For the past few years, big screen video game adaptations have been a mixed bag. It’s been rare for the films to be quite as bad as Borderlands (2024), which has served as a reminder of just how difficult it is to translate a game into another medium, coming off the back of 2022 adaptations like Uncharted, which never seemed to capture the tonal consistency and intensity of its source material, and Five Nights at Freddy’s which, while leaden with Easter eggs and references to the games, fell flat as an actual horror film. In contrast to this, hype continues to build for the upcoming second season of The Last of Us, and Prime Video is hoping to continue the success of Fallout with the newly announced anthology series Secret Level.
From the team behind the Netflix anthology Love, Death, & Robots, the upcoming Secret Level aims to tell short stories set in the worlds of various acclaimed video games – and game-adjacent properties – with the trailer showcasing Space Marines from the world of Warhammer 40,000; God of War’s Kratos; Mega Man, and more. On paper, this has the potential to be great. Drawing on games that are acclaimed for their storytelling – like God of War and The Outer Wilds – could be the perfect way to remind people not only how good these games are, but to show that they can work well in other forms. That is, if they’re able to sidestep what could potentially be the biggest problem with the nascent series.
