It really is hard to find original content nowadays, and while the movie industry has got us used to seeing flicks based on video games (Tomb Raider, Max Payne, Tron and, in a way, Ready Player One), it is also quite common to see examples of adaptations going the other way round.
Unfortunately, compared to the early 2000s, this tendency has significantly gone down, somehow shifting from big-budget console video games actually based on movies, to online games and betting apps loosely inspired by movie characters or themes.
It is fair to assume that investing in very ambitious projects bringing movies to your consoles or PC has not proven successful for producers in the last decade, forcing them to abandon such practice. And while this might be disappointing to nostalgic gamers, it opened the doors to websites who wanted to give a theme to their online games, events betting and gambling activities. It is now common to find things such as Psycho Slot, a slot game loosely based on the Alfred Hitchcock movie, not to mention the wide variety of movie-based games on popular gaming websites such as crazygames or miniclip.
Once again, another popular and beloved practice has moved online, becoming incredibly more accessible, but far less ambitious. Not to say the games are not fun or engaging, but they barely have anything to do with the source they’re based on, and don’t equal the experience we got used to when we were children, when, after seeing a movie, we all waited for the possibility of playing the game. It was just a matter of weeks, until we had a chance to become part of the movie ourselves, and tailor our personal experience in the same setting as the protagonists, perhaps making those choices we dreaded he/she hadn’t made in the movie.
It almost seems as if the one kind of adaptations we were really behind is the only one the industry has decided to do without, focusing on reboots, prequels, and sequels, leaving us without much to do, except maybe playing some of those online games, hoping for a chance to at least win a prize and feel better about the whole thing.