Funny that the Madden Curse is apparently, at this point, broken. Drew Brees is having a good year. Not as good as last year (he threw 19 interceptions so far this season - 2nd most in the league along with Favre), but he is healthy and his team is more than likely playoff-bound. It's certainly a far cry from the effect of the curse in years past. The previous Madden cover had Polamalu (who got hurt twice and missed a majority of the season) and Larry Fitzgerald (who was pretty much a non-factor on a team that has sucked ever since).

Big budget films have been essentially marketing vehicles for consumption for a while now. It used to be toys and cereal and everything else. More of it is going toward gaming. And video games consistently make piles more money than movies -- it's not surprising that in this case, it's driving the concept.

Look at any recent crop of CGI-laden movies and they are aesthetic clones of video games.