From 'The Last of Us' to 'Mario Bros.': Video games storm the screen

Nintendo is in luck.

Not content with just teaching an extensive

of

, the new installment of the

saga destined to conquer the world next month, on the 5th the movie of its most iconic character premiered:

For To no surprise, it has been a resounding success.

Not to get tangled up: the movie is wonderful.

Its commercial success is unstoppable and its cinematographic level is remarkable.

Not so much because of the story (simple, like the original) or the characters (which are developed just enough, like archetypes they are) but because of the strictly cinematographic calligraphy: the set

, a mix of action and game elements, are fantastic.

And they are for a specific reason: Mario was not born yesterday.

That is to say, the film has managed to take advantage of all the visual ideas (powers, settings, cars, the appearance of the characters, sound effects) with intelligence and care, developed and refined by games for decades.

And works.

Wow if it works.

The Last of Us

series

overlap in time

and this

They are the first of the new batch of video game adaptations that are simply very good.

We said it in the review of the great HBO series

and it's time to repeat it now.

It is not about casual successes but a very well thought out business move.

The mediocre adaptations that the world of videogames has suffered in the past decades have been left behind, and the great audiovisual industry already knows that interactive entertainment is an overflowing sack from which to draw stories and characters to feed popular culture for decades to come. .

A bag of intellectual properties that have been developed for years (sometimes decades) and have created a beautiful, complex, structured narrative ecosystem ready to be exported from the console to the big (or small) screen.

Especially at a time like this, in which the great repository of stories of the last decades, the superhero comic, is already showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion.

For the development of

, Nintendo has teamed up with Illumination (

,

), but founded Nintendo Pictures last year after acquiring Dynamo, so it's not unreasonable that, to better control its products (and as Sony has already done with PlayStation Productions), Take full control of your audiovisual creations.

And keep all your benefits, of course.

A moment from the movie.

Uncharted

,

,

,

.

But also

... it really is not necessary to write more names, just go around Google to see the huge number of adaptations that are being prepared for the coming years. .

And this is only the beginning.

As with technical advances, video games are the canary in the mine in today's world.

Also, the canary in the mine of audiovisual (and popular) culture that is yet to come.

There is another thing: there has been an attempt to discredit the film based on ideological coordinates.

That if there is no diversity, that if the forced Italian accent bothers, that if it is too patriarchal or heterosexual... regardless of whether these considerations are correct or not, it should be remembered that the film has been the best premiere of an animated film in history , so these attacks have come to nothing.

It's funny: in February the same thing happened with

, with the boycott attempt (much stronger than this one from

, it must be said) that did not do any damage to the extraordinary commercial performance of the game: it is already a resounding success and sequels are guaranteed for a long time.

In fact, it is not unreasonable to suggest that this success has promoted the new series announced by Warner on the

universe .

Digital culture is imposed on popular culture.

It does it by pulling quality and it does so unstoppably, regardless of suspicions, interested criticism or boycott attempts.

is there

to question it, the old axiom says that, in an adaptation, the book is always better than the movie.

At least that was the phrase made in the twentieth century.

In the 21st, we may have to replace the word "book" with "video game" and discuss whether it is true or not.

to time.

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