10 Games That Should Get Films
The problem is that the wrong games are getting made into films. We have some better ideas.
Following on from our 10 films that should get games article (see that here) we got to thinking in the opposite way - which of our favourite games are ripe for film adaptations?
Hollywood has from time to time deigned it necessary to commit a video game to celluloid. The results are often depressing or infuriating, often both. Whilst the Tomb Raider film alone is itself enough to justify never considering another video game film ever again, there are plenty of games that would seriously merit a movie. As is usually the case with things like this, the problem is that the wrong games are getting made into films, or the wrong people are handling the property. Handily, I’ve prepared a list of ten games that would be brilliant on screen, and I’ve even given an ideal director for each one. Don’t say I don’t treat you.
1. Metal Gear Solid
Ideal Director: Christopher Nolan
Seminal postmodern sneakfeast Metal Gear Solid followed the attempts of gruff, broody manthing Solid Snake (hello Freud) to stop a group of terrorists from activating a nuclear weapon launched from an enormous robot dinosaur. I’m not even making that up. The story was an overwritten word buffet of conspiracy theory twaddle, but the characters were what drove the narrative, especially the villains, who were varied and interesting. Christopher Nolan, with his slick, polished visual style and assured box office success, would make a good director to turn Metal Gear into a film, especially given his habit of assembling great casts (they may not always be effectively used, but there you go). Nolan has proven his ability to take caricatures (like the Joker) and make them somewhat more interesting, so he would probably do a good job taking Metal Gear Solid’s rogues gallery of talking encyclopedias and making them watchable and fun.
2. God Of War
Ideal Director: Zack Snyder
There’s no more epic a story than one of a man so consumed with vengeance that he murders the gods. Gratuitously satisfying carnage jamboree God of War has an incredibly cinematic story, offering a frenetic and bloody take on the epic themes of Greek mythology. The hack-and-slasher series’ vast scale and raw violence would translate well to the silver screen, and is exactly the sort of thing that Zack Snyder has done well with his gloriously silly sword-and-spandex festival 300.
3. Bioshock
Ideal Director: Gore Verbinski, dammit
Gore Verbinski had previously been attached to bring nautical gene-bending Ayn Rand-em-up Bioshock to the big screen, but the project has since been stalled over budget concerns, and Verbinski’s subsequent departure as director means this will probably never get made. Which is a crying shame if you ask me, because Verbinski displayed in The Ring a masterful control over horror, and the Pirates franchise at least proved he could handle big budgets. Both things would be necessary to make a film where the main character would have to be the twisted nautical city Rapture itself, a place dripping with narrative texture in the game that has the potential to exist so vividly as a film.
4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Ideal Director: Steven Spielberg
With all the radioactive fridges, motion-capture japes and epic equine sob odysseys coming from ubiquitous blockbuster auteur Spielberg of late, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the man is one of the great directors of science fiction. What makes Spielberg the right choice to adapt the cerebral body-modification shooter Deus Ex: Human Revolution to film is his ability to thoughtfully combine science-fiction about big ideas with meticulously-crafted, box office-pleasing thrills. A film like Minority Report, for example, displays Spielberg’s ability to make clever, taut science-fiction with enough pace and set-pieces to drive the story forward. That’s exactly the kind of treatment that the brainy, expansive Human Revolution would need.
5. Heavy Rain
Ideal Director: David Fincher
You could argue that David Fincher already made one rain-drenched serial killer broodfest, and it was called Seven. But Fincher’s eye for tight, claustrophobic compositions and his command over dark tone would make him perfect to bring the ambitious interactive narrative thingy Heavy Rain to the big screen. Following four characters in search of the Origami Killer, Heavy Rain mimics the multi-character serial killer hunt of Fincher’s elegant Zodiac. All the meticulous investigations of rooms that really crippled Heavy Rain’s pace would be given a tightening up from Fincher (a man who managed to make coding cinematic and engaging), and it will be scenes from the game like the visceral finger-severing episode that would make great set-pieces in Fincher’s hands.
6. Hitman
Ideal Director: Coen Brothers
Watching the film adaptation of Hitman was an excruciating experience, especially because I’m a big fan of the way the franchise mixes slick, merciless badassery with a pitch-black sense of humour. So I felt aggrieved that they had handed the exploits of the bald costume-swapping assassin 47 to the wrong guys. The sensibility of the Coen Brothers – filled as it is with a mix of pitiless violence and bleakly comic lols – resonates with the source material, and they would bring an appropriately wry, controlled tone to the blood-soaked travails of 47.
7. StarCraft
Ideal Director: Ridley Scott
Given that at least one alien race in the staggeringly-popular extraterrestrial strategy hoedown StarCraft was stolen pretty much wholesale from one of Ridley Scott’s films, I don’t think there’d be anyone more appropriate to make the film. Especially considering Scott is a visionary director of sci-fi, and the epic scale of the interplanetary alien three-way in StarCraft fits his proclivities as a filmmaker. I’d very much like to see Scott tackle the vast space battles of StarCraft the way he approaches the massive skirmishes in his historical epics.
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Ideal Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow’s films often focus on men obsessed with the rush and thrill of violence, so there’d be no better filmmaker to tackle the homoerotic international death match of Modern Warfare. Bigelow’s bomb-disposal set-piece marathon The Hurt Locker was a tense, taut action film, directed like a boss with consummate skill. The Call of Duty franchise would offer Bigelow no shortage of electrifying set pieces or gritty military firefights, and her focus would be as much on the men themselves who fight these wars as on the explosions and bullets.
9. Half-Life 2
Ideal Director: Neill Blomkamp
Gordan Freeman’s European alien shooting tour ’06, otherwise known as Half-Life 2, is still rightly considered one of the most influential shooters of all time, largely due to its pioneering and often-imitated melding of storytelling and gameplay. The bleak dystopian setting of the game, where humanity have been occupied by an enigmatic alien race, would make a great premise for a film. Neill Blomkamp, fresh from the success of his stunningly confident seafood documentary District 9, would be able to make this world rich and believable with a cunning mix of special effects and in-camera work. The action set-pieces – some of Half Life 2’s most memorable sequences – would also have the necessary bite in Blomkamp’s hands.
10. Chess
Ideal Director: Michael Bay
Finally, the smash-hit tabletop phenomenon comes to cinemas! The inimitable appreciator of the female form, Michael Bay, brings his own brand of explody mayhem to the game loved my millions the world over. Shia “The Beef” LaBeouf stars as Rex, a young man thrust in the middle of an intergalactic battle between warring wars of giant alien robots, who cunningly disguise themselves as twenty-foot tall chess pieces. The Beef must help the good White Pieces defeat the evil Black Pieces, with the fate of the world in the balance. There will be MichaelBaySplosions. Anyone who has seen the monstrosity that is the Battleship trailer will know that this film is scarily possible.
Subscribe to the SG News Feed
