13 réponses à ce sujet

[Addictress]

Are they still alive? They're the only directors who could pull off a Dragon Age movie. A Dragon Age movie would best be expressed like The Fall or Titus. The combat would have to be ballet or at least House of the Flying Daggers esque.

Think about it.

[Addictress]

No wonder so few have faith in a good Bioware movie.

Because so few have been exposed to quality films.

[Patricia08]

For me the by far best movie director is Steven Spielberg ( and he is still alive ) there is no one that comes even close to him. So if someone could pull of a Dragon Age movie it would be him.

[Jedi Comedian]

I'd prefer David Fincher, Anders can become the Tyler Durden of Dragon Age.

[Beerfish]

Russ Meyer for director!

[Knight of Dane]

I don't want a Dragon Age movie at all. Game movies always either suck or leave you wanting to "play" the events you just watched, neither of which are good experiences. I can imagine this goes doubly for role playing games.

 

And I've never cared about directors, they have all made both great and terrible movies.

[thats1evildude]

Russ Meyer for director!

 

He's dead. Passed away 12 years ago.

[Treacherous J Slither]

I'd like a cgi movie like those Old Republic trailers. Great stuff there.

[PapaCharlie9]

The combat would have to be ballet or at least House of the Flying Daggers esque.

Fight scenes should always be choreographed like old-school musicals (Singing in the Rain, for example) or the best of HK-based kung fu movies. Wide-shot, steady camera or minimal motion, frame the entire exchange and use the setting to suggest the flow/payoff shot. Jackie Chan knows how to direct fight scenes -- by the way, an excellent video essay on directing Action Comedy is here. Quentin Tarantino is another. Kurt Wimmer is another.
 

No wonder so few have faith in a good Bioware movie.

Because so few have been exposed to quality films.

Do you really want DA to be an art film? The art film critics will turn up their noses at the content, no matter how well it's made. The commercial audience will hate it for being even slightly challenging. Sounds like a recipe for a box office disaster.

Now I'm not saying it needs to be a Michael Bay film. It can be commercial and well made at the same time. Which is why I think someone like Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven, rather than Prometheus) could do a good job. Edward Zwick can do both commercial and art film (The Last Samurai and Legends of the Fall, respectively), so he'd also be a good choice.

For me, Kingdom of Heaven is the model to shoot for. There's action and several beautiful settings, but characters are always at the center of the story.

[Addictress]

Fight scenes should always be choreographed like old-school musicals (Singing in the Rain, for example) or the best of HK-based kung fu movies. Wide-shot, steady camera or minimal motion, frame the entire exchange and use the setting to suggest the flow/payoff shot. Jackie Chan knows how to direct fight scenes -- by the way, an excellent video essay on directing Action Comedy is here. Quentin Tarantino is another. Kurt Wimmer is another.
 

Do you really want DA to be an art film? The art film critics will turn up their noses at the content, no matter how well it's made. The commercial audience will hate it for being even slightly challenging. Sounds like a recipe for a box office disaster.

Now I'm not saying it needs to be a Michael Bay film. It can be commercial and well made at the same time. Which is why I think someone like Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven, rather than Prometheus) could do a good job. Edward Zwick can do both commercial and art film (The Last Samurai and Legends of the Fall, respectively), so he'd also be a good choice.

For me, Kingdom of Heaven is the model to shoot for. There's action and several beautiful settings, but characters are always at the center of the story.

Have you seen Titus and The Fall? Watch those first then get back to me. I guess my vision of Dragon Age is different than most people. The combat shouldn't be realistic, or even Gladiator. It should be literally ballet, at most House of Flying Daggers. House of Flying Daggers' combat wasn't even combat - it wasn't like anything in Quentin Tarantino's films as far as I saw.

 

Ridley Scott... Gladiator probably one of my three favorite films of all time, but he would still make it a normal action movie. 

The politics and lore of Dragon Age could be Shakespeareanized - this is my point. After all they are roughly based on Norse mythology. We have an ancient trickster god, who betrays. We have Anders, who betrays. Lots of betrayal. What art critics look down on that? Depends on how it's all written, of course.

[Addictress]

How can I describe the kind of combat I mean?

 

It's the type that has wide shots as you said. Never any shaky cam. It doesn't follow the movement of the combatants, but rather looks at combat as a stage on which the combatants enter in patterned arrangements. Most importantly, the coordination and staging is timed methodically. A kind of processional, procedural direction of multiple combatants' movements en masse, with symmetry or careful asymmetry much like ballet dancers in a theatrical performance. Focus is on the colors, the settings, and the costumes. There is little focus on the blood, the sound effects of blunt-force impacts or sword slashes. More attention is paid to sound effects of the environment.

Why do I think this is good? Well, this game series has always been about directing 4 characters. Automatically we are looking at something more zoomed out, rather than intimate first-person combat. Conceptually this game series has been about managing tactics from afar, which is more aligned with a concept of staging in a wide sense, not close-up. In addition, this game has strong recurring visual themes. The colors, the exaggerated armor, the atmospheres of the dungeons should be indulged in.

