Game Licensing ... the Cart or the Horse?

Here is Anthony Lane reviewing the film Van Helsing in this week's New Yorker (the link will go bad within a week):

Indeed, you wonder what youthful viewers will get from this movie. Any reference to Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi will sail over their heads, and they will never know the loaded, entrancing silence in which those superior monsters advanced upon their prey. I suspect that they will regard “Van Helsing” as a low-budget trailer for the real business of the moment, which is “Van Helsing” the Xbox game, available now for $49.99. I have not yet had the pleasure of its company, but the promises made by the manufacturer are stirring to behold: “Unlock hidden content when you play through three different difficulty modes.” This has to be an improvement on the movie, which has virtually no content at all, hidden or otherwise, and whose only mode of difficulty arises when Hugh Jackman has to shout to make himself heard above the screech of the flight attendants.

Lane, like most critics, doesn't like the film (there are exceptions to this, like our own true Roz Kaveny). But that's rather beside the point he's making in this paragraph: that in his perception the film is the tie-in to the Xbox game, not the other way around.

Anyone who has any understanding of the economics of filmmaking, especially of SFX-laden summer blockbusters, knows this is hogwash. But isn't it interesting that Lane would think so, or at least would make a show of seeming to think so?