Shadow of the Colossus Adaptation

Writing by the guy who wrote Hanna, directing by the guy who directed Chronicle.

While I've yet to see either, they were both pretty well received, right? Last I heard the guy who did that Street Fighter... thing was attached, so at the very least it's an improvement over that.

Link. Though I think they've managed to use a picture from some other game. -____-"

edited 8th Jan '13 10:28:33 AM by LE0Night

how would you even make a film based off this

Have a hot female co-star, preferably in chainmail bikini with an automatic crossbow.

Apathy. That's my verdict for now.

I'm not sure how that could work. SotC is kinda medium dependent...

If it were me, I'd make it a mix of flashbacks intertwined with monster slaying - half the movie would be the love story between the wanderer and his dead girlfriend telling how the met, fell in love and what happened to her, the other half would be the wanderer hunting down and slaying the Colossi. The movie itself would start with the same scene the game opens with where the wanderer travels to the place where he can make a deal to bring her back.

A few of the key fights would be depicted in full for maximized awesomeness, otherwise the rest would simply give hints at the full extent of what he's doing and give them just enough to fill in the gaps on their own.

I'd then intertwine the two stories in order to avoid making it top heavy or bottom heavy where you've got a long dramatic portion followed by an action heavy portion.

That would deviate quite a lot from the original, though, I'd rather they attempt to make a true movie-equivalent of it, it would be really interesting to see how they could achieve that. Sot C was almost completely plot-free, I know it's controversial but I don't think the success of a movie is contingent on one.
Though unless they're going to make a three-hour epic, I imagine they would have to either resort to a montage at some point or decrease the number of colossi a bit.

And if this turns out to be anything less than Scenery Porn: The Movie, I will be extremely upset.

Something still tells me that we're going to have a generic socially awkward college-aged white male cast as the lead and the whole movie will revolve around monsters in New York City. I can hope for better I suppose, but I'd be stunned if they could find some way to mimic the atmosphere of the game by even a small margin. . .

They should take a hint from the ICO novelization. It covers the history and culture of the area the game takes place in, and it's really good. It's non-canon now, because of Shadow of the Colossus, but it would a good example.

I would like it if thr film shows the wanderer's growing remorse towards killing the Colossi. I wonder if him ultimately deciding against killing them would work.

Wait, this is actually a thing? Fucking hell...

I know LOTR got away with scenery porn to pad things out but they at least had an extensive plot to hang that all on. I also feel like seeing him killing 16 Colossi in one movie would get repetitive. They could use a montage for some of them but that seems like it would cheapen things.

I'm not quite sure how to feel about this. I'll wait for more news before forming an opinion.

Actually, considering that several of the colossi are effectively duplicates of each other with minor differences in strategy due to the location, you could probably remove some of the colossi outright (or replaced them with new and more distinct colossi), and assuming you went with the idea of focusing more on Wander and Lord Emon...

Yeah, it could be interesting. Ooh, wait, I just thought of how you could do it! Have Wander talk to Aggro as if she's a person in order to combat the loneliness, expand the scale of the Forbidden Land by implying that they're traveling for days on end between each colossi etc.

Focusing on the stress, the loneliness, the anxiety, the fear of all this hardship purely to face incredible danger, flashbacks to how he met Mona and how they came to fall in love, perhaps flashing back to how he stole the sword etc.

Shadow of the Collossus, as a film, would *not* be Shadow of the Collossus as a game, but it could still be extremely interesting as a character study and as an action movie. And with that, away I go! -rides off-

"Gee willickers, I bet this game will be easy to adapt to a movie. I mean, it's just a video game. What could possibly be a problem?"

I sometimes wonder whether the bigwigs in charge of these products realize why video game movies keep failing.

I know I'm judging before any information, but this is a case where the established norm is terrible and the best is mediocrity.

edited 14th Jan '13 7:15:46 AM by Scardoll

The whole problem with movie adaptations of games is that it cheapens the games themselves. Nowhere is this more true than SoC, an experience which you'd never get outside of an interactive game.

Another problem is the stories. Games aren't generally known for reinventing the wheel plot-wise. The whole point is to put you in a movie, not the other way around. And choosing SoC, the pinnacle of what is possible with game design, as fodder for a movie script is retrogressive.

To the contrary, the success of a movie is absolutely contingent on it having a plot. It doesn't have to be very strong, but it does have to be there. And a straight-up adaptation of S ot C, as virtually non-existant as its plot is, would not work. I'm sure there are people who'd love to go watch a guy do nothing more than kill giant monsters for an hour or two, but there certainly aren't enough to make such a movie successful unless they can find a way to produce S ot C on a shoestring budget.

That could certainly be used as a basis on which to build the flashbacks, especially if there's a connection between S ot C and ICO the way I've heard.

Which is what I'm thinking they could use to help give the movie a plot beyond 'guy is told to go kill monster, guy goes and kills monster, rinse & repeat for two hours'.

Exactly - this could very well be a large part of the problem with so many attempts at video game adaptations. Video games, by nature, need to be games that focus on the gameplay. Movies don't even have gameplay and need to have a plot of some kind. Clearly, something is going to be lost in translation.

I don't see this making it to release.

The writer would have to be VERY creative with the source material in order to even get anything worthwhile, especially since there's no dialog at all except from the tribal priest and Dormin. Hell, given that a lot of Hollywood movies are forced by their nature to have dialog or some form of communication for the audience means that the original impact of the game (namely, the player making their own assumptions upon the setting, motivations, and plot) would be lost.

Also, isn't the original dev for the Last Story having a hard enough time trying to release his game as it is?

Both of the films linked in the OP sounded good, but they aren't that similar to Sot C. I'd hate to jump the gun and say this is not going to work, but I think the game won't translate well to being a movie. The only thing to do is wait and see really, but I'm skeptical that this is going to turn out well—although I hope it does.

No wonder California went broke! Why would you elect a film actor when you can clearly tell these guys are out of ideas?

You know, I could see a movie adaptation that is true to the way the story is presented in the game, if it were one of those indie artsy films. But probably not as a traditional Hollywood video game adaptation.

In my opinion, this would only work IF they make the film mostly mute, and even then I'm not really that hopeful.

Change of director, it's now being helmed by the guy who did Mama.

edited 5th Sep '14 4:04:25 AM by LE0Night

Shadow of the Colossus's story consisted entirely of "Dead chick. Go there. Kill that."

How can you turn that into a movie?

Same way Buried was done as a film or Blair Witch being nothing but "Three idiots lost in the woods" was compelling.

For a given definition of compelling.

Well, it wasn't fully boring. And for better or worse, it popularized a film genre that just can't die now.