When the Gran Turismo movie is released at the end of this month, it’ll be the latest in a series of crossovers between film and the gaming world. The plot is inspired by the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer who was able to convert his talent for Gran Turismo into a career as a race car driver.

Gaming is no longer a niche hobby, it has fully entered the mainstream, and his has led to an even greater crossover between the film and gaming worlds. In this article, we’ll dive into some of the movies that do their best to show the gaming world or to recreate the game experience on screen.

Tron (1982)

When the first Tron movie was released in 1982, it changed how the general public viewed computers and gaming. Renowned critic Roger Ebert described the movie as “sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun” but warned audiences that if they’d never played an arcade game, they probably wouldn’t be able to fully understand it.

Tron was innovative, not only because it was about video games but also because it was set inside a computer. While the graphics look dated to us today, it’s impossible to ignore how mind-blowing it would have been to audiences at the time. Even in today’s more tech-literate society, few people actually understand how their computers work.

In 2010, the original movie was followed up by Tron: Legacy. The success of Tron: Legacy showed that video games still have the same appeal for movie audiences. That appeal continues as it has been revealed that a follow-up film Tron: Ares is now in production

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider series (2001, 2003, 2018)

The Lara Croft: Tomb Raider series of games has spawned one of the most recognizable characters in the gaming world. The first game was released in 1996 and since then, there have been 12 main games, spin-offs, ports and even an arcade version. The games also resulted in three movies. The first two starred Angelina Jolie as the titular character, while the most recent was a reboot that cast Alicia Vikander as a grittier version of the heroine.

The Lara Croft series has done something even more impressive than jump from game to film – it’s also jumped from film back to game. There are now Lara Croft slot machine games inspired by the latest movie.

This is fitting because both slots and the Lara Croft series involve complex machines – though admittedly, in the Tomb Raider series, they’re a bit more creative and devious. At the heart of the invention of roulette was the desire to create a perpetual motion machine and even though this didn’t happen, the ideas for a spinning game resulted in both the creation of roulette and of slot machine reels. We can’t necessarily say The Triangle was as useful!

Free Guy (2021)

The unsung heroes of every video game are the NPCs – they’re the ones who assign quests, sell and buy goods, lay out exposition, and add life and interest to the landscape of a game. Free Guy places the NPC at the heart of the story instead of just in the background.

In the virtual world of Free Guy, we follow Guy, who is an NPC who has become sentient. In the real world of the film, we follow the two programmers who believe that a shady game developer has stolen their code to create the game within which Guy exists. The two worlds collide, with humorous and exciting results.

The movie is a meta look at gamer culture and how what we play influences who we are. With cameos from famous gamers, including Jacksepticeye, Ninja, Pokimane, DanTDM and LazarBeam, the film encourages reflection on gamer culture. While the movie could have been seen as overly preachy, the performance by Ryan Reynolds rescues it and keeps it endearing.

Resident Evil series (2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2021)

It’s impossible to talk about video games and movies without talking about the Resident Evil franchise. Among the most successful and longest-running series to both play and watch, the Resident Evil series is a post-apocalyptic adventure that has been drawing in fans for decades.

One of the major reasons for the initial film being so successful was that it could be enjoyed by both fans of the game and new audiences. By giving Milla Jovovich’s character Alice amnesia for the opening acts of the film, the plot of the video game series could be explained in a natural way that all audiences could engage with. This clever trick catapulted the series to enduring success.