spacehamsterZH wrote...
Superman Returns especially is just downright horrible.
Agreed yet when you think of blemishes even Pixar has a blemish now with Car's
2. Every studio has its blemishes. You can't let that be a reason
to not make movie just like you can't believe that EA or any other Video Game
Maker will not make a bad game every now and then. If anything I want
to wait and see what type of team they put together (director, cinematographer,
SE team, etc), before I pass Judgment. So
many important pieces to put together still,
the script hasn’t vene been completely scribed. Revisions can still
be made. There is so much oversight by
Bioware and The production company that I dare say it will be immaculate before
it hits the screen. I don't believe like many here one can say the movie will
be a failure without first giving the creative minds at EA-Bioware/Legendary
Pictures a chance.
And again, those are adaptations of comics, not videogames. Maybe we'll
eventually get to the point where people are willing to make actual good
movies based on videogames, but it won't happen overnight any more than it did
with comicbooks. The first one of those movies that seemed like it had half a
brain was Tim Burton's first Batman, and it took 20 years to get from that to
The Dark Knight. So far, we're still waiting for "the first one that seems
like it has half a brain" with videogame movies.
That's right now we have the Dark Night and others like it and it took 20 years
to get here to today! Now imagine if Christopher Nolan or someone else was at
the helm of Mass Effect. 20 years now becomes next year! The problem is overcoming the groupthink that
is going on regarding the video game to movie transition now that this negative
stigma is now attached to it. The focus needs to be less on that idea and
more on the elements that can make a great story in two formats! The
ingredients are here it is a perfect time to "Cook" (Breaking
Bad Reference)
I happen to think that this is really, really difficult, though. I really
don't think the actual bare-bones story of even the first Mass Effect is all
that great. It's good, solid space opera stuff, but not particularly original.
Some of it is heavily derivative. The strength of the game is its
characters. And the reason the characters are so strong (and this applies to
ME2 as well, maybe even more) is that they're all given room to breathe and
develop in a way only a videogame can pull off because it has as much time as
it wants.
I agree that it will be a difficult task to condense so much experience into a
2-2.5 hour time frame. Movie formats are traditionally not meant for character exposition
and development but a short condensed story. This is a problem with all
movies not just a Mass Effect Movie adaptation. If anything I wish it
could be a large series of movies similar to that of an HBO series (ala Game of
Thrones). This route was not chosen among many reasons is that the
budget with TV series tends to lack in terms of financial backing and a Mass
Effect transition to that Medium would not be satisfactory to fans and newcomers
alike it would lack the scale and size that the game promotes. It would make a great Mini Series!! It
can be done in Movie form though. Parts can be condensed! Most of Mass Effect was the experience of the
subtle moments mixed with the big plot points in the main missions! One subtle point was running on a barren
planet and just realizing how large, empty, and endless that the universe really
was. This is one of my personal experiences with the game format which could
be condensed into a 23.3 second scene involving Shepard as he glares into the
heavens from the side of a barren plant. Shepard falls to his knees
as he realizes the fate of everyone is now in his hands. A plume of dust
rises higher and higher as the gravity seems to take no hold. The camera slowly
zooms out and the Normandy appears. I mean really there is so much that
can be said with so little. A lot of the context will have to be
non-verbal and a great creative team and director can pull this off. There will
be so much to cut out as well such as all the Alliance Side missions,
etc. Although in a game context many of the side missions make sense, yet
in the movie they will have to be incorporated into a more linear fashion and
context for the viewer, If incorporated at all which in all likelihood they
would meet the cutting block. I agree a vast amount will have to be cut out and
the characters will never be as developed as we see them now in the mind’s eye.
The Movie will likely focus on the critical scenes and sub plots of the
game. The idea of the movie should be discovery and intrigue. There
was so much I wanted to know in the first game I could not put my controller
down and then. You learn another small fact of the great threat that come. The
Warning from the ancient Protheans given to Shepard in the form of flashbacks
of bright light from the touch with the beacon. The discovery that
everything you know and love is now in your hands and you can only move
forward, you cannot stop, you cannot let go of what you know only you
know what this is that comes to destroy. That is the feeling that
can be brought into a perfect movie context along with so many other subtleties.
For one thing I am not looking for the "exact same" experience with
the movie. One that hits all the key notes, yes It will never be the
same and I think that is what has a lot of Gamer's up in arms over this
idea. It is not going to be their experience. It is going to be a
whole new experience on a new format. I just want Bioware to do it right
like you and everyone else. But that does not mean I believe it should
not be done for the sake of my own unreasonable expectations but that it can be
something and something great at that!
For example, If you have to cram all of Wrex's personal backstory, the history
of the Krogan race and Wrex's emotional reaction to it into a 2-hour movie and
actually only have that be a minor character arc among a lot of others, it'll
lose so much depth that the movie Wrex ends up being a caricature of the
videogame version. But you can't just leave him out either. So what's going to
happen is that there's going to be a CGI character that looks like Wrex and talks
like Wrex, but all he ever does is headbutt people and spout badass one-liners
because the movie doesn't have time to establish him as a character.
And that's just the character arcs. Even if you leave all that out and just
focus on the main missions, you'd have to scrap about 80% of it to make it fit
a movie. Frankly, it would probably be best if they just did Noveria and forgot
about everything else.
Agreed the Character arc’s will suffer as a result of the
transition but that does not mean that the character have to be drones in the
movie format or shells of their former selves.
The team at Bioware and the studio and writers so many people can work
on this so that they are not “husks”.
The focus will have to be drawn out and only what is essential to the
plot maintained. The movie can run
longer then a traditional movie as well a 3 hour Space Opera may afford this a
better chance of survival then a 2 hour cut and mashup. I cannot comment on this enough as I am not
sure how they will make all the scenes that were important.
Eden Prime is Necessary for the setup of Shepard and
throwing the viewer right into the heat of battle
The Citadel next for an introduction into a larger galaxy.
The Liara Missions and Ferros Mission can be condensed into
one possibly
Virmire is important for the genophage and Wrex story
Ilos has a very important part especially with the scene
between Shepard and The prothean Hologram
Finally the climax on the citadel
That is not a lot considering it could be possibly 3 hour+ movie which
would make sense considering the size and scope they are trying to get. My problem is that if they make the movei to
short as you said the characters will have no time to be developed. I hope this is not true
Modifié par Hwalkerl, 27 juillet 2011 - 05:29 .
Retour en haut
Cramming all the events of ME1 into two hours isn't going to be possible (how they're going to trim it down to a manageable script that doesn't suck and/or make no sense is what I'm really worried about), so most of the choices in the game probably won't be in the movie anyway.
Without main characters i wouldn't feel much need to see it, as i'm already bonded to those guys. I know the characters, so watching the movie with them only improves the experience
