Action Packed Games and The Movies They Inspired

Here’s a quick look at two of our favorite action packed games and the at-times head scratching movies they spawned.

Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft had a major hit on their hands with Assassin’s Creed. The first title in the franchise, released in 2007, has since spawned several sequels, not to mention a plethora of merchandising, novelizations, comic book adaptations, and a 2016 film starring Michael Fassbender. Unlike other video game adaptations, however, the Assassin’s Creed film featured an original story that felt wholly detached from the game. It may have met with mixed reviews, both from critics and from fans of the games, but it was a box office success, nearly doubling its $125 million production budget.

Doom. Nothing short of a classic in the video game world, the original Doom still enjoys a following to this very day despite a number of sequels and reboots. Some of those sequels attempted to make the game far more serious that its original incarnation, and such was the case with the movie, which made an attempt to be a genuine horror film. Starring such notable names as Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban and Rosamund Pike, the film failed to appease fans of the game, this despite including a first person shooting sequence as a nod to its roots. The film flopped with critics, and didn’t manage to match its $60 million budget at the box office.

Looking for some action and adventure? Visit our online library at www.actionlu.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

The Iron Giant: A Sleepy Classic

Few lists of the best animated movies of all time would be complete without 1999’s Iron Giant. The Warner Bros feature, which marked the directorial debut of Brad Bird, was based on Ted Hughes’s 1968 novel The Iron Man and tells the story of a young boy named Hogarth Hughes. Hogarth, who is growing up in the height of the Cold War, finds and befriends a giant mechanical robot who fell to earth from outer space. The US military, suspecting the robot to be of Russian origin, set out to destroy him, with only Hogarth and a beatnik artist named Kent Mansley standing in their way.

Featuring the voices of Vin Diesel (as the Iron Giant), Eli Marienthal, Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Christopher McDonald and John Mahoney, the film had all the making of an instant classic and no shortage of hype surrounding its release. The box office numbers proved otherwise, however. On a staggering budget of $70-80 million, the film only managed to gross $20 million in the US and $31 million worldwide, making it a huge flop for Warner Bros.

Audiences, however, didn’t turn their attention away from the film outright. Although its initial release attracted few to the cinema, critics praised the film’s innovative mix of computer and traditional animation, not to mention its captivating storyline. Slowly but surely audiences sought out the film and it developed a cult following, eventually leading to a 2015 remastered theatrical re-release.

Looking for some action and adventure? Visit our online library at www.actionlu.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

Fun Facts About Die Hard

While the arguments rage on as whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, the fact of the matter is that it’s one of the most beloved movies of all time regardless of its status as a holiday classic. Here are two fun facts about Die Hard you may not have known.

Die Hard is based on a novel. Yes, that’s right, Bruce Willis’s action packed portrayal of detective John McClane is actually based on the adventures of detective Joe Leland, the principal character in Roderick Throp’s Nothing Lasts Forever. Although an adaptation of Throp’s novel, Die Hard did include some significant changes to the original story, notably the age of the protagonist (Willis played a much younger character) and the ending of the story, which was considerably happier in the movie.

John McClane is barefoot for nearly the entire movie. Early in the film McClane receives the following advice from a fellow airplane passenger: “You want to know the secret to surviving air travel? After you get where you’re going, take off your shoes and socks. Then you walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with your toes. I know, it sounds crazy. Trust me, I’ve been doing it for nine years. Yes, sir! Better than a shower and a hot cup of coffee.” Little did he know that listening to that advice would leave him barefoot throughout a terrorist encounter. Even when McClane has the opportunity to lift some shoes from one of the terrorists they end up being too small. Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.

Looking for more action and adventure? Visit our online library at www.actionlu.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more.