METAL GEAR SOLID, the hugely popular video game franchise, is to get a big screen adaptation, it has been confirmed.
At the top of many geeks’ ‘They Should Totally Make A Movie Of This’ list for many years, Metal Gear looks set to finally make the leap from PS3 to multiplex. At the series’s 25th anniversary event, celebrating a quarter of a century’s worth of gamer pleasing history, SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN producer Avi Arad rocked up and declared that Sony Pictures were indeed developing a movie of the film-friendly-franchise.
‘For many years I fought to bring comics to theaters’ Arad declared. ‘And video games are the comics of today.’
Though that’s not strictly true (I think comics are the comics of today), we see his point. However, video games-to-movie adaptations have a long and well documented history of being utter arse. SUPER MARIO BROS (1993). STREET FIGHTER (1994), TOMB RAIDER (2001), MORTAL KOMBAT (1995) and DOOM (2005) to name but a few are all examples of classic games that made films so bad, you’d want PacMan to bite your face off before watching them again.
Never the less, ever since Metal Gear Solid blew our minds on the PlayStation back in 1998, fans have been aching for a film adaptation, as the game was so cinematic. With the sequels (especially Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in 2001) came more elaborate cut-scenes with intricate dialogue and beautifully framed action sequences, as well as a sweeping orchestral score from Harry Gregson-Williams. He composed the music for films as diverse as TEAM AMERICA:WORLD POLICE, BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON and PROMETHESUS, and his work added to the experience of being inside a movie as much as playing a game. A big screen counterpart seemed inevitable, yet it has yet to materialise. So Arad’s news, which he delivered alongside Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, will be thrilling to fans of all ages.
And now begins the enjoyable casting conversations. The Metal Gear series has a ridiculously complex narrative arc that would take a small novella to summarise, as well as a beloved canon of characters. Our hero, though, is Snake, a grissled, (sometimes) eye-patch wearing badass whose high level stealth and cunning is matched only by his voice, which sounds like he’s been gargling chainsaws. Think a cross between 70s Clint Eastwood and, funnily enough, Kurt Russell’s ‘Snake Plissken’ from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and you’re in the right area. But who to play him? Had this been made in the early 2000s, Sean Bean would have been ideal, although he probably wouldn’t have done it, as Snake doesn’t die at the end. So who do we reckon? To quote Tom Fordy in his talk of a new Batman: Pray for Ryan Gosling, fear Bradley Cooper.
Sources: Computor and Video Games
