Movies Based on Toys and Games, Ranked Worst to Best
Greta Gerwig's new Barbie film may be getting all of the attention this month, but it's far from the first film to attempt to bring a children's toy line to the big screen. While some of those adaptations have been dismissed as nothing more than feature-length toy commercials, others have been successful in spite of their origins. In the gallery on this page, we rank over three dozen such films from worst to best according to their Metascores, which represent the consensus views of leading professional film critics.
All of the films are based on pre-existing toys—including tabletop games and trading cards—though we have omitted any films for franchises that were already well established as television shows (or comics) prior to becoming toys. In addition, we have also excluded any films with fewer than four reviews from critics (our minimum required for calculating a Metascore)—a group that mainly includes direct-to-video features (including, by the way, most of the previous Barbie movies).
While the first live-action film based on tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons is one of the worst films in history to be based on a toy or game, 2023's Honor Among Thieves—the only other D&D live-action film to get a theatrical release—is among the best. Written and directed by longtime collaborators Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (whose credits include, appropriately enough, Game Night), Honor Among Thieves wisely ignores the prior D&D films to tell a new fantasy adventure story in the Forgotten Realms campaign. Excellent effects and action sequences, a good cast (led by Chris Pine, Chris Pine Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, and Bridgerton's Regé-Jean Page) and a genuinely funny script—the film is a comedy, among other things—are among the reasons the film earned praise from reviewers at its SXSW premiere and beyond. But Thieves was likely a money-loser at the box office, which means that it could easily be another two decades before D&D returns to the big screen.
“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves conjures its own type of movie magic that proudly stands apart from other fantasy films. The heartfelt story, enchanting characters, dazzling visual effects, and fun-filled nature will allow the film to be a treasured classic. An adaptation of this caliber could be considered a roll of the dice to some, but Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has already proved itself to be an ironclad winner.” —Marisa Mirabal, IndieWire
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