The Yakuza Movie Is Great Because It Embraces The Absurdity Of The Games
Good video game movies are as hard to find as a decent TV in a skip. There just aren’t that many of them and the few that are ‘good’ are more stupid fun than solid filmmaking, but I’ll take stupid fun over bland failed attempts any day. Just look at the camp ‘90s Mortal Kombats or the more recent Sonic 2, and how they lean into the hamminess of their villains. Those two understand that games aren’t completely serious cinematic spectacles and instead embrace the quirks, something that Yakuza did best of all.
Like a Dragon—the movie, not the latest game—was released in 2007 and tells the story of the first Yakuza, but it pushes aside Nishiki and Kiryu’s brotherly beef for Majima and Kiryu’s test of mettle. We see Majima peeking around corners with his eyepatched-eye, hurling baseballs into people’s foreheads, and shouting Kiryu-san down the streets of Kamurocho just like in the game. It takes everything corny and fun about Yakuza and puts it front and centre. The whole experience makes it clear it's rooted in video games rather than shying away from its origins.
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That’s where a lot of these movies go wrong. They’re ashamed of where they came from and try to be something ‘more’, awkwardly shoving themselves into the world of film to be taken seriously. Just look at the Super Mario Bros. movie and how it ditched the colourful cartoony aesthetic for a gritty New York-focused action about lizard people. Or you have the new Mortal Kombat that tried to make a cheesy series about eccentric characters fist-fighting into something dramatic—video games don’t need to be the same as movies to be taken seriously and that means their adaptations
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