As all film fans know, Academy Award winners are held among the highest of regard. To be named the Best Picture at the Oscars is a level of prestige unrivalled in the industry.
While very few of these movies incite the kind of action and excitement that results in the story and characters surpassing the realm of film and emerging across other mediums, there are a few which have gone far beyond the Academy Award win to become a part of pop-culture.
When a film is truly special, it appeals to a huge number of people, who in turn demand content based on the universe created by the movie. Since the turn of the millennium, only a couple of Best Picture winners have been able to captivate its audience in a way which has led to their fans seeking other ways to interact with the movie and immerse themselves in its universe.
The most interactive way that fans can sink into a movie’s world is through gaming, and these games created around two incredible movies certainly allow fans to do exactly that.
2000 Best Picture Winner: Gladiator
Starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, and Djimon Hounsou, Gladiator was an epic historical drama which took the world by storm. The Ridley Scott-directed movie remains a cinematic masterpiece to this day, perfectly putting the underused Roman setting to the big screen with a powerful story of revenge.
It’s still popular to this day, as the games have proven, with the BBC reporting that Scott is moving forward with a sequel. Russell Crowe also landed the award for Best Actor while the film totalled five Academy Awards on the night.
As you would imagine, Gladiator makes for an exciting setting for any form of game, but the most popular and successful games have proven to be the range of Betfair slots.
Created by Playtech, Gladiator was one of the earliest official slot games, but its sequels, Gladiator Jackpot and Gladiator: Road to Rome, have taken the game to the next level. Featuring characters from the film, such as the traitorous Commodus, the iconic helmet, and the Coliseum, the games deliver the feel of thrills and high stakes that the duels within the coliseum achieve in the movie.
2003 Best Picture Winner: The Return of the King
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is perhaps one of the most epic film sagas to hit the big screen and earn Academy Award recognition throughout. In 2003, the film starring Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, and many superb actors finally won Best Picture.
The Lord of the Rings is now entrenched in pop-culture having spawned a huge fan base that merged the original fans of the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien and the movies, with the massive budget from Amazon to create a series based on the universe proving how loved Middle-Earth is to this day.
The franchise was huge in the time that video games were being made for almost every film, which worked particularly well for the fantasy realm of Middle-Earth. While games like The Third Age, The Battle for Middle-Earth, and War in the North were very enjoyable, it was the official movie-based games of the same name which allowed players to play through the movie themselves.
Electronic Arts’ The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was an incredibly immersive and enjoyable game on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, allowing you to play through all of the storylines of the epic conclusion to the trilogy. Middle-Earth in gaming is still going fairly strong, with Monolith Productions delivering an epic experience in the much-loved universe.
Both Gladiator and The Return of the King hold strong as cinematic masterpieces to this day, with their game adaptations giving us another way to experience the thrills of the movies.