[Addictress]

Every Bioware game could basically be Lawrence of Arabia. I mean what the hell does Lawrence even do? He travels around in a mission, makes quirky friendships with new people who follow him around and then assist him or turn on him in the course of that mission, he kind of becomes a little bit of a revered chosen one, he falls in with some foreign nation and gets into politics and.... it's all what we ever do in any Bioware game. I see a lot of dignified cinematic potential in BIoware games, which apparently no one else sees.

[PapaCharlie9]

Have you seen Titus and The Fall? Watch those first then get back to me.

No, I hadn't, but I looked them up when I read your post. The Fall looks fantastic, in more ways than one.
 

Ridley Scott... Gladiator probably one of my three favorite films of all time, but he would still make it a normal action movie.

Which Gladiator do you mean? Russell Crowe or Cuba Gooding Jr?

I take it you haven't seen Kingdom of Heaven. It's anything but a normal action movie. You mentioned Lawrence of Arabia, I think there was some influence from that movie on Kingdom of Heaven.

I understand the vision you have for combat. I'd like to see that too -- the more like choreography a fight scene is, the better I like it, and some of the best "action" actors are ones with formal dance training, Kate Beckinsale comes to mind -- I just don't want to see it in a DA movie. Not in the first DA movie anyway. Too risky.

[paramitch]

Are they still alive? They're the only directors who could pull off a Dragon Age movie. A Dragon Age movie would best be expressed like The Fall or Titus. The combat would have to be ballet or at least House of the Flying Daggers esque.

 

I think Tarsem Singh is really uneven, but he does tend to paint beautiful pictures. I did absolutely adore "The Fall," and liked "The Cell" (but honestly my love for that is mainly for Eiko Ishioka's amazing costumes and for Tom Foder's production design). I think Julie Taymor is AMAZING in every single way, ever, but I think she would get very bogged down in any kind of DAI adaptation, although it would probably be really amazing, vivid and theatrical (I'm a huge fan of her work on "Titus," "Frida" and on the stage adaptation of "The Lion King." I wasn't such a fan of "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark" however).

 

I do think Ang Lee ("House of Flying Daggers" and "Life of Pi") is certainly technically able to make any movie in the world -- he's already proven he can bring total fantasy to life. So he might do a great job, as would Peter Jackson -- simply through his effects experience and LOTR/Hobbit films, I would have faith in his abilities to paint the world of Thedas onscreen. Even if he'd probably get super-stuck on The Iron Bull and give us lots of "hilarious" scenes of drunk Chargers spitting or peeing or spilling stuff (that just seems to be PJ's sense of humor, as seen by the dwarves in LOTR etc).

 

But honestly? I really don't mind if nobody ever makes a Dragon Age movie. For one thing, I know it's an illusion, but when I play now, it feels like my world, my (female) Inquisitor, my Warden, my companions. But if they make a movie, I guarantee you the main character is gonna be a textbook brawny male human Inquisitor. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not how I see the world, the game, or the story.) And I know that even if I like the movie, the movie characters won't quite feel right to me -- the voices are so important to me, and I can't imagine Bull, Solas, Cass, Sera, Cullen, Varric, Vivienne, or any of the others of our companions without those wonderful voices. 

 

 

I don't want a Dragon Age movie at all. Game movies always either suck or leave you wanting to "play" the events you just watched, neither of which are good experiences. I can imagine this goes doubly for role playing games.

 

I just don't think any casting would ever make me happy. It's not like when you see a book adaptation -- most of the time I'm very forgiving on that front and have enjoyed tons of them. But in this case, this would mean taking something the feels personal to me, and then turn all those characters into a bunch of strangers.

 

The politics and lore of Dragon Age could be Shakespeareanized - this is my point. After all they are roughly based on Norse mythology. We have an ancient trickster god, who betrays. We have Anders, who betrays. Lots of betrayal. What art critics look down on that? Depends on how it's all written, of course.

 

The problem for me is that I don't think the studio would ever greenlight an esoteric or "Shakespearean" adaptation of "Dragon Age." They'll be looking for a big fat candybar fantasy movie, mass-market, mass appeal, and created to bring in millions at the box office.

 

Every Bioware game could basically be Lawrence of Arabia. I mean what the hell does Lawrence even do? He travels around in a mission, makes quirky friendships with new people who follow him around and then assist him or turn on him in the course of that mission, he kind of becomes a little bit of a revered chosen one, he falls in with some foreign nation and gets into politics and.... it's all what we ever do in any Bioware game. I see a lot of dignified cinematic potential in BIoware games, which apparently no one else sees.

 

I see what you're saying about "Lawrence" but it's still about more than that -- it's got a real story, and an amazing throughline -- about men vs gods, about east vs west, about hubris and arrogance ultimately claiming a man's soul. (Sorry to get on a soapbox, but I think "Lawrence" is an amazing movie, one of the all-time greats... and Omar Sharif was amazing in it.)

 

I do think a really good adaptation of "Dragon Age" is possible, and could (probably) reach film (although again, I think we'd lose a huge amount of the complexity and nuance from the game -- the relationship possibilities alone could never be encompassed in a single film). I just don't know if I'd be very happy with it even if it actually happened. There's no way that Inquisitor or those relationships would ever feel as personal to me.