Why Can't Hollywood Seem To Do Cartoon and/or Video Game Adaptations Correctly?
- 40084662thesecond
- Sep 6, 2022
- 24 min read
Updated: Sep 15, 2022
As we all know, the film industry at large just loves to do sequels, reboots, remakes and, our relevant topic for this post, adaptations of pre-existing works, especially these days. The reason they do this so often is because pre-existing works (such as older films, comic books, games, cartoons, fairy tales, ext) usually come with a built in audience for the studio executives to capitalise on since they'll be more likely to want to see the film you're making if it has a franchise name they recognise. (of course with films like Lightyear, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Ghostbusters 2016 still underperforming despite being based on existing properties means this isn't a guarantee)
With this in mind however, two things Hollywood can't seem to adapt properly are cartoons and video games. (what with films such as Super Mario Bros 1993, Michael Bay's Transformers, The Smurfs 2011 and it's sequel, all of the Resident Evil movies and more receiving mostly negative reviews) Clearly this isn't an issue with the idea of adapting things into other mediums, as good adaptations of existing media do exist, my main examples being the 1996 adaptation of Matilda (based on the book by Roald Dahl), Muppets Christmas Carol (a version of Charles Dickens' story of the same name), Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (based on the Pokémon spin off game of the same name) and even the live action Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (based loosely on the 1992 game of the same name with elements of 1994's Sonic The Hedgehog 3: And Knuckles thrown in)
So what seems to be the issue? why is it that we keep getting films like the Alvin and The Chipmunks movies (the first one is a guilty pleasure of mine), The Smurfs, The Lion King 2019 (and all of Disney's live action remakes in general) and even Avatar: The Last Airbender, which as a kid, I remember not liking Avatar the moment I saw the trailer, and considering I saw films like Yogi Bear and The Smurfs and actually enjoyed them unironically, that's saying something! (you know, between this, The Lion King 2019 and the first live action Sonic, I'm starting to notice a pattern where I end up not liking them due to my enjoyment of the originals they're based on, where as with Yogi Bear, Underdog and The Smurfs, I enjoyed those adaptations more because I wasn't all too familiar with the originals beforehand)
Let's take a look at various examples and compare them to the original source material to find out. But before we do that, I need to establish how I'm going to do this. First I'm going to talk a little bit about the source material the live action adaptation is based on followed by a synopsis of the live action adaptation in question so that we can compare and contrast the two and see how much they stay true to the source material vs how much they stray away from it. (spoiler alert, most of these are going to stray far away from the source material) Now that we've established how this is going to go down, let's get started. Up first is one that hits really close to home considering my obsession with the source material, so without further ado, let's compare...
Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) Vs Sonic The Hedgehog (2020)
Before we start, I do want to admit that the sequel to this movie is actually really good and sticks more to the source material, but for this comparison we're only doing film one. (the second one will only come up when it's relevant) Likewise, I also won't be bringing up the 8 bit versions of Sonic The Hedgehog 1 made for both the SEGA Master System and SEGA Game Gear. Another thing I should point out is that in the decades between Sonic the game and Sonic the movie, Sonic would have a change in design that gave him green eyes starting from Sonic Adventure onward, where as everything from Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) to Sonic R (1997) for the SEGA Saturn featured a Sonic with black eyes (which has been dubbed "Classic Sonic" in games such as Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces), so things like Sonic's eye colour and general body shape won't be mentioned as inaccuracies during this comparison since technically speaking, they are accurate to the modern games
The Source Material
Synopsis
The original Sonic The Hedgehog game is a 2D side scroller where an evil fat scientist named Dr Robotnik (or Dr Eggman if you're from Japan) captures little woodland creatures, including small blue birds called Flickies (I emphasise the Flickies because one was actually the star of their own game called "Flicky", which came out in 1984 for the arcades), once Sonic finds out about this, it becomes his job to use his super speed to free his animal buddies, gather the 6 chaos emeralds (the 7th emerald wouldn't be introduced until 1992's Sonic The Hedgehog 2) and put a stop to Dr Robotnik's plans to dominate the world with his evil technology.
Conclusion
As you can see, the plot itself is relatively simple and Sonic The Hedgehog is the central character of the whole game, although that is likely due to the fact it was a platformer released in the 90s, an era where storytelling in games wasn't as important as it is now (heck, the story itself wasn't found in the game but instead the instruction manual:
Along with this, the game was released before the likes of Tails and Knuckles would show up and become the main characters alongside Sonic himself but the point still stands that Sonic The Hedgehog is the main character of game named after him.
Of course, this isn't mentioning the variety of varied zones Sonic gets to visit on his journey to defeat Robotnik (from a loop de loop filled Green Hill Zone to the bouncy Spring Yard Zone to the notorious Labyrinth Zone and even Dr Robotnik's Scrap Brain Zone)
All of this is done without the need to shoehorn a human sidekick into the mix to slow things down with their own plot, but they were originally going to give Sonic a human girlfriend named Madonna (yes, that was her actual name)
The Adaptation
Synopsis
The live action Sonic The Hedgehog Movie is a film about a blue alien hedgehog named Sonic, who was forced to run away to earth because the Knuckles Clan from Sonic Adventure (who are all dead in the games except Knuckles) wanted his power for themselves, but after Sonic causes a power outage and gets the attention of the United States Military, who enlist the help of a fairly skinny scientist named Dr Robotink to hunt him down, our hero is forced to team up with a small town cop named Tom Wachowski to go to San Francisco in order to get his rings back so that he can leave the earth and go to a mushroom planet with a Mushroom Hill Zone in it. (I'd take it they also have a Mushroom Kingdom that isn't affiliated with any video game franchises about plumbers, we swear)
Conclusion
While this film will likely be remembered fondly as the first time a big studio actually listened to fan criticism and fixed the design of their main character before release (and rightfully so), the film itself has problems that a simple redesign couldn't fix if it tried. (and even some that redesigns could easily fix) For starters, it revolves around the same fish out of water style story a good chunk of these films use and does nothing new with it... Well, actually that's a lie, as they do one thing new here. (at least, new to me) They DONT have Sonic go back home to Green Hill Zone in the end (which is a shame because what little they did show of Sonic's world looked quite interesting), instead he sticks around on earth and becomes the adopted son of Tom and his wife Maddie.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with this type of story (in fact, Toy Story's quite a good example of a fish out of water story done right, what with Woody and Buzz trying to get back to Andy's house before he moves away), I'd say it hinders this movie because it means that Sonic has to spend time with an uninteresting human character despite the fact that the whole point of his character is that he can go fast. (meaning he could have easily gotten his rings back without the useless donut lord)
Another personal problem I have with the movie as a Sonic fan is that the movie itself doesn't even bother with sticking to the source material for the most part in more ways than one. (Strap yourselves in, we're about to enter the nit-pick zone) Starting with the big antagonist, Dr Robotnik looks nothing like he does in any previous iteration of the character ever made, be it the classic games, the modern games, Sonic Boom or even the 90s cartoons (especially in the beginning) since he's not fat (although neither was Boom Eggman), he doesn't wear a red outfit until later on in the movie (and even then it doesn't look like the games), he actually has hair unlike his game counterpart who is bald and his moustache isn't as big or as bushy until literally during the credits (and even then, it's still not exact):
Meanwhile, Sonic himself had also received a little bit of a re-design to make him "fit better in the real world" despite the fact he's an alien hedgehog from another world in this movie, as not only did they give him blue arms instead of his usual tan arms like in the games (probably so they could more easily make that reference to the Sanic meme), but they also separated his eyes, although to be fair on the designers, it must be difficult to make Sonic's conjoined eyes in 3D which is exactly why SEGA keeps the conjoined eyes in every single one of Sonic's 3D appearances (not to mention his cameos in Wreck It Ralphs 1 and 2 but that's besides the point):
Other than those admittedly minor details however, this design does stay faithful to the modern Sonic design (complete with the green eyes), although the main reason this design is the way it is is because the original version they revealed for the first trailer got rightfully mocked for looking horrendous:
