The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Films Based on Toys and Games is fairly explanatory. There have been a number of occasions where toy manufacturers have worked in collaboration with filmmakers to produce a film or tv spinoff of one of their popular toys.
This is more common in children’s tv animation than on film. However, there have been a number of successful series based on toys such as Transformers and G.I. Joe and the ongoing popularity of the animated Barbie, Care Bears, Trolls and Pokemon films, as well as the films based around Lego characters. There is no particular overriding theme to these other than that the films are usually pitched to a younger demographic.
Adaptations of games are less popular than toys, although we have seen several films based around the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game and other singletons taken from Battleship and Warhammer 40,000.
For films based on videogames see Videogame Adaptations. For films in which toys come to life or develop sinister purpose see Toys in Fantastic Cinema. For the fictional depiction of assorted games see Games in Fantastic Cinema.
Less a film than a phenomenon, there is something ironic about a doll that is accused of promoting negative body standards ending up leading a women’s movement. Moria has just one or two issues with this.
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
Alexandre Dumas’s classic adventure story is turned into an animated vehicle for Barbie with genders reversed and an absurdly upbeat Girls Can Do Anything vibe. Being a kid’s film, the girl Musketeers are no longer allowed to wield swords
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
Here the Barbie films turn to Mark Twain’s classic (non-fantasy) tale of rags and riches and spins it as a fairytale This has the same blank, plastic style of the early Barbie films and is otherwise bland
The previous Barbie animated films had adapted various fairytales but this casts her as a fairy in a magical kingdom – simplistic, but one of the most colourfully animated of Mainframe’s Barbie films
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet
Another of Mainframe’s interminable Barbie films that soon slip into a sameness. This is at least directed with a visual sweep
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
The third animated film based on the popular girl’s doll Barbie. This places Barbie into Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake in an okay telling, if one that suffers from the usual limited animation of Mainframe’s early films
Another animated Barbie film, this appropriate the name of the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale and makes it now about a fairy who preaches conservation. As these films go, this is one of the better made and comes with quite a degree of colour
An animated Batman film that is essentially an extended commercial based on a line of toys wherein Batman fights super-villains that have an animal motif
Adaptation of the Battleship boardgame that emerges at best as wannabe Michael Bay. Imagine Pearl Harbor mashed up with a Transformers film and lots of bone-headed glorification of American militarism
Spinoff from the Transformers films. As though all it took was a change of director, this is a small sweet film that has more in common with E.T. as opposed to Michael Bay’s mass destruction spectaculars
The second of the Care Bears films, light, insubstantial and rather sweet as pre-adolescent creatures of indeterminate gender romp around in their cloud kingdom banishing bad feelings
The third of the Care Bears film conducts a crossover with Alice in Wonderland, although it is an adaptation that is liberal in its treatment of Lewis Carroll to say the least
The first film from Mamoru Hosoda based on a tv series that was a blatant attempt to copy the Pokemon phenomenon and concerning cute creatures that live on the internet
Film based on the enormously popular roleplaying game, this appears to have been quickly thrown together in advance of The Lord of the Rings films but is a shabby effort filled with some disastrous off-tone casting
A new film based on the role-playing game. The first film several years ago is poorly regarded. This is an attempt to reboot a film series but suffers badly from being handed to two comedy directors and their flip treatment
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
Stephen Sommers make a film based on the popular action toy line. Barring one exhilarating sequence in the middle, this consists of lots of sound and CGI fury amounting to very little at all
The original animated series was one of the pop oddities of the 80s – part teen pop fantasy, part superheroics and secret identities. This live-action remake is an object lesson in how to strip all the fun elements out a series
Following the success of The Lego Movie, where he was a scene-stealing supporting character, Batman gets a whole Lego film to himself. Less a Batman film than it is a parody of Batman
How much fun can a film based around Lego characters be? A film that overflows with cleverness, wit and energy. The most fun is in the film’s creating a madcap mix-up of characters from different franchises
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
Third of the animated films based on the Lego toy line. This has the same fast-paced humour and witty fourth-wall breaking gags as its predecessors, even if you suspect the Lego Movie brand is starting to fade
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
An ill-conceived attempt to compete amid the high stakes box-office superheroics enjoyed by Marvel and belatedly DC, this had one of the most disastrous box-office showings of 2016 … Based on a popular line of action toys, this gets nothing right – it’s hard to tell it is meant to be a superhero film for half the show
The first film spun off from the popular Pokemon phenomenon and animated series, this is largely incomprehensible to anyone who is not familiar with the series
The second of the animated films spun off around the Pokemon phenomenon and an altogether better film than its predecessor due to some imaginative animation
Slight but colourful animated film for the very young based on the popular series of Hallmark cards and Mattel toys about a magical horse
Part of the attempt to reboot the G.I. Joe film series into a shared universe, this is a kinetically driven martial arts film
Michael Bay takes on the 1980s toy phenomenon, turning it into a massive blockbuster filled with copious mass destruction and machines beating the metal crap out of each other
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
The third of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. While the human scenes opt for a ghastly miscalculated sense of humour, the effects houses are at the peak of their game, even if Bay allows them to drag the mass destruction out to a numbing excess
Since Michael Bay retired from the series, The Transformers films have been looking for new directions. This ventures into animation to tell a Transformers origin story
The first of Michael Bay’s Transformers sequels has even better effects and more copious mass destruction to the point it washes over you without any effect
The seventh of the live-action Transformers films, the second made after Michael Bay stepped down from the director’s chair
The fifth of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. This comes with more of an outright comedy focus than any of the other films where Bay seems to be second-guessing his critics and spoofing his own peccadilloes in quote marks, only to produce the silliest entry in the series yet
Animated theatrically released spinoff from the original Transformers tv series. The film mostly serves to highlight the considerable number of characters where to the uninitiated it is frequently difficult to tell one side from the next.
A perfect example of all the things I hate about modern animation. Based around the popular Troll dolls, this is vapidly designed, content-free product based solely around simplistic storylines, manic slapstick sequences, song and dance numbers, and inane contemporary pop culture in-jokes
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget