The Top 10 Best Movie Depictions of Video Games

03. Edge of Tomorrow

Right now you are likely thinking to yourself: wait, that's not a video game, it's a movie! This is supposed to be the best presentations of video games in movies, but there was no game here!

True that...

But if you bear with us for a moment, all will be made clear.

Know what the most common feature of a video game is? Here is a hint - it is part of the major plot element for this movie. We'll try hard not to spoil it too much for you in case you have not yet seen it, but here is the thing - while it is tempting to compare this movie to Groundhog Day, there is one very important difference...

The basic plot is that an unprepared and unlikely hero-protagonist is thrust into mind-numbing combat and great peril, where he dies. Then the game.. Err.. Movie - resets. Again and again, he gets sent back to his last valid checkpoint. He gets better at being a soldier and eventually he gets good enough.

Now does that sound like any video game you ever played?

In Edge of Tomorrow they took the basic structure of a first-person-shooter video game and turned it into a movie. Dress it up any way you like, but that is what it is.

Now usually when they try to make a movie out of a video game it sucks. I think there is actually some natural law that says if you try to make a movie out of a video game it will suck actually, but what about when you take a basic and common plot and premise of a video game and make THAT into a movie?

Now this could easily devolve into a chicken-and-egg argument; you could take the position that video games borrowed those basic foundation points from movies. There is also the notion that there are no original ideas in fiction anymore, because they have all been tried thousands of times in variation after variation going back to ancient Greece.

We don't buy that argument however. And it is our position - stated - that while this is not a video game (yet) it has to be the best representation of a video game in a movie (that is not based off of a video game) pretty much so far...

It has it all - and when we say all we mean every basic game element - and that includes a MacGuffin, a false plot, and the whole heroic bit. As it turns out, if you have Tom Cruise and you borrow the basic elements of a video game, you actually have a shot at making something worth watching.