The fact that people signed off on that design to begin with (upsetting even SEGA themselves) means that when making the film, the folks at Paramount didn't even care about the source material in the same vain as what happened with Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The only reason they even made Sonic more faithful to the games is because fans like me complained about it hard enough so that the studio couldn't ignore it and they ended up making all the money in the world off the back of it, which is why the sequel leaned harder into the source material and why Sonic 3 is likely to pull a lot from Sonic Adventure 2, what with them revealing Shadow and the existence of Project Shadow at the end credits for Sonic 2. (Wonder if they'll do Maria's death)
Speaking of redesigns, one element of the film I feel needed a redesign is actually Robotnik's badniks, as once again they look nothing like what's presented in the game since not only are they not as colourful as anything Robotnik/Eggman would make in the games, but they look so generic you could stick them into a different franchise about robots and no-one would bat an eye:
Meanwhile, in the voice casting department, no one from the games except Miles "Tails" Prower (who is voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey, his current voice actress in the games) had their original actors reprise their roles, as everyone else was replaced by big names such as Jim Carrey (who plays Dr Robotnik) and Ben Schwartz. (who plays Sonic himself) I actually quite like Ben and Jim's performances as Sonic and Robotnik respectively, as Ben in particular manages to keep to the spirit of Sonic's character in his vocal performance (even if he played Sonic as more of a loner who wanted friends, which to be fair made Sonic more of a well rounded character than the games were portraying him as at the time) where as Jim Carrey simply did his 90's Jim Carrey schtick throughout the film which does end up working in his favour to be fair, as Robotnik is quite memorable (and as always, Colleen does a great job as Tails)
Overall, while I think Sonic The Hedgehog is at least a decent film that happens to have Sonic in it, it's definitely not a good Sonic The Hedgehog movie, and since Sonic The Hedgehog 2 explains things from the first film so well, you don't even need to have seen Sonic 1 to enjoy Sonic 2.
Now that we've seen what they did to Sonic, let's check out...
The Smurfs (2011) Vs The Smurfs (1981)
Technically the cartoon isn't the original source material, as that was based on the original 60s Belgian comics made by Peyo but the cartoon itself was popular enough to get a film made decades later so we're comparing the film with the cartoon it was based on.
The Source Material (Or The Cartoon If You Want To Be Technical About It)
Synopsis
The Smurfs are little blue creatures named after their main defining trait, I.E: Clumsy Smurf is clumsy, Hefty Smurf is strong, Vanity Smurf is self absorbed and Smurfette is the girl of the main bunch (and even then, she was originally created by the show's villain, Gargamel) that live in a place called Smurf village and use the word "Smurf" to replace every other word in their sentences (example: We've gotta smurf the smurfberries, papa), where they get up to all kinds of smurfing activities, like gathering smurfberries and generally smurfing around. Meanwhile, an evil wizard named Gargamel is trying to catch the Smurfs with the help of his cat, Azrael, so that he can either eat them or turn them into gold (the motivation depends on the episode), so whenever he terrorizes their village, it's up to the Smurfs to outwit Gargamel and Azrael so they don't get eaten or turned into gold. (other characters would get introduced as the series goes on, but for the most part this was the main formula for the series)
Video uploaded by the official Smurfs YouTube Channel
Conclusion
Much like the plot of Sonic The Hedgehog (1991), The Smurfs series as a whole has a very simple formula, what with it being a Saturday morning cartoon from the early 80s, so much like Sonic The Hedgehog (specifically the original game since other games in the series like Sonic Unleashed and even Sonic 06 have stories that could work as a film) turning this into a feature film would require a little bit of finagling to make work, I.E: focusing in just a few Smurfs rather than the entire village at once (which to be fair, the show already does this) and giving the Smurfs character development without losing the personality trait they're named after (again, to be fair, characters like Smurfette, Papa Smurf and even Brainy Smurf are easier to flesh out considering they don't follow one note personality traits unlike most of the others)
Again, much like the case with Sonic, the creators of the show (and even the original comic series) didn't feel the need to shoehorn a human sidekick to pad out the run time since they knew people would tune into and/or read a book titled "The Smurfs" and expect it to focus mainly on the characters in the title and their exploits and not some dumb human characters in the (at the time) modern world and their failing advertising campaigns. (how specific of a scenario, hope that doesn't come up later)
The Adaptation
Synopsis
