me. I care more about the projection and quality of the film itself than any gigantic recliner seat. Granted, this Grapevine auditorium wasn't extraordinary or deeply specific in design. I'm sure the projectors were (like the other AMC locations I've been to) nowhere near as crisp as the projector quality at the Texas Theatre. However, it got the job done, and inside there were (albeit more muted) red and yellow colors littering the walls to extend the locations primary visual aesthetic.

Look at that seating!

When I ventured into the women's restroom, I was greeted with another surprise: a cushy couch-ish area that looked like one half of a restaurant booth shaped like a quesadilla slice. I'd never seen something like this inside a movie theater bathroom before. What a lovely place to sit if the lines get too long or even just to collect your thoughts. That little sofa isn't something I'd expect to find in a restroom, but that just made its presence all the more welcome. This idiosyncratic touch cemented that the AMC Grapevine was a special place, right down to how its 30 screens offered up so many different kinds of cinematic experiences. You can see the biggest blockbusters here AND obscure Tamil-language releases.

Perhaps on another day something would've gone so horribly wrong that the AMC Grapevine would've incurred my ire rather than my affection. But on this day of seeing Neelira on the big screen, the theater not only worked like a charm, but its interior also dazzled me. Just gazing down any hallway of this place filled my eyes with hues of blue, silver, yellow, and light green, among other colors. Vibrancy and fun abounded in this realm, in sharp contrast to the drabness often plaguing the interiors of other AMC locations. Committing to specificity-drenched decor and pizzazz got even cantankerous me charmed by an AMC.

I still didn't touch the popcorn, though (besides nibbling a few kernels from my friend's bucket). I don't trust any AMC, not even this one, to do popcorn right enough to justify spending $11+.

New Line Cinema Embodies The Perils of Movie Studio Consolidation

It's a little maddening existing. Specifically, it's enraging watching so many powerful people ignore the past just to stuff a few extra dollars into their pockets. We know what happens when you cut down environmental protection and measures to curb pollution in people's drinking water. Let's slash those anyway! History has shown America diving into wars in the Middle East for oil does nothing but inspire bloodshed and carnage. Let's do it anyway! Hopping onto tech trends only Wall Street bros and Silicon Valley losers deem "the future" merely produces entities like Quibi and the Metaverse. Let's put everyone's money into generative AI bullshit anyway!

For Hollywood right now, the same thing is happening regarding Skydance's proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Skydance would own two major studios in this regard, following its absorption of Paramount Pictures last year. It's clear this is a terrible idea. Having two massive studios owned by one company, nope, warning signs going off. However, so many prolific figures in the entertainment industry are greeting the news with either a shrug or attempts to curry the favor of Skydance head David Ellison should he gain control of Warner Bros. 

Deadline Hollywood described recent questions lobbed at Ellison about the proposed mega-merger as "softball" queries. Former Warner Bros. Pictures head Toby Emmerich said he feels the merger is a good thing and expressed hopes that the combined company would distribute films from his new production label. Openly conservative producer Jerry Bruckheimer, meanwhile, has openly supported the Skydance merger. Of course, he would. He's rich and sheltered enough to withstand any negative consequences from two movie studios becoming basically one. Meanwhile, working-class organizations like Hollywood teamsters or the theater owners' representative group Cinema United have openly opposed this proposed merger on many grounds.

These opponents have wisely pointed out how 20th Century Fox's output decreased dramatically once the studio was bought by Disney. Movie theaters and the general box office have since suffered. If they want another example of what horrors happen when movie studios consolidate, though, may I suggest referencing the poor struggles of New Line Cinema? Once a prosperous standalone studio, it was shuttered into a Warner Bros. division in the late 2000s. Cinema has suffered for that ever since.

New Line Cinema As An Independent Studio

This graphic from the University of Michigan (written by Daniel Herbert while the visual itself was made by Jamie Lai) and this timeline of New Line Cinema history from Variety writer Keith Collins should help provide a more specific and detailed history of New Line Cinema's earliest days. Real quickly, though, before we launch into New Line Cinema's 21st-century experiences, this studio was founded in 1967 by Bob Shaye. Originally, New Line handled super avant-garde and challenging arthouse titles meant to resonate with college-aged audiences. This included Jean-Luc Godard directorial efforts and the earliest John Waters directorial efforts. New Line wasn't a big label, in other words. It was the purveyor of counterculture cinema.

1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, though, launched New Line Cinema into the stratosphere and new levels of notoriety. The studio expanded its operations, but didn't stop handling motion pictures many other studios and distributors wouldn't touch. For instance, in September 1984, New Line released Buddies, a terrific movie that served as one of American cinema's first explorations of the AIDS crisis. New Line also released fellow queer cinema staple Torch Song Trilogy in the final weeks of 1988 and, at the dawn of the 90s, this label put House Party into theaters. Similarly, when nobody else wanted to take on distribution rights to the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, New Line Cinema stepped up to the plate and made a fortune in the process.

New Line Cinema was putting out a lot of titles into movie theaters, including features like My Own Private Idaho released under its Fine Line Features banner (established in 1991). In 1994, the Turner Broadcasting System purchased New Line Cinema. Just two years later, Turner merged with Time Warner Entertainment. This meant New Line Cinema was now a sister company to Warner Bros., though the two remained disparate entities. Though no longer a solo act without any corporate owners, New Line Cinema still took mighty big risks like financing Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Between New Line Cinema and Fine Line, 16 New Line-owned movies got theatrical releases in 1999. New Line put out the same number of titles across its two divisions in 2002. Warner Bros. put out 23(!!!) separate new theatrical releases the same year. Unfortunately, New Line would cease to function as a standalone entity by the start of 2008. New Line's attempts to recreate that Lord of the Rings box office success with misguided, costly misfires like The Golden Compass had sunk the studio's fortunes. TimeWarner announced in late Feburary 2008 that Warner Bros. would be the company's only theatrical film studio going forward. Picturehouse (an arthouse label successor to Fine Line Features) was dead. New Line was now a Warner Bros. division.

"New Line Cinema Is Dead. Bury It."

For the next two years, Warner Bros. released a deluge of new releases (like The Final Destination, Sex and the City: The Movie, He's Just Not That Into You, Four Christmases, and more) that were already green-lit and/or filmed before New Line's demise. By 2010, though, it was clear New Line was in a new era. Only four new movies featured the New Line logo that year. Compare that to the 11 features New Line Cinema released three years earlier in 2007, or its 10 features in 2006 and 2005. In 2012, the nadir of New Line's existence, Warner Bros. only put out three films under this label. Just looking at the raw numbers here makes it apparent: corporate consolidation cost the film industry dearly. Fewer jobs, fewer titles for movie theaters to play, and fewer artistic endeavors were created after TimeWarner merged New Line into Warner Bros.

Initially, New Line Cinema’s fate under Warner Bros. appeared to be similar to 20th Century Fox’s fate under Disney leadership: a label for sequels to old movies, but nothing new. WB was happy to use the New Line Cinema logo for Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, and Final Destination 5. From 2010 to 2012, though, it looked like the age of fresh New Line Cinema films was over. Thankfully, 2013’s The Conjuring breathed new life into New Line and allowed the label to slightly expand its annual output. 

Still, New Line, even with Conjuring and the It movies under its belt, was a shell of its former self. Excluding MGM co-productions, MGM only put out five films in 2016. The previous year, it only put out four titles (again, exempting MGM movies like Hot Pursuit and Creed). The closest the 2010s had to an “old school” year for New Line Cinema was 2019, when the label was attached to nine different movies. That included British indie Blinded by the Light, a Sundance 2019 sensation New Line acquired. A smaller scale independent title like that harkened back to the earliest days of New Line and the kind of output that used to be its bread and butter. 

Aside from 2019, though, New Line’s annual output has been significantly limited and often comprises franchise titles rather than the originals/non-sequels it used to take risks on. Recent features like Companion and Weapons are exceptions to the default releases Warner Bros. shuffles under the New Line banner. The days of New Line and Fine Line Features offering havens for John Waters movies, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, My Own Private Idaho, Buddies, and more have been replaced by endless Conjuring sequels and spin-offs. New Line's annual theatrical output is often 75% less than its typical slate when it was a standalone entity.

What We Lose When Studios Consolidate 

Studio consolidation is not sad because we'll see a certain movie studio logo less or because change is inherently bad. It's because it only benefits the most powerful people. Reducing competition and how many studios to operate provides more dollars for the top executives of whoever owns Warner Bros. this week. It sure doesn't offer more choices or variety for the consumer, though. It also doesn't help ensure there are options in the marketplace for filmmakers and artists needing distributors.

To boot, New Line Cinema and Fine Line Features, as part of their "let's take some risks" practice, helped get films from marginalized artists off the ground. In addition to the LGBTQIA+ movies I've already mentioned, there was a slew of features from Black filmmakers that got made at New Line Cinema. Love & Basketball, for instance, was a New Line Cinema release. Ditto other titles from Black artists like Bamboozled, Set It Off, and B*A*P*S,  among many other titles, were also New Line/Fine Line titles. Since 2013, Blinded by the Light (an outside acquisition) is the only film helmed by a woman of color to get released by New Line Cinema. Reducing this studio to being a Warner Bros. label, whether intentional or not, deprived the world of more art from non-white voices.

That's what happens, though, when studios are absorbed, bought, and collapsed into larger entities. When 20th Century Fox was merged into Disney, fewer movies got made. When Sony merged TriStar into Columbia Pictures, fewer movies were made. When Lionsgate bought Summit Entertainment, the label was gradually discontinued. A distributor that put out seven or eight movies a year as late as 2011 no longer exists. Fewer movies got made. DreamWorks SKG, after being sold to Paramount in late 2005, went through a series of financial troubles and evolutions. It's now a Universal label that's had its logo attached to just three films since 2022. Fewer movies got made. The list goes on and on and on.

Unless your'e talking about Disney buying family movie labels that previously made one or two movies annually (like Pixar or Marvel Studios), the history of movie studios purchasing and/or absorbing other studios is diminishing returns. This is the sole outcome. David Ellison can spout his notions that Skydance will have the financing to make 30 movies across Paramount and Warner Bros. annually. The historical track record bears out that movie studio purchases limit options for creators and moviegoers. The only people who benefit are the uber-wealthy like Ellison.

New Line Cinema is one of the most tragic examples of this phenomenon (and, ironically, a cautionary tale its larger sister company, Warner Bros., seems doomed to mimic). New Line once was the place that steadily supplied all kinds of movies to theaters and birthed the careers of John Waters, Gina Prince-bythewood, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, John Cameron Mitchell, and more. Heck, we have the Lord of the Rings trilogy because of this studio. In the 2020s, though, it's the home of Black Adam and a series of reboots/remakes (like new Mortal Kombat, Final Destination, and Conjuring outings) exploiting its legacy. 

Both its volume of new theatrical releases and risk-taking (each of which theaters need to survive) are gone. Do not listen to the press release-ready jargon of David Ellison. Gaze upon the dwindled modern incarnation of New Line Cinema to witness what happens when movie studio consolidation goes unchecked. Mergers obliterate jobs. They do not create them.

All It Took Was This One Tweak to Finally Make Video Game Movies Box Office Juggernauts

For the longest time, only one video game movie cracked $100+ million domestically. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider sure looked lonely on this list pre-2016, as most other video game movies (even costly features like Warcraft and Assassin's Creed) failed to even hit $60 million domestically, let alone $100+ million domestically. Of course, just a decade after The Angry Birds Movie became only the second video game movie to hit $100+ million in North America, that all feels like a distant memory. In the first few weeks of the 2020s, Sonic the Hedgehog secured the title of biggest video game movie ever domestically. 

Since then, the Illumination Mario movies, A Minecraft Movie, the Sonic sequels, and even Uncharted have all amassed major box office hauls. Minecraft and Mario especially have become some of the biggest motion pictures (of any genre) in history. The video game movie, once box office poison, is now a massive business in Hollywood. There are several reasons the video game movie has come into its own. Gearing more of these films towards family audiences has certainly helped. Meanwhile, many people who grew up with Mario, Steve from Minecraft, and Sonic as part of their everyday lives are now adults with disposable income in the 2020s. That nostalgia-driven crowd might not have been able to drive one of these movies to massive numbers as late as 2015.

The biggest difference between new and old video game movies, though, is pretty simple. These films finally focused on concrete characters, rather than just brand names, people are familiar with. The quality of these features hasn't drastically improved. However, there's a big difference between promising people a movie containing Shadow the Hedgehog and a generic action movie that happens to have the Assassin's Creed brand name.

What Kind of Characters Did Old Video Game Movies Focus On?

The very first live-action video game movies, like Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat, did bring Mario, M. Bison, and Johnny Cash, respectively, to the silver screen. Starting in the 21st century, though, video game films began largely eschewing familiar video game characters in favor of new fictional individuals. The Resident Evil movies, for instance, famously carved out their own new lead character (Alice) and ensemble casts.  Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, meanwhile, was adapting games based around an unnamed "Prince" character. That figure became the largely standalone new figure Prince Dastan of Persia. The Assassin's Creed movie didn't give Ezio Firenze or Edward Kenway a chance to shine on the silver screen. Instead, Michael Fassbender's Callum "Cal" Lynch was the centerpiece.

2016's Warcraft focused on a slew of various Orcs and humans that were unfamiliar to even the most hardcore World of Warcraft players. Need for Speed was adapting a series of racing games devoid of recognizable characters, so a deluge of new figures had to be conjured up for a motion picture adaptation. Mark Wahlberg's Max Payne, meanwhile, kept the titular character from the comics, but grounded him in a fantastical world with plenty of otherworldly beasties (known as Valkyrie) not from the games. On and on the examples go.

This is not to say the problems rooted in these projects were solely because they weren't loyal to the games. The Illumination Mario movies vividly demonstrate that slavish devotion to pre-existing material doesn't equal a quality motion picture. However, this phenomenon does help explain why these titles didn't register as must-see titles for most people. If you see an ad for a Spider-Man movie, you know you're going to see a story involving characters you love like Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Mary Jane Watson, and others. If you spot a billboard for a new 007 movie, you might get stoked that James Bond is back on the big screen.

