So far, the only things that have come close to good video game adaptations are Adi Shankar’s Castlevania on Netflix, and the unauthorized Uncharted fan film starring Nathan Fillion. Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island) is directing the film and he’s sat down with Collider in a new conversation about how it’s coming along.
On how he plans to capture the feeling of the games, here’s what Roberts had to say:
“The thing about Metal Gear is it’s intentionally sprawling and it’s intentionally dense. It’d be super easy to do one sliver of it or do too much at once. And we’ve spent the last little bit really trying to figure out, to me, the most Kojima-san inspired way to tackle as much of that story through a device that I think allows you to tap in…how to put this without spoiling it?…regardless, we have a device that I think allows us to respect the breadth of the franchise, respect the sprawling nature of the franchise, respect the somewhat convoluted nature of the franchise at times. But to still show you the mirrors. What I mean by that is all those timelines fundamentally exist because they show the repetition of war throughout time. They show the repetition and the cycle of pain throughout time. So it ’s almost impossible to tell just one story now. You need the full throughline of what this game is about.”
Meanwhile, here’s his take on leaning into the game’s weirdness:
“Our understanding of genre evolves. Now we have talking raccoons and talking trees in genre movies, and ten years ago, even three years ago that would’ve seemed like a crazy idea…I think there’s a way to lean into all of the oddities and the quirks and the idiosyncrasies of Metal Gear—and people forget Metal Gear is goofy. It’s filled with like military surrealism, it’s filled with these walking, talking philosophical ideologies of characters, it’s filled with almost horror tones at times—and that’s all in this container of this sort of super serious military game. I think finding the right access point and leaning into all of those things that appeal to the hardcore, I think that’s a way to translate that stuff and those end up being the things that a general audience falls in love with. Instead of being afraid of them, instead of running away from all those oddities and those quirks, those are Metal Gear.”
He also teased that the film has plenty of room for familiar faces other than Snake and Big Boss:
“Snake and Boss—these two figureheads of the franchise, essentially—they define themselves based on the relationships of the people around them. So much of the game ends up being the tragedy that these characters experienced…you have a boss fight, and instead of feeling like you accomplished something, you feel a sense of loss, which is such a unique Metal Gear feeling. So it’s important that those characters are surrounded by a roster of people. So we’re finding the exact right amount of people where we can introduce enough of them where it feels robust, where we can define Snake or Boss through these characters, but not enough to get lost.
Check out the full interview HERE: