title Is 2026 The Year Hollywood Finally Figures Out Video Game Movies? - Beyond 943

description Well, maybe! So far, we’ve had Return to Silent Hill, Iron Lung and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which were varying degrees of successful depending who you ask, but still to come we’ve got the Johnny Cage-forward Mortal Kombat II, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, the totally bonkers Street Fighter movie. And, hey, if this isn’t this year, it’s not like video game movie adaptations are slowing down: 2027 has The Legend of Zelda, Helldivers and Sonic The Hedgehog and A Minecraft Movie sequels. 2028, meanwhile, will finally see Call of Duty make its way to the big screen, but more interesting to us is A24’s Elden Ring film. Alex Garland has given us some of our favorite genre media of recent years, between Ex Machinia, Annihilation, Men, Devs, Civil War, and of course, 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later. How will he handle a cinematic tour of The Lands Between? Hard to say, but Nick Offerman, Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw and Jonathan Pryce will be there, so we’re certainly intrigued. Beyond!



This weeks show is hosted by Max Scoville and Brian Altano and is produced by Nick Maillet.
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pubDate Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:00:00 GMT

author IGN & Geek Media

duration 3485000

transcript

Speaker 1:
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Beyond and hello and welcome once again to IGN's weekly PlayStation show. I'm your host, Max Scoville, and coming up between the Mario Galaxy Movie, Mortal Kombat II, Street Fighter and Resident Evil, 2026 is shaping up to be a pretty great year for video game movies. But will any of them actually be great movies? We'll discuss. Plus the Elden Ring Movie Cast has been announced and we have some thoughts. Let's get into it. Well, Beyond and hello, Brian. How's it going?

Speaker 2:
[04:16] Well, beyond hello to you, Max. I don't know why we said it like that, like old rivals.

Speaker 1:
[04:22] I think it's good to start a show like We're Enemies. I think it's funny, and it's a good gag. Now, I wanna talk about some video game movie stuff. This morning, we got the Elden Ring cast confirmed. This is the Alex Garland, A24 Elden Ring adaptation. No one knows how the hell that's gonna work, but I feel like it's in pretty good hands. Before we get into that, I wanna talk about something crazy that happened, which I don't think anyone could have seen coming. Do you remember when they made the PlayStation more expensive?

Speaker 2:
[04:50] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:50] Just like a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 2:
[04:52] That sucked. I'm gonna take an official stance and say that that sucked.

Speaker 1:
[04:57] We try not to get too political here, but I think you may be on to something. But yeah, would you believe that after Sony announced that and gave a little bit of fair warning that they saw a big spike in hardware sales because everybody ran out and bought PlayStations. Yeah, so this was this news drop last week. This comes by way of Circana, which is sort of the industry analysis. I don't know where you go, like a firm. I don't know what you call them. I never know what the official term is.

Speaker 2:
[05:25] Kind of a gang.

Speaker 1:
[05:26] A gang, yeah. The industry analysis gang led by... They're sort of a troop. Yeah, well, they're a ring leader. Matt Piscatella posted on social media.

Speaker 2:
[05:35] Hey, Matt.

Speaker 1:
[05:36] About how, yeah, US.

Speaker 2:
[05:37] Weekly. Yeah, we know about your gang.

Speaker 1:
[05:40] We know what you're doing over there. You're just analyzing things.

Speaker 2:
[05:44] When you were a kid, did any one of your friends' parents ever say, like, hey, watch out for gangs?

Speaker 1:
[05:50] So in in like second grade, we tried to we're really just going right off the rails, right off the gate here. In second grade, we we started clubs and we got them. We got them shut down because they were like resembling gangs too much. So I was like I was in a club that we called Spear, like some kind of like super villain group. I don't know why that was what we got. But our nemesis was another club which was called the Animaniacs Club. Yeah, those were the two violent, boring factions.

Speaker 2:
[06:20] Anyway, just constantly hitting people with malice. No, I had a friend whose whose parents said that we couldn't go. He couldn't come with me to the mall, the Paramus Park Mall in Paramus, New Jersey, because there were gangs there and there weren't. There was a Barnes and Noble and a Nathan's Hot Dogs. The center of that mall was a fountain that people threw pennies in. I don't know if that's really something that attracts gangs, but no, never saw a gang there.

Speaker 1:
[06:48] Yeah, Barnes and Noble, unless you count like weaboos, I don't think Barnes and Noble is a congregation point for gangs. Anyway, yeah, so Sirkana reports that US weekly unit and dollar sales of PS5 hardware reached 2026 highs for the week ending April 4th. But bear in mind that the price hikes took effect April 2nd. So that's probably like a really, those price hikes go about half a week. There's like a week where they're like, and then they're just going to go blop right off.

Speaker 2:
[07:20] I hate that. I hate that. I hate, and I talked about it last week. I almost fell for it. You know, we had people telling me that I should have done it. I should have bought the PS5 Pro. You're right. I probably should have, but I didn't because I'm stubborn and frustrated and the price went up and now I'm even more stubborn and more frustrated. It sucks.

Speaker 1:
[07:41] Which is worse, the feeling of like not buying something knowing that it's like an opportunity in front of you, like the kind of just, whether it's a sale or just like a thing that's kind of fallen in front of you and being like, I'll pass on this, that, or the thing where you do jump on it and then it becomes like readily available after the fact. Or you get something and then it immediately becomes cheaper everywhere else.

Speaker 2:
[08:05] I have so much stuff that I bought at full price that's just completely worth a shit now. You know, just like how many action figures I bought that were like, it's like a high end or like the toy or collectible or, you know, I'll buy like a fancy art book for like a movie the second it comes out and then it's just it's on Amazon like six months later for like $4. And I'm like, what have I done? But not the PS5.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
[09:55] I bought a Gameboy Pocket when I was like 12 or 11 or whatever, and about 15 minutes after I bought it, they announced the Gameboy Color.

Speaker 2:
[10:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[10:03] I was just like, cool, I got this half-measure.

Speaker 2:
[10:07] You got the black and white screen. I bought a 3DS on day one. They price dropped that guy. I bought a PS3. I don't think I actually know I didn't get a PS3 on day one. I don't remember if I did. But no, 3DS, they price dropped and gave us that apology certificate.

Speaker 1:
[10:23] That was cool. I mean, that was obviously kind of a needle. They gave you a bunch of Super Nintendo games or GBA games that you couldn't get otherwise, and then for 15 years, you couldn't legally buy Minish Cap anywhere. I don't know what was going on there. I saw people posting about this on Twitter where it's like that meme of the guy tapping his forehead being like, aha, that's the plan. It's like Sony, it's like raise the price, announce in advance, profit, question mark, whatever. It's like that old Looney Tunes bit about the dude who's got this incredible talent show trick, but he can only do it once because it's like eating a stick of dynamite or whatever. For our next trick, we're going to see PlayStation sales skyrocket because we're going to raise the price. Like that's not a repeatable thing.

Speaker 2:
[11:09] But oh, you mischievous rascals, capitalists, scamps.

Speaker 1:
[11:14] Yeah, that's the story. There's not really anything else to it. I just I'm interested to see what the sort of when the other shoe drops, when like a month from now, Serkana comes out, known known gang, Serkana comes out with their they've got their like bike chains and like pool cues and shit. And they're like, all right, hardware sales are up. But no, like they're going to come out and be like, yeah, I cannot imagine that there's going to be anything too exciting in the hardware sales department on Sony's front for a minute, probably until Black Friday or GTA drops or something like that. Like, it's just kind of there's if you want people to buy a thing, don't make it more expensive. That's that's stupid.

Speaker 2:
[11:50] So let's say this real quick. We're adults, right? Air quotes. And we have jobs, we have wives with jobs, and we're able to afford things when we want to buy things for the most part, within reason, within measure. Big picture items, it's obviously a conversation with the significant other and see if that's going to fly. I keep trying to get a bigger TV. My wife's not really down with that, but I know she'll benefit from it. But when I was in middle school or high school, really, and I wanted a video game console, I had saved up forever for that. I did odd jobs, yard work. I would mow people's lawns and rake leaves and shovel snow up and down the street and stuff like that. And the idea of spending months and months and months to save up for a PS5 and a game and you finally are right about there and they raise the price on you, that just sucks, man. That just, I just want to be abundantly clear that how sympathetic I am to the average kid, right? And maybe some adults too, some adults too, right? People who are just dealing with, all the finances are tougher than they've ever been right now. Everything is more expensive than it's ever been, not to get political, but it's bad. And then you're like, I just want to play video games and blow off steam at the end of the day. And you can't. So that sucks. This is why people are playing free to play trash all day, right? Because they're getting price out of a hobby that should be welcoming. And that's my...

Speaker 1:
[13:34] No, I mean, like it sucks. I saved up for like a PS1 when I was a kid. And the amount that I had to save up is literally how much they raised the price on PlayStation stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[13:48] Like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:48] What are we doing? Anyway, that's wild. Something that is making a bunch of money is the movies. That's right. They're back. That Mario and his friends, they did another movie and it made a bunch of money unsurprisingly because, you know, there's not a ton of movies you can drag the whole family to go see and it's got bright, colorful things in it. You sit there for two hours and you have a... You clap your hands like a seal and you eat a bucket of something. And yeah, I don't know. We're both old and tired. We're parents. I had a hoot watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Speaker 2:
[14:23] I've seen that movie three times. I really like it. I think it's a ton of fun. I think it's exactly what a Super Mario movie should be like. I reviewed the 1993 Super Mario movie for us recently. That is an ambitious but painful watch. There's a lot of really cool ideas in it. But ultimately, it's a pretty crappy Mario movie. I think the Mario Galaxy Movie is like, if you're going to take a series of games that have a paper thin plot and you want to make something really fun and gorgeous out of it. I said this on NBC recently. I think that Illumination's philosophy here is to effectively use this brand as a reason to just string together a bunch of really fun gorgeous vignettes. They have a bunch of, just like levels. They take a bunch of scenes, they glue them together, they are cohesively tethered by one core philosophy, which is stop the bad guy, the good guys are cool. Basic, basic, basic, basic stuff. And that's fine. I think some movies, you need more than that, some adaptations, you need more than that. And I think this one didn't. Yeah, I think it is.

Speaker 1:
[15:35] No, I want to, like, I was annoyed looking at the sort of the Rotten Tomatoes for this. The first movie, I think, kind of got a pass. Like a lot of people were like, okay, this is going to be terrible. And it was not as terrible as they expected, but also it proceeded to make a billion dollars. And admittedly, there are better movies that could make a billion dollars, but it's also an iconic 40 year old brand that hasn't really had a place in movies for a cool minute. But it's also, it's kind of an upstart medium. Like video games are competition for the movies. They are this this new medium. And the fact that they're like, yeah, we'll also be movies. I can see how some like, you know, stuffy old like cinema critics are like, nah, not happening. We need to adhere to certain rules here. And, you know, to your point about it being a very level based movie, it really is. And it's I think that's why it works. I think that for so long, video game movies have been sort of overthinking what works and what doesn't or what a video game movie needs to be. And like Mario is not a story. It's not about a story. Like it's never been story focused. Mario Bear is barely a character like he what are what are his traits that he's like he's like wahoo. Yeah, he's a good guy. That's he's like nice, you know, he jumps like like like Luigi is the complicated one and his his like personality is just he's scared of stuff like Mario is just that without the defining characteristic, he's just like a regular just he's a he's just like an avatar, you know, and that's how it's always been. And I mean, I remember I saw one of the one of the critics was complaining that like the movie just jumped around too much. And like his name was originally Jumpman. Yes. Yeah, he it's a platformer. He jumps around. Who cares? It's fun. It's fine. And this is the first of many colorful looking video game movies that are coming out this year. I kind of I kind of took a look back and look ahead at sort of what's what's around the corner, what's right behind us. The first. So let's I guess I'm I'm wondering if 2026 is going to be not the best year for video game movies, but like kind of a milestone year in where they stop being just by default, not great. And we actually get some that are pretty solid. There was a I mean, I want to say it was I want to say it was 2008 for superhero movies where we got like the Dark Knight and Iron Man same time and Hellboy 2. And it was at this point where like up until then, you kind of were rolling the dice with superhero movies and comic book movies and there was a very good chance you were watching a very not good movie. And yeah, we've reached a point where it's honestly, they're kind of, we still get bad ones, we still get duds here and there, but they're consistent at least and people have kind of cracked that code. And I feel like video games are at that point where people are figuring out how to make them right. And yeah, again, it's a little bit more complicated than adapting a 32 page superhero adventure into a two hour movie.

Speaker 2:
[18:21] At the very least, like 90s me, who was in middle school, like arguing with kids about which game was better Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. The fact that both of those movies are getting big live action adaptations this year, within a couple of months of each other, the cast are beefing on social media and stuff like that. I don't know if either of these movies are going to be good. I don't know what I need from one of these movies. I don't know how a movie like this is good.

Speaker 1:
[18:57] Somebody out there wants a serious good Mortal Kombat movie, but I would argue that the vast majority of people just want to have fun. There's plenty of lore there to unpack. There's some complicated story stuff. But for the most part, this is the video game series where you can punch somebody's skeleton so hard that his nuts explode or whatever. It's always been absurd. It's always been over the top. It's always been campy.

Speaker 2:
[19:22] So we were talking about this with the Bloodborne movie last week, right? Where it was like some people come to that franchise because they love the lore, and some people come to that franchise because they love the vibe.

Speaker 1:
[19:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[19:33] For me, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, I've never been a competitive fighting game guy. I love so many video games. I'm really good at so many video games. But hardcore competitive fighting scene never been my thing. I'm happy to sit back and watch. Yes. Really good people beat the hell out of each other. That's what these movies are going to give me.

Speaker 1:
[19:51] A fighting game is like a cross between action figures and a musical instrument. Where if you just want to bash them together, you can do that. But if you want to play a guitar solo or what, that takes practice. I like fighting games in that there are rosters of colorful characters, in interesting scenarios. They're just generally doing some unexpected stuff. They're rooted in martial arts movies. They're fun to watch. They're fun to look at. I suck at them. I'm terrible at playing them. I guess I don't even really actively enjoy playing them. Now that I have grown up a little bit. When I was a kid, I would have fun button mashing. But Mortal Kombat is like a bunch of little weird people who have crazy action features. You just want to hit the right buttons and then somebody turns into a dragon or somebody rips out somebody's heart.

Speaker 2:
[20:38] No, pre-internet, it was like I loved memorizing combos and special moves, doing fatalities and babalities. I was totally locked in on all that. I loved doing all that stuff. And then I realized I have more fun watching people who are really good at these things.

Speaker 1:
[20:55] Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2:
[20:56] I've told this story before, one of my first, I think the first event I ever covered for IGN was a Street Fighter tournament in San Francisco. And I showed up and it was just like in this big, it was in like a, not like a warehouse, it was like a hanger basically. And it was Giles' level. Yeah, Giles' level. And it was awesome. I just like they had these big TVs and people were like gigantic screens. It felt like being at a boxing match and I'd never been at EVO, I'd never done anything like that. I've known about those things, right? But like this was my first time walking in a room and there's a huge crowd and they're going crazy and like that's what I want from these movies, right? I want these movies to be big and colorful and silly and violent. And I want them to beat the heck out of each other. And other people, they really want, they really like the stories in those games or like the lore. And that's just never really been-

Speaker 1:
[21:49] It's in there, but it's also, you know, you kind of you got to take a lot of it at face value. I want to talk about the fighting games in a second, first I want to take a look back at the video game movies that have come out this year. The first one out the gate was Return to Silent Hill, which I watched this weekend. And whoo boy, whoo, oh, it's very bad. And the funniest thing about it is that it was from the director of the original Silent Hill movie, which is also not good. And he did that like 20 years ago. And then for whatever reason, Konami was like, you promise you're not going to make it bad again? He's like, yes, no, I'll make it excellent. He's French. He's like, I will make a fantastic film. I don't know what that voice is I'm doing right now. But anyway, it's this guy named Christophe Gantz. And he's made a handful of movies. Like, he's definitely genre-focused. And allegedly, he's a big Silent Hill fan. But watching this movie as a very casual Silent Hill appreciator, I was watching with a couple really hardcore fans who were really invested in that story. And they were just tearing their hair out, being like, what did you do here? Why did you do this? It's the most arbitrary stuff. They got the color of James' jacket and hair wrong. The most good faith thing you can do when you're adapting beloved source material is at the absolute very least just be like, yeah, you see that guy's clothes, they look like the guy's clothes in the other thing. Not just completely arbitrary overhaul, redesign, makeover stuff. Just make it look the same. Just keep it close.

Speaker 2:
[23:15] I mentioned that in my Super Mario 1993 movie review where Luigi wears red for half the movie and you're like, this is the most bare minimum thing. He doesn't even have a mustache. The most bare minimum, okay, if you had to just, you had 10 minutes before Comic-Con to dress up as Luigi, what color would you put on? Yeah, so I don't know. I have no interest in seeing this one. I actually sort of like the original. I think the original Silent Hill movie, I think it has some cool stuff.

Speaker 1:
[23:45] It's aged, interestingly enough, but it's also, I mean, it's the problem with making, adapting a story that's already a story, that's a horror story, is that horror hinges on not knowing what happens. And if you make something that's beat for beat, then it's like, okay, it's not scary. And so they have to reinterpret it a little bit and twist it up a little bit. But these choices they make in this one are just baffling. And so it got, it has like an 18% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 28 from fans. So it's just kind of, no one's really going to bat for this one. And it's, the funny thing about it is it's, Christophe Gans came out and was like, yes, this is going to be the start of a whole reboot. And for the most part, Konami's been doing pretty great stuff with this franchise lately. They, the remake was killer. Silent Hill F was really good. We got that other one around the corner. Like they clearly are paying attention to what works and what doesn't and really just doing their best. They got Akira Yamaoka to do the score, which is pretty cool. There's like little bits of things in here that work. But for the most part, it's just a big baffling swing and a miss. Like it's swinging in the wrong direction. You're like, why would you bother doing that? And will we see another one? I don't know. It made $47 million of the box office on a $23 million budget.

Speaker 2:
[24:53] So we probably will, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:55] Maybe. I don't know. The thing that's weird though is it's also, it's got like an unnecessary amount of like CGI. And I know that's a complaint you can level out a lot of stuff. But so much of Silent Hill is just atmospheric. It's just a foggy town. Like the spookiness of the games is rooted in limited technical draw distance. Like the fog is like a bug and a feature basically. And they don't, I don't know, they just made everything like... Like this is one thing that could function really well low budget. It could be very effective as a low budget thing. So, you know, I don't know what they were doing there. I hope they don't do it like that anymore. I think it would be cool if they gave a different director who maybe has a different relationship to the games, the keys to this franchise.

Speaker 2:
[25:38] It's, I also like, it's such a flag looking at when you see a trailer and it's like from the studio that brought you a completely different movie from a completely different director. Or like, I remember one of my favorite a couple of years ago was like, from one of the writers of It, and you're like, one of them, okay.

Speaker 1:
[25:56] Stephen King?

Speaker 2:
[25:57] No.

Speaker 1:
[25:57] Not Stephen King. Okay, nevermind.

Speaker 2:
[25:59] One of the people who helped adapt it in your like, or like one of the, yeah, one of the producer, it's like from the store where you bought breakfast.

Speaker 1:
[26:08] Yep.

Speaker 2:
[26:09] Okay, there's no guarantee that like this pot roast is gonna be good.

Speaker 1:
[26:12] But no, so Return to Silent Hill, again, this guy, Christophe Gans is like, he's kind of two for two with pissing off Silent Hill fans and really kind of, I would say just, even if the first one is kind of like, it's got some charm to it. And this second one has some of this, I guess it's actually technically the third one. It's got some, you know, interesting ideas in there. For the most part, it's just squandering a really, really cool IP that could be adapted really well into a movie. It could be, it could be given a good treatment. There's a, there's enough, you know, material there that could be reinterpreted creatively. The big paradox is that without Christophe Gans, we might not have Bloodborne because his big movie, his big kind of first hit was Brotherhood of the Wolf, which is without question the most Bloodborne, like the biggest influence. Like you see that it's a person in a tri-corner hat doing Kung Fu with a werewolf. Like it's, it is extremely, like there's no question that this was an influence on Bloodborne.

Speaker 2:
[27:07] I like this movie a lot, by the way.

Speaker 1:
[27:08] It's a cool movie. It's really rad. But it's all, I guess I'm glad that this guy's not getting the Bloodborne movie. Like that's, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:16] But it's just crazy to me that it's like the bullet there.

Speaker 1:
[27:18] It's like this guy where, you know, gamers want to be like, he keeps ruining Silent Hill movies, but also we sort of inadvertently gave us Bloodborne in a weird roundabout way. So that's an odd paradox there. The other movie that came out right first thing in January, which is a completely totally different thing, is Iron Lung, which I still haven't seen. Have you watched Iron Lung yet? No. Yeah. So this is Markiplier's directorial feature film debut. And he wrote, starred and directed it. And it's a one room horror story, basically. And he's like in a, like, I want to say like a space submarine. Again, it's a weird movie.

Speaker 2:
[27:53] It's basically the thing that the submersible those guys blew up in trying to go see the Titanic.

Speaker 1:
[27:58] So he, I mean, I give this guy credit. Like I know that some people didn't like this movie. Some people did. It's got an interesting divide. It's got like 87% fresh from fans on Rotten Tomatoes. And many of these people might have just been Markiplier fans who were like, hell yeah, I want to go support my dude. And, you know, some critics are harsh on us. Our very own Tom Jorgensen was not wild about this movie, but other critics were much more forgiving. The thing I've got to applaud the guy for is that you can take a season director, a season writer, a season actor and doing a movie where it's one person in one place for two hours. That is-

Speaker 2:
[28:27] The location, yeah. That is hard.

Speaker 1:
[28:30] It is hard to pull off and yeah, and to make something compelling. So, but it apparent that was without question a success. It was a three to $4 million budget. It made 52 million at the box office. So I have a feeling we'll be seeing more, you know, Markiplier led movies, whatever that means. But again, out the gate, Silent Hill, Iron Lung. It's an interesting start. January is typically pretty slow for movies. And then in March, we got Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is 43% from critics, 89 from fans of Rotten Tomatoes. And I looked this up last week. I'm pretty sure this is probably $300 million higher now. It made $636 million as of last week on a $110 million budget. And I've almost definitely got to clear a billion if it hasn't already. Like this is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year. I think it currently is the biggest movie of 2026 so far. You know, there's obviously...

Speaker 2:
[29:23] There's all sorts of toys and action figures in my house. My daughter is obsessed with this movie. All the characters in it. It's like it got us playing Mario Maker again. Like I really love these movies. Like Nintendo launched a Switch 2 bundle with Galaxy 1 and 2. Those are Nintendo Wii games. Like how crazy is that, right? Like this is their new cutting edge console. It turns a year old next month. Their prominent bundle right now is basically like up-res versions of Nintendo Wii games. That's awesome. Now, I love that this movie is 90 minutes long. I love that it's like, this is going to be the one. I'm going to buy it digitally when it comes out, and I'll throw it on for my kid on a Saturday afternoon while I'm making lunch. I love this movie. We gave it a six out of 10. I would probably go seven, maybe if we went 7.5 or eight, but six out of 10 is okay. I talked to Clint about it. I read his review before it went up because I was one of the only people who had seen it early as well. And I came to realize all of his criticism is spot on, and your mileage will vary on how obsessed you are with these characters. And I am. I'm more than he is. I have a shelf of Mario figurines behind me, right? I'm a stupid idiot when it comes to this.

Speaker 1:
[30:40] It's a toy shelf. I didn't walk into this expecting a story. I walked into it being like, I'm going to see a bunch of things. I'm going to see a bunch of stuff up there. And it's going to be pretty. They had less random licensed music. They had more Koji Kondo tracks in there. I liked it. It was just a lot of fun stuff to look at. It was enjoyable. I dug it. And again, I feel like it was very... The first one was a little shaky. I mean, it got the point across. It did what it needed to do. But this one felt much more like they're like, all right, you're either with us or you're not. Let's just go. Let's go play. Let's go have fun. Let's run around. And then, yeah, so mission accomplished. Second video games are often better than the first, usually. The same is not always true about movies, but I think we may be seeing the... I don't know. I can't get a read on this, but Mortal Kombat II looks to be, at the very least, just more of the 2021 Mortal Kombat. But instead of focusing on some random dude they made up for the sake of the movie, it's focusing on Johnny Cage, which is an improvement no matter how you slice it.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] What's interesting is this is also the second Mortal Kombat II.

Speaker 1:
[31:48] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[31:49] We already got a bad Mortal Kombat II.

Speaker 1:
[31:52] Mortal Kombat is an annihilation.

Speaker 2:
[31:53] Yes. The first Mortal Kombat movie from the 90s, I think it's a better movie than Street Fighter by far.

Speaker 1:
[32:01] Not yet. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[32:03] It's not a great movie by any stretch, but it's fun as hell.

Speaker 1:
[32:06] It's fun as hell. It's such a fun movie.

Speaker 2:
[32:08] It's not the assignment, right? I think Street Fighter, it's got a lot of campy, silly stuff in it. It misses the mark in a lot of ways, but it's tethered in a couple of performances that are just really great and really fun. So yeah.

Speaker 1:
[32:22] The original Mortal Kombat movie is one of my favorites. It's just a really, it's a good time. And again, going back to what I like about fighting games, it's just a bunch of colorful characters and this is just making them fight each other. And it's just, you get Kano, what's up with his eye? I don't know, it doesn't matter. You watch him, he's gonna fight on the beach, you know? Sonya, Sonya Plane's gonna break his neck or whatever. Like, and then the new one, so I actually, somebody sent me like an early draft of the screenplay for the 2021 Mortal Kombat. Oh, okay. And I read it and just not really knowing what to expect and having really pretty low expectations and reading the screenplay, I was like, this sucks. This is bad. This is gonna piss everyone off. And watching the actual movie, it was pretty close to, I feel like there were a couple little things they tweaked story-wise, but for the most part, the fact that it focused on a made-up character that they just, I mean, they're all made-up characters, but a character who was not from the games, they just were like, yeah, let's have this random dude in here. He's got new powers. Why would you do that? Just use one of the dozens of characters you've already made. Do something with them. And it seems like this one's going to kind of backburner him, but the thing that the original, the last Mortal Kombat movie did really well was they didn't get every character out there on the screen. They kind of cherry picked who they wanted to bring out to play with. They showed a certain self-restraint that is very out of character for Mortal Kombat, which is typically about just throwing as much shit and seeing what sticks. And yeah, I'm stoked for this one, because again, it looks big and dumb and loud and stupid, and that's what I want from a Mortal Kombat movie. And I'm, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:00] Yeah, I totally agree. I'm really excited for this one. I imagine it's not going to be an amazing film, but I want to see big violent fights, and I want to see over-the-top characters impale each other with stuff.

Speaker 1:
[34:12] One thing that's wild is the original Mortal Kombat movie is PG-13. Like there's barely, I don't think there's any blood in the movie.

Speaker 2:
[34:16] It's surprising, right?

Speaker 1:
[34:17] Yeah. That was Paul WS. Anderson's big break. That was the guy who would proceed to go on to make 17 Resident Evil movies starring his wife Mila Jovovich.

Speaker 2:
[34:25] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[34:25] And then Monster Hunter starring Mila Jovovich.

Speaker 2:
[34:28] Yep. No. So I'm a little warmer on the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie, but I recognize specifically that when that movie came out, it was like some peak COVID wave.

Speaker 1:
[34:41] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:41] We were all sheltering in place. I was depressed as hell. And someone was like, this movie was supposed to be in theaters, and instead it's on your TV. And I was just like giddy, because I was like, cool. Like this thing, in a normal world, I would be in a packed crowd on a Saturday morning with a beer in my hand watching this dumb nonsense. But instead I'm at home, I'm on my couch, I got my big, you know, not big enough, I keep telling my wife, OLED TV. And I was like, cool. Like, I understand that centering this around an unknown character is stupid. That is a failure that no adaptation should make. And very rarely does a movie like adapt a source material, center it around an unknown character who's brand new and succeed. It's very rare.

Speaker 1:
[35:27] Just don't do it. It's dumb.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] Yeah, just don't do it.

Speaker 1:
[35:29] Yeah. No, I had a good time with that. Again, I remember just like being at a friend's house, it was peak COVID, they were part of our bubble or whatever. And we were just all just hooting and hollering, just jumping up and down, just getting all stir crazy, jumping on the couch, stupid dumb people. But I had a good time. I had a fun time. I tried to rewatch it pretty recently and I threw it on. I was with my buddy. We're just, again, it's like the kind of friend you watch Return to Silent Hill with. And we're like, let's watch Mortal Kombat. We put it on, we watched about 10 minutes. We're like, yeah, yeah. You want to watch the 1995? Yeah, let's watch the 1995. We immediately put that one on and we're just, that one's just, again, I hope this one knows to just come out swinging, just get loud, get stupid, out the cage. Just really, you don't have to set up new characters. You don't have to make it, really, it doesn't need to be that compelling of a story. It just needs to be just silly as fuck. Just get like really, just get violent, get dumb, get crazy.

Speaker 2:
[36:21] Paul Urban as Johnny Cage is some inspired ass casting. That is some great, great A plus casting. So yeah, I don't know how the rest of the movie is going to turn out, but I'm going to be there for that.

Speaker 1:
[36:31] I don't care. Again, it's like the Mario Galaxy situation. I don't expect high art. I don't, I want to, it's a Mortal Kombat II, the movie.

Speaker 2:
[36:40] What, like spelled one of the words wrong in it.

Speaker 1:
[36:45] Yeah, that tells you everything you need to know going into this. Like what do you, yeah. Shifting gears to that though.

Speaker 2:
[36:51] My kid did an art show, Impromptu, the other day, and she spelled show S-H-O-E-W. And, you know, just immediately I was like, all right, let's lower the expectations a little bit about what this is going to be.

Speaker 1:
[37:07] That's fun.

Speaker 2:
[37:08] Very funny bit in that show, by the way, she put prices next to all of her art.

Speaker 1:
[37:12] Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[37:13] And one of them was, she just drew a dot on a piece of paper and in quotes underneath, she wrote the dot and it was $4 million.

Speaker 1:
[37:20] That's so funny. Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[37:21] I was like, wow, I've never even taken, like you don't know anything about, like, you know, the sort of like modern art movement for the last 50 years. But yeah, this is spot on.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] That's, yeah, that's deeply cynical and also endearing. Okay, so September, Mortal Kombat II is May 8th. And then we got a bunch of summer nonsense. And then Resident Evil, sorry, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 12. I'm stoked for this one.

Speaker 2:
[37:46] This is, so dude, okay, I am so fucking excited for this movie and I am already preemptively exhausted with its cynicism around it. And I feel this is another one of those things where I have a complete disconnect from the people who play these games for the lore and the people who play these games because they're gorgeous and they're scary and they're fun, right? I love the story in RE4. I love when that little Napoleon man Zoom calls you and pops you and you fall down.

Speaker 1:
[38:17] Well, you know the story, you know it. And you also have a very clear idea of who Leon S. Kennedy is. And if you recast somebody as him and put them up on the screen, you'd be like, that's not Leon, that's not my name. So I realized I just said that the thing I hated about the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie is that they just made up a new character. The thing that I appreciate about Resident Evil is it's just making up an entirely new everything. Like it's set in the Umbrella Universe, that's all happening. All the stuff, like Zach Cregger, the director is like pretty open. He seems legit. He seems like he kind of, he knows the games. Like he seems to be like...

Speaker 2:
[38:52] He's a hardcore Resident Evil fan who has said that he regularly replays Resident Evil 4 and finishes it and then starts again. And I was like, ooh, ooh, ooh, that's me. I do that too. That's amazing. I'm so excited for this. Like this is a guy who has made, first of all, he made a bunch of really funny sketch comedy stuff. But recently he's made Weapons and he's made Barbarian, which are two really awesome movies that mix horror and comedy.

Speaker 1:
[39:20] They're both really scary and then they're just funny and over the top. And that's Resident Evil in a nutshell.

Speaker 2:
[39:25] To me, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[39:26] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:26] And I think some people think they're really serious. And also people are like, you know, what do you mean? You're telling a whole new story in this world with new characters. And it's like, yeah. Could you imagine a Resident Evil game comes out and has a brand new character in it that no one's ever seen before? I can, because they did that two fucking months ago. And we all loved it.

Speaker 1:
[39:47] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:47] We all loved it.

Speaker 1:
[39:48] Yeah. I mean, that's like comedy and horror both hinge on surprise. They both need to have a level of the unfamiliar. You got to have something. If you go into this being like, they're going to tell the story of Resident Evil 2. It's like, OK, well, we know what happens there. And if anything, you're just going to be comparing notes on what they didn't do right. And in this case, you don't know what's coming, and that's deeply unsettling or exciting, whichever. It's a horror movie.

Speaker 2:
[40:08] People have compared this movie to Mad Max Fury Road and that immediately got my brain tingling because what that tells me is that this is going to be tight. It's going to be action packed and kind of nonstop. You're going to have this basically Rube Goldberg thing where there's going to be a small group of survivors in Raccoon City. The outbreak happens, and we're following them. And they're all going to die. They're going to mutate. Awful things are going to happen. And I can't wait. And the thing is, it's like, this is not sacred cow, right? This is an IP that has been turned into anime. It's been turned into, you know, mobile games. It's been turned into multiple live action movies, a live action TV show.

Speaker 1:
[40:52] There's no way that this is worse than the Paul WS. Anderson's seventh movie or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[40:59] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:01] I think I've seen maybe two of those movies. And I was kind of curious, I looked it up, like, has Leon been in there? Leon was in one of them as like a background character. And it's like, what are you doing? Like, you've got one of the best characters. You're not even doing anything with that. He completely was just making up his own, you know, Milla Fanfic, basically. And that's cool, whatever. But at that point, that one's kind of, you're not coloring within the lines and you're not drawing a new picture. You're just kind of scribbling. And like, I feel like Zach Cregger is, I like the idea that it's, it's the, it's, maybe there's stuff happening in the background that lines up with the games. Like maybe there's some familiar locations. Maybe there's some creatures we've seen before. Maybe it's entirely new, but I think it's going to exist within the framework of the lore, where there's certain rules that apply and certain. I think he said he's trying to like, he's trying to make a movie that is the experience of playing a Resident Evil game, which, cool, cool. Yeah. Like get some little puzzles in there, get some, have a part where somebody's like trying to fit a bunch of crap in their backpack. I gotta throw out a potted plant, you know, if they find an egg and they're like, I need this, gotta have this egg.

Speaker 2:
[42:02] I think, so like I've seen people say that they hate barbarian and weapons and I mean, this means nothing.

Speaker 1:
[42:08] Watch more movies, just watch, watch. What are you doing?

Speaker 2:
[42:10] I wouldn't be your friend.

Speaker 1:
[42:11] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:11] Like it's just like, those are, those are two of my favorite theater experiences this decade, probably this century, honestly. Like going into those things, knowing absolutely nothing. I interviewed Justin Long for Barbarian. He's in that teaser trailer for half a second, and we basically couldn't talk about anything.

Speaker 1:
[42:32] He wasn't even in the trailer, I don't think.

Speaker 2:
[42:34] Yeah, I don't even think maybe he was. Yeah, I don't even think he was in the trailer.

Speaker 1:
[42:37] I mean, going to Barbarian Cold was like, where's this going? And it's just, it's a very, it's a-

Speaker 2:
[42:41] Dude.

Speaker 1:
[42:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:42] Yeah. Like just going into that, and it's going to be harder to do with Resident Evil because we work for a video game website, and we're going to see that trailer. We're going to probably interview the cat. We're going to be locked in on that, but I'm going to selfishly try to cover my eyes as much as possible. So when I sit down and watch that movie for the first time-

Speaker 1:
[42:59] I'm excited. Again, this is what I'm talking about. It's a talented filmmaker who is not being handed a video game IP because he didn't, because he doesn't have anything better to do. He's like, he's someone who appreciates it. It's someone who really wants to make this movie. And he's, we haven't seen anything from it, but I'm excited to see what comes out of it. That one's out September 18th. Out October 16th is something we have gotten a glimpse of, which I could not be more excited for. I think I'm more excited for this than I am for Mortal Kombat, but Street Fighter, which is being directed by Kitawa Sakurai, who I feel like Sakurai's in general have a pretty good track record for making movies, for making media where a bunch of people colorfully punch each other and hit each other and throw objects at each other. But this dude is best known for his work on the Eric Andre Show, which is a show, it's a talk show sometimes, where every episode opens with just comical amounts of stuff getting broken and people flying through bookshelves and just weird violence, just over the top absurd violence. Then he did Bad Trip, which was Eric Andre on a road trip. He basically crashed a car and then had a bunch of people standing. It was like a man on the street, hidden camera type thing where two people are in a car accident, they're just arguing with each other. I feel like that's all the components of Street Fighter. You have two people who are fighting, there's a broken down car and there's a bunch of random people standing around being like, why is any of this happening? What? There's always the bystanders and they're shouting. The casting for this is just sublime on its own.

Speaker 2:
[44:34] Yes. I loved this new trailer so much. It's so much fun. They're clearly understanding what most people want from this movie, right? Which is again, take a bunch of big colorful ingredients, throw them together in a pot and see what happens. I love the old washed up Ken and Ryu coming back and re-igniting their old beef, and then starting a new fight, teaming up against a common enemy or whatever. There are things I've seen people say that this character won't be as good as this one was. Raul Julia is a very tough act to follow. I think that dude was, they did, they handed him a not great script, and he made one of the most iconic, for him it was a Tuesday.

Speaker 1:
[45:19] For him it was a Tuesday.

Speaker 2:
[45:20] Yeah. David Desmalkian is incredibly talented. I'm really excited to see what he does with the role. It's not going to be the same, and that's okay. It's been 40 years. Let's see what happens here. I'm excited to see this turn into a franchise. I think that they have a lot of opportunity with a post-credits scene, to tease more characters and stuff like that. I also think, and this is insane, but what if, in a couple of years, we get a crossover and there's a Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat movie? That's what I want. In the same way I want the Mario Galaxy movies to build up to a Smash Brothers-shaped thing, I want these two movies to fight, because they're already fighting. They're already fighting in public. I want them to fight in private and film it, and then put it out publicly.

Speaker 1:
[46:07] Okay. Yeah, we can do that. This is me being like, those Lego bricks are different colors. I don't want to see Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter fight. I want to see Mortal Kombat and Batman fight. I want to see Street Fighter and Marvel fight. Give me a Marvel versus Capcom movie.

Speaker 2:
[46:26] That could be cool.

Speaker 1:
[46:27] I'm never going to do that, but no. Yeah, I feel like a DC Mortal Kombat crossover and live-action is more likely to happen than MCU. Anyway, so the last big video game movie of 2026 is going to be a doozy. It's shaping up. It's the Angry Birds Movie 3.

Speaker 2:
[46:45] Now, I didn't even know there was two.

Speaker 1:
[46:47] There's a two. Now, listen, the first one came out in 2016. Those birds were pretty steamed. Second one came out 2019. Can you imagine how much angrier are you on any given day in 2026 than you were 10 years ago? Think about that for a second and then pretend that you're a bird. And that's what this movie is going to be.

Speaker 2:
[47:08] It depends.

Speaker 1:
[47:09] These birds are going to be pissed. They're going to be so mad.

Speaker 2:
[47:13] Some people mellow out. Maybe they did. Maybe they're more chill. I don't think so. But there's a chance. There's a chance that they're just... I still get angry at really stupid stuff all the time. But a path I've chosen is when I... Violence. Yeah, violence. I just go right to that. No, if I open a website and it's one of those... You know that Curtains for Zuzka tweet? It's this tweet where basically this guy is like, I'm 50 and every news story I read now, it's just like Curtains for Zuzka and it's like, I don't know what you're talking. I get that all the time now. I've said this before, but you have two options. When you get old and pop culture starts passing you by and you start seeing, it's like two Tik Tokers are fighting with each other. It's like Ruby Red is fighting against Vincenzo and you're like, I don't know who that is, I hope they're okay. It's that other meme where it's like, I ain't reading all that, I'm happy for you, I'm sorry that happened or whatever. That's how I feel about most stuff now. I'm more angry if a truck cuts me off or whatever, but for the most part, I don't really care. I'm hoping that these birds are in the same boat.

Speaker 1:
[48:28] The birds aren't in a boat, it's actually like a slingshot that they put them in. But anyway, we don't need to talk about the Angry Birds Movie 3 anymore, I was just joking to put that in.

Speaker 2:
[48:35] Do you think they're gonna resolve what that awful thing they did in the second one?

Speaker 1:
[48:39] Oh, the murder they did?

Speaker 2:
[48:41] Yeah, it was, it was actually, it was more of a suicide by cop.

Speaker 1:
[48:45] They killed that pig. Well, I meant, I wasn't going, I meant like they fight green pigs. We just that, okay, anyway. We're just gonna walk away. We're just gonna hit and run, just leave that on where it was.

Speaker 2:
[48:59] That was not planned.

Speaker 1:
[49:00] But that wasn't planned. I was talking about the cartoon green pigs that the Angry Birds launched themselves at. I didn't want to, anyway.

Speaker 2:
[49:06] Did you have a slingshot growing up?

Speaker 1:
[49:09] All right, so they're making an Elden Ring movie. A24 is making this, Alex Garland is directing it. Alex Garland is awesome. Alex Garland rules. Just for context, his first big break, he wrote the novel, The Beach. The Beach was adapted into a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. Far Cry 3 blatantly ripped off the plot of that to make Far Cry 3, which is a very good video game and it would be very easy to get mad about that. But Alex Garland is actually busy making video games of his own. He worked with Ninja Theory on, was it Heavenly Sword and the monkey one, the Journey to the West one. What is it called? One of Andy Serkis as a monkey. You know what I'm talking about. That's it. No, Andy Serkis is a monkey. Anyway, he did that. He's done a bunch of other stuff since he did Ex Machinia. He did Civil War. He did a movie, a show called Devs, which was about people making just weird software stuff. One of the main characters was established as a gamer, where there's just a shot of him playing Dark Souls 2. It was a very specific tough boss fight that just was like, if there's an opposite of those shots in movies where somebody's holding a controller that's not plugged in or holding it upside down and pushing the wrong buttons, having someone who deliberately is like, here's the gameplay we need to be showing, that's that.

Speaker 2:
[50:20] Yeah, I think a good couple of touchstones for, if you're trying to figure out how this movie is going to vibe, Men has a bunch of really interesting shots. I think it's like...

Speaker 1:
[50:36] That's the name of the movie, Men.

Speaker 2:
[50:38] Yeah, that's the name of the movie, not us. Not the actual, not us.

Speaker 1:
[50:41] I mean, Men and Annihilation are both really weird kind of ambient horror. Like, there's a lot of strange stuff in there, and the pacing is...

Speaker 2:
[50:52] Annihilation specifically has some really cool beasts in it that are very sort of otherworldly.

Speaker 1:
[50:58] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[50:58] And so I think that's a good touchstone. 28 Years Later.

Speaker 1:
[51:03] Oh, yeah, that's an easy one.

Speaker 2:
[51:04] Same sort of deal.

Speaker 1:
[51:05] I completely left that off. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:07] People walk into... They come to this area that's been uninhabited, and there are messed up creatures everywhere. And in fact, one of the things I wasn't... I didn't love about the Bone Temple, which I enjoyed, but was a little let down, was 28 Years Later is basically like, hey, check out all these enemy types, right? And in the Bone Temple, they're like, ah, we're not going to do anything with that, right? And so, yeah, so I think there's some cool stuff in there, some cool shots in Men of like a character just basically walking through a forest or through a tunnel, and some great stuff in Annihilation. I have a lot of faith in this. I think Alex Garland's awesome. I think that he is one of the most talented writers and directors working today. And I think that this is going... This is gonna be a weird one.

Speaker 1:
[51:55] Yeah, I mean, it's A24 doing a video game adaptation, which is just... I think that says a lot about where video game movies are, just the fact that that's a thing that's gonna be the most expensive movie to date. Previously, it was like Marty Supreme and Alex Garland's Civil War were the biggest budget thing they've done. This is a formerly indie production house or studio, and they generally have pretty good track records. So yeah, the cast is all over the place. You got Kit Connor, who is in Warfare, which again is a really very tense Alex Garland movie. Ben Whishaw, who is Paddington Bear. He's gonna be at Paddington is in there. You know who else is in there? Darth Maul.

Speaker 2:
[52:38] Barney. Darth Maul.

