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Hai! You may know me as Professor Pew in older times. If you see a cblog here from beyond September 2010 or something: that's from the cblogging days and not anything editor-related :)
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Bad Idea, Bad Idea: Bioshock the Movie
Maurice Tan | 3:42 PM on 02.09.2008 19 comments


As you may know, Take2 is being bombarded by requests from Hollywood studios, agents and producers to sell the rights to Bioshock so it can be turned into a movie. Take2 is currently holding back and perhaps waiting for a perfect bid, but do we really want a Bioshock movie? Your first thought may be: “YES! God yes!” But let’s take a look at what we can expect.



The main reason why Bioshock is getting such attention is the way they provide solid gameplay with an immersive, evolving storyline. Evolving in the sense that as the player progresses, he/she becomes more powerful as a character in the world, but at the same time the story is written with exactly that in mind. Which, as those of you who already finished the game may or may not agree, works well in this storyline. The player gets stronger, understands more about the world, and then faces an adversary that is both part of that world and acts like a Boss character which he could never have beaten at the start. Would you really be able to change from crashed lad into a plasmid wielding maestro that easily dispatches the "powerful" master of the realm?

Maybe it's just as unrealistic to do it in the scope of 6-10 hours, but since we expect that of games, it just feels right and we don't worry about it. Hell, we don't expect a Chrono Trigger movie to work with a character that knows nothing in the first 15 minutes, while after 2 hours you'd seem him having a party of badasses that cast insanely powerfull spells to save the world. Games just provide us with the setting where these kinds of things work, while we generally expect more realistic or believable(or something that we can relate to more) elements in our movies. Which is probably why we didn't see Gandalf casting Firaga all over the place in the theatrical cut of LOTR: ROTK.



Another strong point of the Bioshock story as a game experience is Andrew Ryan. This character seems to be in total control of the world you crash into, which makes him an archetypical Final Boss type of character. He continuously attempts to thwart your attempts of getting ahead in the game (or life?), while resting on his laurels and talking down to you from his Ivory Tower. The kind of thing that Ryan himself perhaps strived to eliminate from his utopia of Rapture: to create a world where all Men are equal and have unlimited boundaries and resources for reaching their full potential without an overarching system or person to impose his/her will on Man. This irony of the Creator being destroyed by the fundamental flaws of his Creation is nothing new, but more importantly: it's something that works best in books. More generally: the type of media where the consumer takes his time to get acquainted, to get immersed with all the aspects of the conflict, ultimately leading to an engrossing and sometimes even learning experience.



If you've ever read a book that was later turned into a movie, you'll recognize this easily; how much did you miss in the LOTR movies that you thought was absolutely a terrible decision to leave out of the movies? How much were the Bourne movies different from the books? And would you really have wanted a Godfather movie that was exactly like the book, instead of the masterpiece of cinema that it ended up like? More importantly: how many action movies do you know that did the source material justice? Because you know, Bioshock is a game, so the movie will definitely try to be an Action movie.

The kind of writing as we encounter in Bioshock often fails hard in movies. Mostly because movies are often cut into 3 acts, with limited time for character development for each character, the decision on choosing one or multiple perspectives and the inability to portray all the aspects that were supposed to come together in something that is greater than the sum of its parts. There just isn’t enough time to explain all elements to as wide an audience as possible and still have it work. Even if Atonement did a great job of doing the near impossible in creating a working movie from the meandering novel, that movie will never reach the kind of audience that Hollywood will want for the Bioshock movie.



In fact, usually these types of movies that do revolve around the same kind of premise only work when they choose one perspective and follow it for 2 hours. An example where it works is Terminator 2: it follows a small group of characters that seem to just do their own thing, while having them act as archetypes of the human capacity for survival, love, change and destruction at the same time as drawing on feelings of uncertainty for what could or might happen. An example where it didn’t work is Chronicles of Riddick. It tried to establish a Star Wars-like universe while lacking the characters that made the true Trilogy so popular. Thus, it failed horribly on a wide scale, even if I personally really liked that movie and didn’t care about the problems it had.



Which brings us to Bioshock the movie. Who are you supposed to follow in such a movie? The player-character that doesn’t say anything? This would get tiresome unless he would find some hot-looking woman to travel with him, to talk with him and the audience about what happened in Rapture, to maybe share an emotional moment or to die in the final act. But that would rape the whole aspect of Bioshock being Bioshock, wouldn’t it?

Or should they follow both the player, Andrew Ryan, Atlas and Tennenbaum? Each getting some minutes of screentime, talking to subordinates (which ones?) or having monologues for the camera, talking about what they want to do and why the player is being so pesky? Or why he could be a savior? That is the kind of stuff that creates horrors like Eragon or In The Name of the King: longwinded story exposition with little feeling for anything at all. For us gamers, Bioshock the movie could be even more terrible than those movies if it ended up with a shooting script like:

The PLAYER is seen RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE on a camera display monitor. One of many. ANDREW RYAN stands in front of them, watching the PLAYER run from the SUBMARINE that was just destroyed.

ANDREW RYAN is talking to himself:
“This little insect! How dare he even try? Does he not see that it is futile to resist? Does he not understand that this is a world without Gods? There is only room for MEN here, MEN and… ME. Hahahaha!”

ANDREW RYAN laughs hysterically as fluorescent light flickers overhead. A few SPLICERS cower as he laughs, seemingly afraid of some unknown power.

ANDREW RYAN:
“Still, there is remarkable persistence in this man’s actions. Something familiar… Yet, I sensed the same thing in that bastard Fontaine when he arrived.”

ANDREW RYAN slams the control panel in sudden rage.

ANDREW RYAN:
“No, I will not make the same mistake again. This small man will fall, for there is no room for small men in MY world.” *laughs hysterically as the camera pans out, back into a corner of the room while fading to black*…

Look, there’s a reason this stuff wasn’t in the game. The game worked because you, the player, slowly uncovered the truth about Rapture and YOU unraveled the story. Not because some cutscene pushed it into your face. There is just no way of translating this to the silver screen without changing perspective, adding characters or falling into cinema clichés for a Bioshock movie. You know it’s not going to be written by Christopher Nolan or Charlie Kaufman. And you know you can’t have a Doom FPS perspective for 2 hours either. And you also know that while Rapture felt like an essential character in itself in the game, it will just be a sum of lame CGI and props in the movie. Therefore, it’s just a bad idea, period.

There is no good idea here to talk about, even if you want to see a Bioshock movie regardless of how it turns out. You would think that Bioshock, being a story-driven game, would make a perfect choice to turn into a movie. But it’s exactly the story-driven nature that makes it a bad choice to turn into a movie. Any Big Daddy fight will be a copy of the Troll fight from The Fellowship of the Ring. Any confrontation with Andrew Ryan will be a ripoff of some lame 007 third act standoff where Ryan will just hold evil monologues before acting out what happened in the game. Any revelation of the Player’s own origins will fall flat because it will be hard to care for the Player (especially if he will be Nicholas Cage). Not that you can’t work around clichés, I just don’t see it working.

In short: for a Bioshock movie to work as a movie, a lot of creative license will have to be taken for it to work. So much that it might be a movie based on a videogame, but ultimately will fail to deliver in bringing Bioshock to the big screen. Any attempt will fail at that, so ask yourself this: do you really want to see a movie based on Bioshock? Or would you rather cherish the experience of playing the game without having it raped, mangled or *maybe* turned into a just-average movie that you’ve seen before…


…and I didn’t even mention the radio diaries.



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18 comments | showing # 1 to 18
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Bob Muir's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 16:02
Bob Muir
Excellent points all around Pew, and thank you for keeping spoilers to a minimum for slowpokes like me.
Maurice Tan's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 16:12
Maurice Tan
Well, according to legend: sometimes there is a special Slowpoke that can evolve into a Slowking instead of a Slowbro!
Shalashaska161's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 16:13
Shalashaska161
Great blog. Bioshock is so great because so much of its story only works within in a context of a game. The choices with the little sisters, the feelings evoked when the plot twist happens, none of this would be capable in a movie. Bioshock should stay a game, period.
Murder64's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 17:15
Murder64
Bioshock is too good to be turned into a movie. It would ruin it and be pointless since it would never surpass the game itself.
wardrox's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 18:22
wardrox
Seriously, you just completely changed my opinion on the film idea. I did think it was a great prospect, now I really don't want it.
Neonie's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 18:34
Neonie
I can agree with most of that. Wasent Cloverfeild in a First person angle for two hours? Or would that be considerd a diffrent kind of camera angle?
Maurice Tan's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 18:40
Maurice Tan
Neonie: Cloverfield worked on that level because there was an actual character behind the handheld camera. In Doom, you saw the FPS-view with the gun and all that. Camera: can work. FPS view for 2 hours: not really :)
Sharpless's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 18:44
Sharpless
LOL @ Anne Frank
Ocified-Xboxer's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 19:00
Ocified-Xboxer
I was talking about a Bioshock movie with a friend of mine the other day. You just totally gave me a fistfull of STFU and I accept it. This is really a well thought out idea...and it makes a ton of valid points and I now agree that there should be no Bioshock the move. And I enjoyed Anne Frank. We always need a curveball...thanks.
Ninevolt's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 19:28
Ninevolt
I totally agree. Nice write up, Pew. Keep em coming.
Sadie G's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/09/2008 23:36
Sadie G
I feel the same as Wardrox, I thought it was a great idea at first. Also, you know what would suck...if _ _ _ got his hands out on, I won't say it because I believe when you put ideas out there they may come true and that would be extremely tragic for us all if he were to get his grubby hands on the movie rights.
mistic's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 01:34
mistic
great writeup...

I'd still like to see the movie though... but as it is with movies & books, so it is too with movies & games... the movies will allways have the 'lesser' experience, it lasts chorter, less atmosphere most of the time etc...

that's why I never try to compare the books/movies/games to eachother, because all 3 are designed and written to give you a completely different experience...

Doom the movie was on its own an entertaining action-movie, but compared to the games, there was no soul, no atmosphere or anything so compared to the game it was rather bleak...

same with LOTR, the books were great, the movie too, as long as you don't compare the books vs the movie because then the movie totally blows...

but its like comparing apples and oranges...
Sharpless's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 01:54
Sharpless
Incidentally, I agree. I don't want a BioShock movie. A BioShock-like movie, sure. I think it could work incredibly well as a movie, but a straight adaptation of the game? No. I don't see how they could make it work as well as it does in game form.
Atlas's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 04:20
Atlas
Atlas is..... ?

Take a wild guess...
Atlas's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 04:30
Atlas
Also, Bioshock movie would suck because we already know the twists in it...

Ending is already ruined for us now.
Eschatos's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 11:10
Eschatos
Please don't happen. It will suck dick.
Kryptinite's Avatar - Comment posted on 02/10/2008 15:40
Kryptinite
great write up man :). I just did a similar post but I like the perspective you took.
Fading Star's Avatar - Comment posted on 04/30/2008 17:49
Fading Star
.....lol.
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