By Frank Paiva
Special to MSN Movies

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Twentieth Century Fox will release "Hitman," which follows bald assassin Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) as he traverses Europe killing people for money. But is that really reason to give thanks? "Hitman" is the latest in a long string of movies inspired by popular video games, which raises the eternal question: Are movies based on video games inherently terrible?

Read more: Game Shows: TV-Inspired Video Games

The quick answer is probably yes, unless you're talking to a hard-core gamer or a genre flick fan. But simply brushing off releases that started on a Nintendo Wii, Xbox, PS3 or even a (gasp) Super NES ignores the prominence of gaming in the overall scheme of the entertainment industry.

The combined gross of video game console software, hardware and accessory sales reaches $11 billion annually in the United States. According to The-Numbers.com, the domestic box office gross of every movie released in America during 2006 clocks in at $9.3 billion, a difference of nearly $2 billion. Keeping these statistics in mind, it's a wonder more movies aren't being made from the array of hit titles in the digital marketplace. But as the brief console-to-film history shows, adapting your favorite game into a full-length feature is easier said than done.

The Early Years

The floodgates opened with the 1993 release of "Super Mario Bros." The ultra-strange and ultra-bad adaptation was a gigantic failure, earning back less than half its $42 million budget. Critical drubbing aside, many fans expressed their disappointment with the film, claiming it had little to nothing to do with what actually happens in the widely admired game series. Today, strangely, "Super Mario Bros." is a cult classic, appreciated for its crazy costumes, makeup, and general weirdness.

Finding a coherent story (by action standards at least) was just as difficult the following year for two of the biggest fighting games on the market. "Double Dragon" featured Hawaiian martial arts champ Mark Dacascos and white-bread TV star Scott Wolf as brothers fighting to retrieve an ancient Chinese talisman. The film was criticized for its bland PG-13 action and its wide-ranging ridiculousness.

For me, "Street Fighter" remains the granddaddy of all ill-conceived adaptations. It's a movie so gut-wrenchingly terrible that it surpasses all levels of irony. "Street Fighter" was released two months after the death of star Raul Julia, who really deserved a better ending to his dignified career. The plot featured Julia as M. Bison, a despotic supervillain whose reign of terror mobilizes a group of insurgents led by American soldier Guile, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. That's right. There was a time when Van Damme made movies that were theatrically released, people, and we're all responsible.

The early spurt ended with the 1995 release of "Mortal Kombat" and its 1997 sequel "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation." The films marked the mainstream American debut of Hong Kong martial arts star Robin Shou, and featured just enough bombastic action to please regular audiences in addition to the game's fans.

The New Millennium Franchises

The 1996 release of the Nintendo 64 forever changed the face of the video game industry by finally allowing full player immersion into a digital world. Graphics and realistic play were greatly improved, much to consumer satisfaction. Shifting technologies, though, meant a dearth of reliable titles to turn into films. Strangely enough, it was a Game Boy game about fighting monsters that began a run of highly successful game-to-movie franchises.

The Pokemon invasion of the late '90s baffled parents but pleased kids. An all-out blitz of merchandise and media saturation culminated in the release of "Pokemon: The First Movie," the first of five Pikachu-loving titles that would eventually receive theatrical release in America. These Japanese animated features were cheap to produce, leading to an overhaul of Saturday morning cartoon programming.

Angelina Jolie, who two years prior had won an Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted," gave the game-to-movie adaptation industry a boost of artistic cred in 2001. Jolie starred as "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," the sexy adventurer who searches the world for stolen ancient artifacts. The film and its 2003 sequel turned Jolie from a quirky critics' darling into a major box-office star.

And, finally, director Paul W.S. Anderson, who directed the original "Mortal Kombat" film to success seven years earlier, set his sights on a new franchise with the 2002 release of "Resident Evil." The trilogy about zombies and corporate responsibility (or lack thereof) provided Ukrainian model-turned-actress Milla Jovovich with a terrific star vehicle. The first film actually received some of the highest critical marks in games-to-movies history ("As good as the genre gets," uh, raved the Baltimore Sun!), which means it wasn't completely thrown under a bus. Still, the trilogy was a financial success, with the supposedly final chapter, "Resident Evil: Extinction" hitting No. 1 at the box office in September 2007.

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