Because the SUPER MARIO BROS. movie tanked (even though I liked it, personally), so now everybody fears that that'll be the case of any further movies based on video games.
And uh. Why is making a moving to increase the game popularity a bad thing?
Actually aren't pretty much all video game based movies just cash grabs from the fans of the actual game?
The Tomb Raider and Resident Evil movies actually proved to be successful. A new series of Tomb Raider movies is currently in production.
The Mario movie was doomed to fail because the technology and budget for a direct adaption just didn't exist then, nor did any knowledge of the characters by anyone over the age of 15. We had those who only cared about the game's popularity making the movie, and we ended up with a cynical, barely in name only flop that cheated gamer kids out of a good Mario movie and caused Nintendo to be insanely head up their butt picky about what happens to characters. Somehow Donkey Kong Country was able to happen, but that was the last Western adaption of their characters. And like I always say
pfffffttt like Pokemon and F-Zero were that great?
That was a different scene than it is today. We've had 30 solid years of mainstream video gaming programmed into today's writers and directors. Everything makes a video game reference. Whole shows are nothing
but video game references to the point of them being predictable and almost tired. Every cartoon is now legally required to do a fight sequence that turns into a Street Fighter II parody, from Family Guy to TMNT. If a Mario movie was made today, it would be incredibly lovingly close because
everyone knows what Mario is about now,
and they'd have to field some angry gamers. Look how much crap the 80's DIC Nintendo cartoons get online.
As for Ratchet and Clank, isn't this being supervised at least by the game company and creators? They seem to be doing what cartoon shows do when they get full theatrical movies. They're keeping the original professional voice acting cast as the franchise characters, but adding in new ones so they can say "hey! We have celebrity voice actors in this movie." This sounds like it could be a pretty fun little movie, but I have to admit, I don't see it being that successful. R&C has its fans, they'll probably go see this. I want to see it even though I've never played a R&C game and will probably be a little lost going in. But the film is going to be released a week before May's huge march of large budget movies, and after The Jungle Book (though, frankly I don't see that doing too well either, but losing far more money due to the budget). it seems that it'll get lost in the shuffle, and I might have to search for a theater to even see it.