Metal Gear Solid Isn’t an Easy Series to Adapt into a Film
The Metal Gear Solid movie’s director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is determined to make “the first great video game movie,” but the complex series is definitely giving him a challenge. One such challenge is working with the series’ “sprawling” and “dense” universe that consists of multiple timelines and a vast mixture of characters.
“The thing about Metal Gear is it’s intentionally sprawling and it’s intentionally dense,” Vogt-Roberts said in a Collider interview. “It’d be super easy to do one sliver of it or do too much at once. And we’ve spent the last little bit really trying to figure out, to me, the most Kojima-san inspired way to tackle as much of that story through a device that I think allows you to tap in…how to put this without spoiling it?”
“Regardless, we have a device that I think allows us to respect the breadth of the franchise, respect the sprawling nature of the franchise, respect the somewhat convoluted nature of the franchise at times,” he continued. “But to still show you the mirrors. What I mean by that is all those timelines fundamentally exist because they show the repetition of war throughout time. They show the repetition and the cycle of pain throughout time. So it’s almost impossible to tell just one story now. You need the full throughline of what this.”
While no cast has been set, Vogt-Roberts and co-scriptwriter Derek Connelly have been reworking the script since last August and are determined to capture that wild nature of the series.
“Even if I wasn’t involved in this movie I would read that script and say, ‘Holy shit,’” he said. “It represents a different approach to a video game movie,” he said. “It represents a different approach to how a three-act structure is put on screen.”