When I first heard that Sony was adapting Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2 into movies, as well as making a Ghost of Tsushima anime (alongside the already-planned Ghost of Tsushima live-action movie from John Wick creator Chad Stahelski), my first instinct was to write about it. That’s kind of my thing – I write about video game news, and while these are movies, this is news in video game land.
But I’m not really sure what I have to say. Helldivers 2 is clearly riffing on Starship Troopers (specifically the movie rather than the novel), and Ghost of Tsushima is so inspired by movies it has a ‘Kurosawa mode’, which is just a black and white filter. Horizon doesn’t hem so closely to any specific cinematic reference, but it is part of Sony’s post-The Last of Us strategy of storytelling which is highly inspired by film as a general rule. But… is that anything?
Gaming Adaptations Are No Longer A Big Deal
I suppose it kind of is. When you make a game that takes a lot of cues from movies and then you turn it into a movie, you somewhat flatten the metatextual references and the story (not the strongest part of any of that trio) is left to stand alone without powerhouse graphics or engaging gameplay to back it up. You end up with an adaptation that is inherently worse than the original. My colleague Tessa Kaur has already broken down why this is a particularly odd strategy for Helldivers 2.
But then, wouldn’t we say that about most adaptations? Have you ever read a book, seen the movie, and then whined about characters or arcs or events that were cut, truncated, or misinterpreted? If the answer is ‘no’, read more books. Yes, these adaptations will cut elements of the games. But as long as they’re made by people with respect for the source material (something we are seeing far more with modern gaming adaptations), there’s no reason to be too apprehensive of this new reality.
As I realised I didn’t care much about these adaptations on a deeper, ‘what does this mean for gaming?’ level, I realised that’s because they don’t really mean anything on a deeper level. This is just the way the wind is blowing. The Game Awards has a Best Adaptation category now, and while there were some ‘making up the numbers’ nominees this year, we’re going to see more of them year on year.
Games Are Part Of Pop Culture
Another one of my colleagues has similarly beaten me to the punch here. Last year, another colleague Andrew King wondered aloud (assuming he has a mechanical keyboard or talks to himself while he types) whether, with superhero movies dying out, video game adaptations might replace them. We’ve seen popcorn trends all throughout cinema’s history. There was a time when sword and sandal movies were the fresh young thing on the block.
I don’t think it’s scary, or even all that interesting, to see Sony making more movies of its games. With the Sonic trilogy clearing a billion, Mario being one of the most successful animated movies of all time, Arcane (plus The Witcher) and Fallout being amongst Netflix’s and Prime’s biggest hits, and the shower of accolades for The Last of Us, gaming adaptations have been dominating pop culture for a while now. That’s not to mention middling hits like Uncharted, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Castlevania.
My question is ‘if games are here to stay, what next?’. On top of the three I mentioned (four including the other Tsushima adaptation), we have Tomb Raider, Mass Effect, God of War, BioShock, Gears of War, Zelda, and Street Fighter in the works, while Minecraft is expecting major success this year. Can you name that many games after that? Scratch that, of course you can. Can you name that many games that both translate well to being condensed into a two hour movie and with a name-brand that studios would be willing to invest in? These aren’t surefire hits, look at Borderlands.
We Need To Widen The Net
If we think of games as books, in that both are now fodder for Hollywood adaptations, there is a major difference we are overlooking. Any book can become a movie. While bestsellers are more likely to be adapted, if a script writer or director or producer thinks a book is killer, they can buy the rights and make a successful film, because most people who go to see book adaptations haven’t read the book. Game movies are still, primarily, relying on existing fans, which means you need the game to already be a hit.
I think A Space for the Unbound would make a great movie. It’s short, it’s character driven, its narrative would survive without gameplay, it has interesting twists and emotional moments… but even amongst people who willingly read gaming websites, a lot of you won’t have heard it. Fewer will have played it, and fewer still will have enjoyed it to the level of wanting to experience the story again minus the fighting cabinet minigames. So no one is going to make that movie.
A lot of books deserve adaptations (if we see being made into a film as the pinnacle of achievement), and a lot of books that don’t deserve it get them anyway because they have a famous writer. But it feels as though there’s wiggle room for books to get there on merit. So far, I don’t see games being given that benefit of the doubt, and the well will run dry sooner rather than later.
The Last of Us may be an exception to this rule, enjoying massive casual success on HBO, but that’s in part because of the HBO branding and the project would never have come to fruition if TLOU was not already incredibly popular.
To return to the superhero replacement idea, game adaptations are still on their Spider-Mans, their Batmans. We need someone to do an Iron Man, to pave the way for a Guardians of the Galaxy to somehow get a trilogy. Games and movies can have a happy future together, but the net needs to widen a little bit. And please, cast someone besides Chris Pratt for a change.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
84/100