The live action Smurfs movie is about how a small group of Smurfs consisting of Papa Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Smurfette, Grouchy Smurf and Gutsy Smurf (who himself is a new character made specifically for these movies who is never heard from again) take a portal to New York City in order to get away from Gargamel after he tracks down their entire village and now the Smurfs need to find their way home with the help of a random couple named Patrick Wilson, played Neil Patrick Harris, and Grace Wilson, played by Jayma Mays (I actually had to look up their names despite having watched the film years ago, so that should tell you how memorable they really are), all the meanwhile the Smurfs help the human couple learn what it means to have a family and even accidentally save Patrick's failing advertising campaign which I've more or less forgotten what that was for (it was either perfume or a fashion line, but I'm not sure which one)
In Conclusion
Yeah there's no need to sugar coat this one folks, as while I liked this movie back when it first came out (don't forget I was a child back then so my taste weren't as good yet), I can see now that it isn't a good movie in general, let alone a good Smurfs movie, which is a bit of a contrast to that of Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) which was at the very least a decent film on it's own. The problems with this film are very similar to that of Sonic The Hedgehog, as like that film The Smurfs relies on the tried and tested fish out of water style storyline except this time, our heroes are sent to the very real city of New York in the state of New York instead of a fictional small town in Montana. (meaning we get all sorts of product placements throughout this film)
Much like Sonic however, this film doesn't draw upon the source material a whole lot, but unlike Sonic where we get Sonic, Miles "Tails" Prower, Dr Robotnik, Green Hill Zone (complete with a piano version of the accompanying music) with a one of the owl blocks from Labyrinth Zone in it, The Knuckles Clan from Sonic Adventure (or so I think that's them but it could just be a random echidna tribe), the "Blue Spheres" Special Stage from Sonic 3 (as a part of Sonic's map of safe worlds), Hill Top Zone (as a sign in Sonic's cave), the rings (which double as warp rings) and even one of the songs from Sonic Mania, specifically Friends by Hyper Potions (actually that's quite a lot when it's all listed out like this), The Smurfs (2011) meanwhile has The Smurfs themselves (specifically the original 100 or so), Smurf Village (but even then it was only in the beginning and ending), Gargamel and his magic (but not his original motivations for capturing the Smurfs), Azrael the cat, Smurfberries, the original theme from the show and even The original comic designs in a book by Peyo himself, not as much surprisingly but to be fair, I don't have the same history with The Smurfs (2011)'s source material as I do with Sonic The Hedgehog (2020)'s source material so there might be more I don't know.
Another similarity The Smurfs (2011) shares with Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) is the fact that because it's a live action movie, they felt the need to make The Smurfs themselves look more "realistic" so that they fit better with the real world despite the fact that films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Rocky and Bullwinkle exist and simply have the characters react to the lighting without needing to change their designs. (although in Rocky and Bullwinkle's case, the main characters were CGI with textures that match the original look closely) Unlike Sonic however, no amount of bullying the studio behind this movie would get them to change their minds:
While it is true that the Smurfs do mostly look like themselves, their more realistic muscle structure and even the differences in their faces make them look quite weird and unlike anything that could exist on earth. I think it would have been better for the film if they just decided to forgo the whole "realism" angle and make the Smurfs more cartoony in design like in this animation test I found:
As you can see from the video, the Smurf design they used here looks way more appealing, as it sticks closer to the original design principals where the character looks cartoony while still fitting in with the environment, thus removing the uncanny feeling one might have when watching the final film.
Meanwhile, you have the totally necessary and not at all shoehorned human characters, who end up basically becoming the main characters for the majority of the film once they're introduced because animation is expensive and studio executives value big name celebs over animators for some cussing reason:
With this in mind, it means that much like Sonic The Hedgehog (2020), The Smurfs (2011) isn't actually a Smurfs movie, but rather a film with the Smurfs in it, except it's way worse because not only do the humans get an entire plot about learning what it means to be a family while saving Patrick's advertising campaign as he prepares to become a dad, but their whole scenario is rather boring, especially for the kids this film allegedly targets (I say "Allegedly" because I doubt most young kids would even understand the ad campaign parts as they'd more than likely want to see the Smurfs in the film that's literally called "The Smurfs")
With that I'll be ending this particular comparison here, apologies if it's not a detailed as what I did with Sonic but like I said several times, I never had the same history with the original Smurfs cartoon or comics as I did with the Sonic games.
With this in mind, unlike our previous two entries where the original rights holders weren't all that involved outside of licensing the IP (Sonic The Hedgehog 2020 was made by Paramount Pictures and The Smurfs 2011 was made by Sony Pictures), this time the rights holders themselves were actually involved in this next train-wreck... I mean live action adaptation. Much like Sonic The Hedgehog, I actually enjoyed the original source material, but then everything changed when the Shyamalan nation attacked with...
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005) Vs The Last Airbender (2010)
The Source Material
Synopsis
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an anime inspired animated series about a boy named Aang, who is both the Avatar, a being who can learn to bend water, fire, air and earth at the same time (everyone else only gets to learn one element), and the only remaining air bender in existence (hence the show's title, "The Last Airbender"), as he goes on a grand journey to defeat the evil fire nation with the two kids (a pair of water bending siblings named Sokka and Katara) who unearthed him from the ice.
Conclusion
Unlike our previous two examples where the plots were relatively easy going (in Sonic's case this was because it was a video game in the early 1990s while The Smurfs was a Saturday morning cartoon using a relatively episodic structure where the characters return to the status quo by the end), Avatar the Last Airbender is a more narrative driven action show that takes itself more seriously.
Because of the fact that it's a TV series and not a movie, Avatar: The Last Airbender is able to create a longer, more detailed narrative overall than a film could ever hope to achieve since it's often split up into chunks that can range from 11 to 22 minutes on average per episode, where as a movie's narrative can only last for so long because of the greater immediate time investment that is often required of both the audience, since they have to watch around an hour and a half to two hours worth of content on average per movie (although if they're bingeing a TV show this can easily be exceeded depending on the number of seasons), and the film makers, since a film can take longer to develop and produce than a single episode, although overall the show can take longer to produce depending on how many episodes there are per season and even how many seasons the creators commissioned, as a show like the Simpsons for example has a much longer collective production time than something like The Fairly OddParents or even it's own movie, especially since they keep commissioning a seemingly infinite number of seasons.
The Adaptation
Synopsis
The Last Airbender is a movie about a boy named Aang, who is both the Avatar, a being who can learn to bend water, fire, air and earth at the same time (everyone else only gets to learn one element), and the only remaining air bender in existence (hence the show's title, "The Last Airbender"), as he goes on a grand journey to defeat the evil fire nation with the two kids (a pair of water bending siblings named Sokka and Katara) who unearthed him from the ice.
Conclusion
For those of you that are getting major de-ja vu from reading this synopsis, I actually copied and pasted the synopsis from the show and changed a few minor things around. This is because unlike every other live action adaptation we've discussed thus far, this film actually follows the same basic outline as the show itself, meaning the film in theory takes place in the show's universe, which is a good thing since it means Aang, Katara and Sokka won't end up prancing around New York City trying to get home with the help of a bureaucratic lawyer and an ice cream lady while stopping fire lord Ozari from bringing the full wrath of the fire nation into our world during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. (Ft. Sonic The Hedgehog, Papa Smurf, Pikachu, Spider-Man, Super-Man, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and SpongeBob SquarePants) However, just because they didn't stick Aang and the gang in New York City however, doesn't mean they didn't get other things wrong about the series, but before we move on I just want to say one thing about this movie that's also different from the others. This movie is the only one I never saw all the way through, as I simply disliked it that much due to the fact it wasn't animated like the show it was based on (and given the snippets I have seen and the overall reaction this film got, I'd say I made a smart choice for once), so expect the analysis to be a bit more surface level in nature
One problem this film seems to have right from the get go (as far as I've heard from internet reviews) is that it's trying to squeeze much of the original show's narrative into one movie, thus meaning they end up needing to cut out a lot of scenes from the show and replace a lot of them with boring explanations of everything, thus slowing the pace to a crawl much of the time. (ironic considering the fact they were trying to cram the grand majority of the show's narrative in this thing)
Another thing they ended up getting wrong is the characters themselves in more ways than one. For example, let's take a look at the character of Zuko, who looks like this in the actual show:
If you look very very carefully, you might just notice a great big obvious burn scar that covers Zuko's left eye and a good chunk of the left side of his face. Some might even say it's one of his most iconic traits, so obviously M. Night Shyamalan must have looked at this guy and paid great attention to include this detail on his left eye, right? (although if you look at the film's poster you'll be spoiled on the answer but I still want to indulge in the moment dag nabbit!):
Huh, it seems the scar itself is still there, but for some reason, Shyamalan decided not to make it super pronounced like it's supposed to be, thus meaning that whenever he's far away from the camera and/or in certain lighting conditions, you won't even notice it's there, thus ruining the most iconic part of Zuko's appearance and making pre existing fans wonder the big question:
Ok, so it seems Zuko didn't get the best treatment in this regard, but maybe they'll do the main characters justice, right? RIGHT?!
