Not long ago I did a piece on how Hollywood trashes video game adaptations… actually scrap that, it usually screws them right the hell up. As a follow up, I’ve decided to think up a few games that would look good on the big screen all while I cringe in fear of what the final product may look like.
*Authors note: I don’t play many (or any, really) family games. I’m sure there are plenty of games that would be great kids movies (like the upcoming Sly Cooper, for example), but that is just not knowledge I posses anymore.
World of Warcraft/Assassin’s Creed
I don’t particularly think these two deserve big screen versions over anything else per se, but I included them because they are already happening. World of Warcraft starts shooting in the spring and Creed is just waiting on financing before it gets rolling.
World of Warcraft was a simple choice. It’s incredibly popular and is almost guaranteed to be a huge hit. With the criminally underrated Duncan Jones (Moon) helming this project, I’ve actually been swayed from jaded cynicism to slightly interested. I guess we’ll see if this turns out to be a crowd pleaser or fanboy fodder.
Assassin’s Creed is another really popular franchise (I never made it past the first one due to extreme boredom) that seems good on paper, but could potentially be a major dud. The only thing that has piqued my interest in this movie at all is Michael Fassbender praising the script and being attached to star. I reserve my right to judgement until it’s further along the development line.
Grandia II/ Final Fantasy X
Starting off with a darkhorse, or as I like to call it the no chance in hell of being made choice! The reason why I grouped these together is that their story lines are similar enough that they likely both couldn’t be made. Basically, hero accompanies priestess, they fall in love, there’s an evil church, both have beast men, a giant creature bent on destroying the world, yadda yadda yadda.
The thing that separates these two is the scale. Grandia II is awesome. I’d love to see the fight with Valmar and flying the Granasaber and the Granacliffs as well as all the awesome fight scenes that come along with having a kid wield a GIANT sword as he fights monsters. But Grandia would be a one off. Sure, the story is pretty convoluted (it is a JRPG after all) but it’s contained enough to be told in one movie (maybe three if Peter Jackson directs it).
FFX though, is big enough that you could make a series out of it. The stuff with Sin being your through line, of course, but there’s also all the stuff with Maester Seymour, the Church, the Aeon’s and Titus being an inter-dimensional being/dream (it is a JRPG after all). Also, FFX doesn’t have as much of a ‘love conquers all’ ending… well, kinda, but not as much.
Either way, these are two projects I could get behind!
Possible Casting: For Ryudo, I like Robert Sheehan (Mistfits) or Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy). For Titus, I like Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class) or Dane Dehaan (Chronicle). No, none of them are Japanese, but neither are the characters, are they? I’m just going to pick the leads for these ones since this isn’t an entire article about how I’d cast Final Fantasy X.
God of War
This may just be me, but this would be a double bonus to watch. First, I am a fiend for mythological stuff. Hell, I sat through the Percy Jackson movies because of all the Greek myth stuff (don’t judge me… although I don’t recommend doing it). Second, God of War is one of my favourite trilogies of all time. The sex, the hyper violence, the bad ass weaponry, puzzle solving and playing as the epitomical anti-hero, Kratos, just makes my day. I’ve played the whole thing through multiple times (and plan on starting it again very soon).
But, of course, there’s always an issue when it comes to big screen transition. Remember ‘Clash of the Titans’? Someone has to since it made enough money they needed a barge to haul it all away. The biggest problem with a similarly themed movie already being out there (twice, God help us all), is that the Titans movies are TERRIBLE! Your regular movie going audience is immediately going to associate a GoW movie with Titans and be put off of it immediately. There is a massive following for GoW, but as many a movie can attest to, fanboy dedication doesn’t translate into box office success (Snakes on a Plane, I’m looking at you).
None the less, this series would make a bad ass movie franchise. They need to be a hard R to keep the integrity of the games intact (can’t very well have a threesome and then impale dozens of poor soldiers and be PG-13) and pack in as much rampant violence as possible while showing the grand scale that GoW offers gloriously on a giant ass screen. Who wouldn’t want to see the Kratos versus Ares fight in IMAX?
Possible Casting: Vin Diesel has both the physique and the growly voice for Kratos, but I think the Riddick movies have shown that he can’t be trusted to be the lead in anything. I’m going to have to go with a relative unknown on this one (as long as he isn’t from the WWE).
Gears of War
Come on, you knew this was going to be on here. Grizzled and impossibly muscled space marines fighting against all odds to defeat alien invaders in what would be some of the goriest set pieces we’ve ever seen. Think about that opening half hour of Saving Private Ryan, but make it aliens and other planets instead of Nazis and Normandy. This could be what Starship Troopers would have been if it wasn’t a genius commentary on propaganda, patriotism and our fascination with being the heroes of war.
Hollywood loves alien movies and they also love underdog humans fighting for survival stories (see any alien invasion movie ever made). Gears of War seems like a perfect fit! The thing that may dissuade studios from hopping on board is the hard R and massive budget needed (look what happened to the Mountains of Madness or Dark Tower).
