Back in the old days, we used to receive video games based on any movie or TV show that Hollywood was dishing out to us. Sure, some of the games were horrible, but it was nice to actually play characters that were portrayed by Hollywood actors.
Back in the ’90s, we got to play as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 video games. For us living in the ’00s, Tobey Maguire was lucky enough to lend his likness to all three Spider-Man video games. Not to mention, most of the cast reprised their roles to star in 2005’s Batman Begins video game.
Nowadays, it’s rare for TV shows and movies to have their own AAA video game. Even if a game is based on a popular movie IP, rarely do they star a Hollywood actor. Let’s rundown some of the movie games we have got in recent years that don’t star Hollywood actors.
I think the biggest misfire is probably Marvel’s Avengers from Square Enix. Not only was the game terrible, but it Marvel’s Avengers was sadly not based on the popular MCU. All we got was Temu versions of The Avengers.
Even Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does not allow players to play as Jake Sully or Neyteri. Instead, the game centers around original Na’vi characters who live in a different region of Pandora.
Speaking of original characters, even recent Star Wars games haven’t allowed us to play as our favourite heroes. We don’t play as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars Jedi games because they created Cal Kestis. The canceled Star Wars 1313 was going to allow us to play as Boba Fett, but instead we got Kay Vess in Ubisoft’s dud called Star Wars Outlaws.
The only time movie and TV show characters do appear in video games are when they are in either Fortnite or Lego games. The recent Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga allowed us to play as pretty much every famous Star Wars character. From the original trilogy, the prequels and the sequels, everyone was in the game.
As for Batman, many of his movies will be featured in the upcoming Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight video game. We sadly never got a proper Batman video game with Ben Affleck or Robert Pattinson. They’ll just have skins in the Lego Batman game instead.
The only reason we don’t see Hollywood actors in video games recently is probably due to rising development costs. Only Fortnite is able to have movie/TV shows because Epic Games pays studios a ton of money for licensed skins. But they only pay for the likeness because Fortnite character don’t talk to the actors don’t have to lend their voice to anything.
Anyway, do you miss movie and TV show video games? I know I do. It’s sad we never for a Spider-Man video game based on Tom Holland or a Superman game with Henry Cavill.