Ok, so we seem to have Aang but his arrow isn't as prominent or even blue, Zuko from earlier and two complete strangers who... Wait, the people on the bottom are Katara and Sokka?!
Video clip re-uploaded by MessWithVids, original "JonTron's StarCade: Episode 4 - Nintendo Star Wars" video uploaded by JonTron Show
How are those two meant to be Sakko and Katara?! For starters, they don't even look like the characters from the show, as their skin tone itself is significantly lighter than their cartoon counterparts:
This isn't even just a matter of taking the cartoon and making them look different either (unlike with characters like Sonic or even Super Mario in their live action movies), as this is actually a blatant example of something called race-swapping (specifically white-washing in this case), which is where you take a character that was originally one race and then swap them to be another, basically, think gender-swapping but with skin colour instead. While inherently it's not entirely a bad thing, I say this because Nick Fury was actually race swapped for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it ended up working quite for his character, a case like this where you take heroes who clearly have darker skin tones and then make them white while taking a character like Zuko who spends much of the film trying to destroy our heroes before joining them in the end. (Much like Aang, Zuko has a lighter skin tone in the original series) and giving him a darker skin tone may end up giving the impression that the people working on this movie may have based who gets to be the good guys and who gets to be the bad guys solely on race rather than what said characters looked like in the original show (which is both racist and shows they didn't give six hoots when adapting the source material)
With that being said, let's skip on over to the subject of how they butcher the characterisations of the characters because I do not want to discuss racism anymore. (mainly because I don't think I can do the subject justice)
Unlike the other live action adaptations we've discussed where they at least tried to keep to the spirit of their title characters (because in the 2020 Sonic movie, they at least let Sonic have moments where he's a bit cocky like in the original games and in The Smurfs 2011, The Smurfs do exhibit their defining traits like in the original cartoon and comics), this movie throws much of the characterisation from the original show into the rubbish bin (the same one Paramount dumped their memory of what happened with Sonic when making the live action Clifford The Big Red Dog movie), which I can see mostly with Aang and Sokka. (since they're the characters I remember the most about and thus can draw the biggest contrasts with)
Aang in the show is actually quite playful despite being the avatar (which makes sense since he's a one hundred and twelve year old boy that spent 100 years frozen in ice) while learning later to take things more seriously when the situation calls for it, where as in the film, he's lost all sense of fun over the last 100 years, thus making him a bore at parties:
hold on, have I been pronouncing Aang's name properly like they do in the source material?! Well according to the everyone in the film, his name is pronounced "Aung" despite the fact that the show clearly pronounces and spells his name as "Aang" not "Aung", thus invalidating the movie entirely. (but hey, at least Aang's bald like in the show, even if the arrow doesn't look like it should in the show)
Meanwhile, with Sokka, his characterisation went to the same butchers as Aang's, since in the original show Sokka serves as the comedy relief of the main trio with his brand of jokes and sarcasm (of course, there's a lot more to him in the original show than that but for simplicity's sake, that's his role), meanwhile in the film (at least from what I've seen and heard in reviews), Sokka isn't exactly what we in the business would call a jokester.
And with that, we'll end things here, as like I said at the top of this section, I haven't seen The Last Airbender (2010) all the way through due to how much I vociferously hated it for being unlike the show.
Now That We Know What It's Like When They Drop The Ball, What Happens When They Actually Care About The Source Material?