Speaker 1:
[52:40] Peter Serafinovich, who also played the Tick at one point. He plays Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's douchebag roommate in Shaun of the Dead. I like that guy a lot. He's got just a great voice for any of this stuff. And I'm sure I just, yeah, put him in Elden Ring. I don't care. Nick Offerman is a weird choice. He's in there, but also he was in, you know, he was in Civil War. He's-

Speaker 2:
[53:05] And he was in Devs, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[53:06] He was in Devs. He was in The Last of Us. Like he's-

Speaker 2:
[53:08] I think, yeah, you think, people think of him as a comedy actor and he's definitely got those chops, but I think he can do horror and I think he can do drama extraordinarily well. Cailee Spaeny, who is, I think, one of the most talented actresses working today. I thought she was awesome in Civil War and Alien Romulus. She's great. I'll watch anything that she signs up for because I have a feeling she'll pick a good script. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[53:32] Havana, Rose Lue and Ruby Cruz were both in Bottoms, which is a completely surreal comedy. It's odd that they're both in this. I don't know what they're going to be doing. Jonathan Pryce, who was a Bond villain at one point. He's in a bunch of stuff. He's in The Two Popes, The Crown, other things. Yeah, it's a good cast. It doesn't feel like it's Chris Pratt as Mario. It's not star studded, but it's got some good names in there. And that leads me to believe that this is going to be, you know, it's going to have characters. It's going to have characters doing something. What does that mean in the context of Elden Ring? I have no idea. How are they going to engage with each other? I'm kind of cool if this is just in the same way that like, you know, the Mario Galaxy Movie is just a bunch of bright, colorful characters jumping around and you see one, you go, hey, I know that one. If it's just a really bizarre sort of atmospheric horror journey through this messed up world that has a little bit of context to it, I'd be cool with that. I don't know how they're going to tackle the lore for this universe because it's dense as hell, but.

Speaker 2:
[54:38] Yeah, that's going to be tough because if you do tackle it, you're going to have to lay that on pretty thin, right? I think most audience members are not going to dig that, but I think that there's a way to explore that without keeping that door closed entirely, right? I think another good touchstone is Green Knight, which is a completely different director, but also same sort of like, all right, so we got this guy, he goes on this sort of surreal adventure into this, you know, leaves the house, basically, right? Goes out into the world and strange things happen and he meets weird princesses and monsters. And I think that that's kind of what I want here. In fact, that's also what I want from the Zelda movie, right?

Speaker 1:
[55:18] There doesn't have to, again, a video game movie doesn't have to be much. Like it's just, I guess I just want them to nail the vibe and the visuals. That's kind of first and foremost for me. I already kind of got the story I want. I've already been here. I just kind of want to see it from a different perspective. I didn't love Annihilation when I first saw it because it is not a, I wouldn't say it's a great, well, it's an unusual adaptation of the novel it's based on, which is Jeff VanderMeer, which is a great sci-fi novel.

Speaker 2:
[55:46] The whole trilogy is really high. I read those last year and I adore them.

Speaker 1:
[55:50] Proto Lovecraftian stuff or Neo Lovecraftian, whatever. But Garland's spin on it and he was open about this. He's like, this is not a beat for beat translation of the book. This is me making a movie based on what I remember feeling when I read the book, or what I remember that experience being. I feel like that approach really lends itself to Elden Ring, where so much of those games, there's lore, there's stuff in there, but so much of it is how you engage with them. Everyone plays them differently. Some people are really meticulous, and some people are about min-maxing, and some people just wander around, get their asses kicked repeatedly, and find cool crap in back corners, and maybe they read the description, and they go, oh, what is that about? Yeah, and some people fall asleep every night listening to Vaati Vidya lore explainers. There's a lot of different ways you can engage with these worlds. I have faith that this guy's gonna do, at the very least, an interesting job with it, and it's gonna look cool. We've seen some leaked set photos of the Church of America, and yeah, man, I don't know, that's out in 2028. So we gotta-

Speaker 2:
[56:53] I think that's a good, what you just said, I think, is a really solid approach for this, and I think that if he makes a movie based on how he felt playing this game, I believe in that. What you said about Annihilation being, not necessarily the most one-to-one adaptation, but still being really cool, there was a lot of people reading into that, that it was basically about cancer, and that resonated with me deeply. I played Animal Crossing with him in 2020. We did a charity stream. I went to Alex Garland's Animal Crossing Island, and afterwards, when the cameras weren't rolling, I thanked him for that because it resonated with me personally, and he was really earnest and kind about it. I think that that's the kind of person that I think, if you asked him straight to his face, like, is this about this? He'd be like, well, no, I'm not, probably doesn't really want to say it.

Speaker 1:
[57:50] No, he's a smart dude.

Speaker 2:
[57:51] Yeah, he's a smart dude. So I think in that regard, I would love that from the Elden Ring movie. So something powerful and something symbolic that resonates with people and looks cool as hell, and makes it some really good horror.

Speaker 1:
[58:03] Yeah, get in and get some monsters. I want to see the monsters. That's all I want. Just excuse me. Anyway, that about does it for this episode of the show. Brian, thanks for hanging out and talking about all these movies.

Speaker 2:
[58:11] Of course.

Speaker 1:
[58:12] We'll be back talking about games next week. I believe there's a new PlayStation game coming out. Perhaps we will tell you about what it's like to play it. Our experiences, our feelings.

Speaker 2:
[58:19] We are playing it.

Speaker 1:
[58:19] Whether or not we are good at it. But yeah, before we go real quick, it is time for a brand new month of gaming. Jump into the Humble April Choice Bundle and score an amazing lineup of titles right now. You can grab, wait for it. Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Damon X Machina, Titanic, Scion, Lord of the Rings, Return to Moria. Until then, Planet of Lana, Artisan TD, The Procession of Calvary and Buddy Simulator 1984. It all supports Reverb, a non-profit that is noticing the cultural power of music to drive real world change by greening concerts, limiting single use plastics and bringing large scale clean energy solutions to live music. Head to humblebundle.com from now until May 5th and grab some cool games and help a great cause. And before then, before we go, real quick, IGN Live is returning this summer. It is a two day celebration of gaming and entertainment. It's gonna take place June 6th and June 7th in downtown LA. It's gonna be filled with celebrity panels, exclusive game reveals, live stage shows, including a live version of Beyond that's gonna get real goofy. Some giveaways and much more early bird tickets on sale now at Show Clicks and fans can purchase one day tickets for 15 bucks or a weekend pass for 30. Thank you for letting me say all of that stuff. I know that people would rather hear us talk about the video games, but there we go.

Speaker 2:
[59:21] We didn't even do that. We just talked about movies.

Speaker 1:
[59:23] We did. We talked about video game movies. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for listening everybody. Beyond, we'll see you next week.

Speaker 2:
[59:29] Beyond.