Need for Speed, though, had no relation to the games beyond "cars go fast." A familiar video game moniker here just felt like a cynical cash grab, not a potentially exciting extension of a beloved gaming world. Without any specific characters to serve as connective tissue between different mediums, what on Earth does a Doom movie even mean to both hardcore Doom fans and casual moviegoers? When Tim Burton's Batman promised the first big-budget big screen version of its titular lead, there was momentous excitement even among those who didn't read Batman comics. Through cultural osmosis, everyone could understand the significance of both Batman as a fictional character and him finally getting translated into this cinematic form.

Compare that to Warcraft, which was adapted from a game where players customized their own characters and interacted with virtual friends in fantasy settings. What value was there in seeing Azeroth in the context of a narrative feature you couldn't control? World of Warcraft's joy came from interacting with your pals, not from controlling or meeting pre-existing characters like in a Mario or Last of Us title. The lack of distinguishable, concrete characters you could translate into a World of Warcraft movie epitomizes how that Duncan Jones directorial effort was a boondoggle from the start.

Frustratingly, too, eschewing source material didn't create compelling new movie experiences. This process can totally create masterpieces. Trust me as a girl who first read Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and then watched (and fell in love with) Steven Spielberg's movie adaptation, which radically changes the text. However, rather than producing the video game movie equivalent of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army or Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, titles like Need for Speed, Assassin's Creed, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time were torturously boring. You got the worst of both worlds with these movies.

Lara Croft Offered A Glimpse of Video Game Cinema's Future

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was the exception amongst 2000s video game movies that proved how much identifiable characters could help these adaptations. I've never played the Lara Croft games, so I can't say how faithful the 2001 Tomb Raider film (which I found to be a snooze) is overall to its predecessors. However, I do know that the Tomb Raider marketing could emphasize a concrete character (Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft!) that audiences could finally see in a live-action movie. This wasn't just a generic action film incidentally featuring Need for Speed or Hitman's brand name. People had grown fond of Lara Croft and wanted to see her in further adventures in a new medium. Compare that to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which was graced with posters dominated by shrug-worthy characters nobody cared about.

Unsurprisingly, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider first lost its domestic box office crown amongst video game movies to Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, which could center its marketing campaign around that beloved yellow, electric rat. Since then, Hollywood has stuck to (largely) family-friendly video game adaptations rooted in games with concretely defined ensemble casts (Sonic and Pals, Mario and the Mushroom kingdom, etc). Even A Minecraft Movie, an adaptation of an online game built on farming and mining, avoided the Warcraft and Doom traps by making sure Steve was front and center in the marketing. 

Whereas Doom abandoned the central concept of the game's monsters coming from Hell, Minecraft bent over backwards to showcase recognizable Minecraft figures like Creepers, Skeletons, and Villagers. The Five Nights at Freddy's films, meanwhile, have centered their entire existence on the "novelty" of seeing Freddy Fazbear and the other animatronics on the big screen. The very appearance of these critters is clearly meant to elicit cheers when they show up in a key climactic Five Nights at Freddy's 2 moment.

In more directly intertwining these video game movies with their source material, and in particular characters, audiences have immense fondness for, well, "cousin, the video game movie businsess is a-boomin'!", as Lt. Aldo Raine might say. Tweaking video game movies isn't, of course, the only element propelling this subgenre to new box office heights. Chiefly, these new features are rooted in far more popular video games (Minecraft and Mario are the two most popular games in history) than Need for Speed or Max Payne.

That's also not to say this shift in priorities has enhanced the film artistically. On the contrary, video game movies have made a lateral shift in what cynical marketing desires motivate their existence. Previously, studios tried to make money by labeling Fast & Furious and Pirates of the Caribbean pastiches Need for Speed or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, respectively. Now they try to make money through "surprise" cameos of Fox McCloud, Shadow the Hedgehog, or figures cribbed from the most obscure corners of Five Nights at Freddy's lore. The times change. Methods shift. Capitalistic urges persist. All the while, the newest Mario movies are actually worse than the 1993 film adaptation. Fidelity to the source material isn't a virtue unto itself.

Still, recognizing what separates the video game movie hits from the flops does help illustrate why audiences are finally turning out to these films in droves. It isn't enough to just invoke a recognizable brand name. A generic crime thriller that happened to be named Spider-Man would bomb at the box office. Ditto a forgettable automobile chase film that was incidentally named The Great Gatsby. Centering these projects on characters like Yoshi, Knuckles, and Nathan Drake, though, has made 2020s video game movies feel more like direct adaptations of beloved Nintendo and PlayStation titles. That's how the video game movie space is now regularly producing $1+ billion hits...even if the quality of these movies* still can't get past the tutorial level.

* = Except for Rampage and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, those two are actually goofy fun.