I think it's pretty obvious to say that the reason a lot of live action adaptations of cartoons and video games seem to constantly screw up when it comes to being anywhere near good is because often times the studio executives who demand these movies get made don't give much of a hoot about the original source material other than how the franchise name recognition can be used to make massive profits (as a pose to miniscule profits), and that's not even mentioning people like Uwe Boll who literally made video game movies as a means to make money off the back of tax loopholes, so what happens when people who actually care about the franchises are in charge of production? Well, the results can be quite interesting, as you might end up with hits such as Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022) and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019) where people ranging from causal viewers to series super fans end up being able to enjoy these movies due to the passion the creators put into them (with Pokémon: Detective Pikachu being a decent mystery plot while Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a great action adventure flick):
On the other hand, you might end up with a film like the Ratchet and Clank movie where not a lot of people ended up enjoying the film (although I liked it well enough, but yes. the PS4 game based on the film that was based on the PS2 classic was better in every way), and that's not to mention the fact it didn't do well at the box office:
examples of good adaptations in terms of cartoons would include the likes of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) and even Recess: School's out (2001):
What you may have noticed about the three examples (and to a lesser extent the Ratchet and Clank Movie) I listed here are that they're all animated movies. There's a very good reason for this, as simply doing an animated movie about a beloved cartoon or a video game makes capturing the feel of the original source material much easier than doing it in live action, as you're able to use the exact same art style as the original work it's based on. (except Smurfs: The Lost Village did gun for an all CGI style, but even then it still stays true to the original Smurf designs) This is especially true if the original creators of the show are involved with the production in question (as is the case with both Recess: School's Out having the show's creators, Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere, writing the script while The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie had the show's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, as the director, thus removing the obstacle of needing to mimic the original since you know, the original creators are involved and know the source material better than any outsiders ever could. (since they themselves created it) Not to mention they'll also try and get the original voice cast of the series to reprise their respective roles. (except for Smurfs The Lost Village, that one had a Clumsy Smurf that sounded like Fix-It-Felix from Wreck It Ralph and a Gargamel who sounded like Gallaxar from Monsters Vs Aliens)
Another thing about these movies that make them different from most live action adaptations is that they'll often stay within the universe the original shows took place in, meaning Papa Smurf isn't going back to New York to meet with Patrick Wilson and friends and SpongeBob SquarePants spends much of his movie under the water with only a brief visit to the surface world, while expanding on the show's universe too, so fans end up getting adventures that wouldn't have been as feasible under the budget of the original shows (I.E: SpongeBob's grand quest for King Neptune's Crown, T.J and the gang trying to stop an evil man from destroying summer vacation by moving the moon onto a different orbit and even Smurfette's quest for the lost village of female Smurfs)
So Is There Hope For Actually Good Adaptations To Become The Norm In The Future?
Well, given the fact that films like Detective Pikachu and the Sonic The Hedgehog movies have managed to bring in massive profits for the studios behind them, especially the Sonic The Hedgehog movies, meaning the character is officially doing better as a film than he is as a game character at the moment (which is funny given that video games were the medium Sonic was created for in the first place, although hopefully Sonic Frontiers will have me eating my words on this one), I'd say there's hope that more studios will take notice, find out what made these movies successful (I.E: bringing in people who actually like the IP in question rather than randos that haven't heard of the source material and letting them actually make a good movie), and do their best to replicate the good aspects of these films while trashing the bad in order to bring video game movies and cartoon adaptations up to the same level of quality and success as the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Iron Man 1 to Avengers Endgame (oh, and Spider Man: No Way Home too, even though I personally think Spider-verse did the same concept way better), but given the long standing reputations of both these kinds of movies (where they more often than not stink), I have a feeling it'll be a long and windy road for these kinds of movies because poorly done films like Uncharted (2022) and Clifford The Big Red Dog (2021) still exist. As for reboots that try to "modernise" the source material while completely discarding the audience of the original like what happened with Ghostbusters 2016, I don't see those lasting much longer myself since they keep failing all the time. (I know it's weird that I'm essentially cliff noting that whole topic but the back and forth surrounding those films tend to get very politically charged so I don't want to touch those with a 39 and a half foot pole anymore than I have to)
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