But for anyone who has ever played these wonderful pieces of multiplayer violence, you know it would work beautifully on the big screen! This series wouldn’t even be a hard sell to the general public due to how willing they seem to be about shelling out money anytime aliens meet humanity in the safe confines of a movie theatre. Let’s get moving here, Microsoft!
Possible Casting: This one is easy. Just go pilfer the cast of the Fast and Furious series and pick up whatever else you need from the Expendables cast and this one is good to go!
Bioshock
Right from the get go, Bioshock is engaging as you survive a crash landing in your plane and travel to the weird city of Rapture in a beautiful underwater world… and then things really get weird.
With the cool setting, the Little Sisters, the Big Daddies, the Splicers and your ADAM powers, this would be a big budget feast for the eyes. And with the awesome plot line (I will not go into it for those who haven’t played the game), it would be an awesome movie with a twist worthy of an early 2000’s M. Night Shyamalan. The sets and make up alone would be incredible! Add in the tag line of ‘Would You Kindly…’, and the ad campaign is pretty much already drawn up for. Think of this one more of an action/horror more than an action packed thrill ride. The creepiness of the game is half the appeal so let’s learn from the mistakes of the Resident Evil series and keep that in the forefront.
Possible Casting: I don’t think it really matters who’s Jack, but some gravitas would be nice when casting Ryan, especially if it’s shown through flashbacks. Jeff Bridges would be a good cast for Ryan while Fontaine would be much harder to cast. I like Michael Shannon, but I’d like Shannon for pretty much anything.
Half Life
Right about here is where Halo normally shows up on these lists, but I figured that since Halo stole so much from Half Life, this deserved to be on the list way more.
Another alien invasion type movie, our favorite ass kicking scientist, Gordon Freeman, has to fight aliens and other humans in both an underground facility and an alien world before being thrown into a dystopian Earth in the future where humanity is enslaved by an overlord alien race. This has all the makings of a great movie series as it goes from small scale (the Black Mesa project) to large scale (the world of Xen) to massive scale (destroyed and enslaved Earth) to… well, we don’t know where it goes after that because Valve screwed us over and left us without an ending.
But isn’t that reason enough for a film franchise right there? Getting a conclusion to Freeman’s story? I want to know who the hell the G-Man was, or what happens to the Combine or what happens to humanity for that matter! Give Gordon some smart, science stuff to do in between smashing aliens with crowbars or eviscerating giant monsters with massive alien guns and you got yourself an action packed movie with some substance for an actor to sink his teeth into.
Possible Casting: Bryan Cranston. Of course, he’s getting on in years, so unless this starts filming in the next year, we may have to get someone a bit younger.
Mass Effect
Outside of Star Trek and Star Wars, the only sci-fi epic out there seems to be Avatar and that makes me sad. I mean, Avatar looks really good, but it was better when it was called Pocahontas (outdated joke, but I couldn’t resist). So, let’s give my inner nerd something to get excited about and get Mass Effect on the big screen already!
Bioware literally wrote out the history for several alien races as well as dozens and dozens of planets. And I don’t mean ‘in the past 50 years since man met them’ histories. I’m talking like ‘the Turians were off fighting such and such a war while Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel’ histories. They went really in depth with these games, so don’t try to tell me there isn’t enough material for a Marvel Studios level of integration (I’m still waiting for Bioware to realize that and drop another damn game already!).
Even if you just stuck to the main story line, that’s already plenty of material for a trilogy of movies! It would basically take the action from the first three Star Wars, the politics of the second three and cut out Jar Jar and all the incest but with guns and giant robot aliens bent on universal destruction. Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget about all the sexy potential for romance (or bromance, depending on how you played the game).
Hell, the more I’m talking about this, the more excited I’m getting! Where is more Mass Effect already!?
Possible Casting: Emily Blunt. That’s right, I went with a woman. To be honest, it was a lot more fun when you were the female character since it wasn’t just the brawny beefcake swinging a gun around and saving the universe (because there’s no way you would  see if you peruse the other couple of titles on this list, right?). Blunt is a great actress and she’s about to show off her action chops in The Edge of Tomorrow, so she seems like a perfect cast.
Uncharted
This one seems so much more obvious (cause it wasn’t the most anticipated adaptation in everyone’s books until now, I’m sure) now that a director has been attached in the form of Seth Gordon. What do I think of him for the job? Not much, to be honest. I like Seth Gordon, but I’ve never seen him handle set pieces like what an Uncharted movie will require. Of course, anything will be better than what David O. Russell had pitched.
An Uncharted movie needs to be similar in tone to the games. Make it part sarcastic wit, part humour, part gunplay and a lot of temple pilfering and tomb puzzle solving. So, giving a movie that may or may not feature zombie like creatures who have been driven mad by an ancient ‘virus’ who need to be put down in a hail of bullets to the guy who directed Horrible Bosses seems sketchy to me. If everyone can get on the same page on this one though, and it comes off right, this is going to be amazing.
Quite frankly, when this one hits, Disney is going to kick themselves for all the money they just shelled out for the Indiana Jones rights.
Possible Casting: Nathan Fillion. If you have to ask for reasons, you should go home, feel ashamed of yourself, watch Firefly and realize your mistake.
