In the pantheon of video game franchises turned into movies, Need For Speed is certainly an oddball choice for adaptation. The bad rap on game-to-film adaptations stems from the fact that most of the early games adapted like Super Mario Bros., Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter had no real plot for the filmmakers to latch onto, only colorful characters and a bizarre world. So it was easy for critics to say, “If these games have no story, why translate them into a storytelling medium, ya’ bunch of morons!” Now we have a plethora of games with fantastic stories executed in a cinematic style that would be well suited to film adaptation like say Uncharted, Dead Space, or BioShock and none of them have been taken to the big screen thanks to the video game movie stigma. Instead, we’ve gotten Need For Speed, a movie based on a game dedicated entirely to hot rod street races and police chases with no memorable characters or plotlines to speak of. So, it’s more of the same, but at least this time the movie is hinged on car chases, one of the great cinematic pleasures from Bullitt to The Fast And The Furious.
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