Can "The Last of Us" Break the Curse of Bad Video-Game Adaptations?

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. When the British actor Bob Hoskins agreed to star in "Super Mario Bros.," he had little sense of what he was getting into. The year was 1992, and, although the title on which the film was based had sold tens of millions of copies, a feature-length live-action adaptation of a video game had never been attempted. The movie's eventual tagline, "This ain't no game," reflected a self-conscious distance from its source material: a convoluted parallel-universe plot recast the heroes as Italian American handymen from Brooklyn and the princess they set out to save as an N.Y.U. Hoskins himself hadn't even heard of the Nintendo franchise--but when his kids learned that he would be playing Mario they excitedly showed him the game.