Over at Pajiba, Dustin Rowles calls out Gore Verbinski for booting out of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean flick to instead direct the film adaptation of Bioshock.
Leaving aside the question of whether it is a good idea for Verbinski to jump ship, so to speak – and I would say “hell yes,” given that the third Pirates was lacklustre throughout and gasping at the overly-long finish – there then follows extended dialogue about whether or not there is even a point to directing a film version of Bioshock, since the game itself is essentially an interactive movie with a rich plot, gorgeous visual ethos and numerous action sequences beyond the usual “shoot things and walk through corridors” experience of first-person gaming.
I think there is, for the same reason I think there’s a movie (or movies) to be made out of the Half-Life series of games: the protagonist is a blank slate. Your character in Bioshock says literally nothing during the course of the game. Things happen to him and are revealed to him (or her, who knows), but his actions within the game do not serve to illuminate anything about the personality of the protagonist.
That alone offers up a whole new avenue of storytelling opportunity for anyone looking to make a filmic version of the game, and serves to differ a film from the game. And that’s why I think Verbinski’s choice is the right one.
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The same could be said for DOOM though, and look how that turned out. I just don’t have enough faith in Hollywood to believe that they can do the game justice. Even the best video game movies are barely tolerable.
Frankly, I don’t see why we need a PotC 4. The plot was wrapped up well enough in the third movie, and people need to learn how to move to a new plot rather than tirelessly beating the dead horse.
I mean, it feels like the writers simply give up after the first film. Take Matrix or X-men. Totally downhill after the first release.
That’s not to say good sequels can’t be done. But, unless you’re dealing with a movie like LotR or Kill Bill where you know from the start it’s going to be a multi-film arc and plan the entire affair accordingly, it seems like the writers just don’t know how to make it happen.
DOOM was a shit ton of fucking sweet ass awesome. ZOMG, best shooter movie ever. And that last scene at the end? Where he’s running around like he’s in a FPS? Soooo good!
I nearly died laughing.
X-Men 1 > X-Men 2?
That does not compute.
Sorry. I’m thinking mostly of X-Men 3.
I got to talk to Ted Elliot when at USC, who noted that one of the difficulties with the third Pirates movie was that, when he and Terry Rossio were writing them, Disney hadn’t yet told them whether they intended to make one sequel or two. Absent that knowledge, Elliott said, it became extraordinarily difficult to write the final two installments, at least partly because the plot points and beats became more difficult to discern. He picked out one particular scene in a row boat when Sparrow goes, pretty finally, from being a more passive character to becoming an active one. So do know that both writers knew the sequels could have been stronger and tried the best they could. And let’s not blame Elliot and Rossio, eh, Zifnab?
(sidenote: one of my screenplay projects is a Macbeth I just kind of want to hand to Verbinski. Because man, dude could rock that shit)
As for Bioshock: is that the one on the spaceship? I’m not familiar with games for the most part (not necessarily by choice, mind, as I would play more given the option), but… okay, videogames have always struck me as a potentially very difficult medium to write, if only because one must, ultimately, at least in ideal circumstances, give up control of the protagonist, as a character, which necessitates letting go of some of the plot. I think this is why so many games sometimes rely on simple lock-door puzzles (and yes, I’m generalizing here, but like I said, not a whole lot of experience with games). Like, so far as Doom went, pretty much every level was like, “Forwardforwardforwardshootshootshoot, oh, locked door. Must require key I shall now find. Oh, shit, new monster! Shootshootshootkillkillkill KEY! and repeat.”
Because, of course, in story terms, locked doors are like Tolkien’s ring: there’s only a couple of things to do with a locked door. My dad always said locks are for honest people, so pretty much first inclination (after kicking the door, just in case), is to find the key. Every locked door must have one, after all. Kind of a no-brainer.
But in a story sense, one of the ways videogames are unique is not just that they’re interactive but that they make the audience the protagonist. The whole point of the videogame is that the audience gets to play the main character, who must save the world from Sudden Doom (tm, r, etc.). If a story were a vehicle, videogames strike me at least in a writing sense as the equivalent of giving someone else control of the steering while keeping your own foot on the gas: you know it’s got to go forward, but can you really trust the person next to you not to drive the damned thing off a cliff or not hit the old lady in the crosswalk (One thing GTA has proven is that people like to aim for the old ladies).
Of course, then again, writing a screenplay is, in many ways, just about equivalent to standing outside with a squeegee, hoping to earn a buck by washing the windshield and knowing full well that if the director drives the damned car straight over the cliff you already warned him about, someone is going to blame it on the fact that he couldn’t see because the windshield was too dirty.
So it goes.
Bioshock is a gorgeous, undersea-art-deco-city environment with weird genetic power-ups (BEEEES!) and creepy children and killer robotmen and… okay, it’s basically a first-person shooter version of Atlas Shrugged or something.
A movie version, keeping the art design, could be neat. I don’t know if a protagonist with personality would actually add to or take away from the plot/themes, however.
Bioshock was a very pretty game. It had a lot of background detail, some mystery, and even a kind of twist in the middle.
For all that, it was also linear as hell. All of the so-called “choice” just meant you could get an “all good” ending or an “all bad/all bad but with a slightly sympathetic voiceover” ending. It even ended with the usual run-and-gun fight with a final boss.
Was it good? Sure. Interesting? Yeah. Groundbreaking? Not so much.
Personally, I can certainly imagine why anyone would choose a video game movie over something as trite and mindless as yet another POTC movie.
At least its not going to Uwe Boll.
Another reason why Gore Verbinski jumped ship: rumor has it that Disney is trying to fill the PotC4 cast with as many of its “next gen” stars like Zach Efron and a Jonas brother or three…
Well, clearly some asked him “Would you kindly make a Bioshock movie?” How was he supposed to respond to that?
*someone
I really need to play Bioshock sometime.
But yeah, this is good news I think. The reason there hasn’t been a really good video game movie yet is that, thusfar, the most talented person to ever make one is Paul W.S. Anderson. Verbinski isn’t exactly a scintillating auteur but he’s still a step up.
With this and the film version of Atlas Shrugged, could 2010 be the year Randianism is finally achieved!?
No.
Really, Bioshock is a takedown of Objectivism more than anything. It’s hard to get into how that works without massively spoiling the game, though, and this is a game which is better for not being spoiled. But the fact that the inhabitants of Rapture, the game’s crypto-Objectivist “utopia”, are not just evil but literally monstrous… well, that’s kind of a hint as to where the producers’ sympathies lie.
It is quite awesome, although when I played it on the PC I ran into a lot of problems I needed to work around in order to get the game to run–and I ran into some of those when I was part of the way through. Nothing sucks more than getting part of the way through an awesome game and then having to stop and troubleshoot. >_(or her, who knows)
I think it’s pretty clear that the protagonist is male, based on how the hands look and also the sounds you make when you’re hurt. I think the player is referred to as male by other characters as well, and finally your character says something in the opening scene on the plane.
karellan: As far as I’m concerned Doom could have worked if it had been: Marines land on Mars. HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WE GOT DEMONS AND SHIT KILLING EVERYBODY! AAAAAAAHHHHH! Get your ass AWAY from Mars.
Instead we got a shitty zombie movie in space. Yawn.
Zifnab: I blame the shittiness of X-Men 3 on the writers. They must have known this was going to be “the last” and decided to cram way to much plot in a two hour movie. Oh, and killing off characters so we can have more Wolverine and Storm.
I was as unimpressed with PotC1 as I was with the other films. I’m just glad I didn’t pay a cent to see them. Whereas I’d drop $6 (I only go to matinee shows) to see Bioshock, if for nothing else but the visuals.
No, no, no. X-Men Three was the best of ’em. Kill off the dead weight and give us some action instead of the verbal masturbating Bryan Singer loves. Gee, Mutants = Gay people? No one’s EVER thought of that before!
Anyway, the question is not whether Bioshock should be made into a movie. I have not played it, can’t tell you my opinion of it. The question is, is Verbinski the right guy to do it?
“As far as I’m concerned Doom could have worked if it had been: Marines land on Mars. HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WE GOT DEMONS AND SHIT KILLING EVERYBODY! AAAAAAAHHHHH! Get your ass AWAY from Mars.”
Yeah, Doom only works if you just roll with the ridiculous concept, Dr. McNinja-style. Do it right and it’s the lovingly shlocky version of Hellboy in Space. For a finale they could even send Dwayne TheRockson back in time and have him fight, I dunno, demon dinosaurs. Yeah, there you go, cinema gold.
X3’s problems came about because it was rushed. They were going to release that in May 2006 come Hell or high water, and after years of inactivity there wasn’t time to actually put together a fully coherent script.
I would really like to hear someone from the DOOM movie explain why they felt the need to change the demon thing. It was probably some arbitrary whim of a studio head, because they like to micromanage plot details. Which is a shame, because the original game actually has a three act structure.
If the protagonist of Bioshock is a woman, she really needs to work on that manly grunting thing. Definitely NOT the Phantom Blonde solving crimes with a pipe wrench upside the head. (Is it wrong that I always just wanted to club the shit out of things with the wrnch instead of using the fancy pants weapons?)
Evan: A 2-3 year wait is pretty standard between theatrical releases. But yes, the film was still rushed.
They just couldn’t finalize a decent script and when Singer left to direct SuperStalker Returns, that was probably the final nail in the coffin. Plus, I can only guess the amount of studio pressure on Ratner to attempt a mimicry of Singer’s style. But with a script that badly thought out, even Francis Ford Coppola couldn’t have pulled that one out of the fire.
X-3’s problems came about because it was directed by Brett Ratner.