Out of the thousands of Metal Gear fans in the world, I’m probably one of the few hundred or so that thinks the entire series is a brilliant masterpiece. The series, while popular, has gained notoriety and fame for being infamously convoluted, while still having gripping set pieces, unique characters, and of course, lengthy cut scenes. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, was probably 2/3 cut scenes in its entirety, and is probably one of the few games where the cut scenes out number the length of all the game play by that 2 to 1 ratio. However, having played the Metal Gear series since I was a youngster, I’ve always been fond of Snake and his adventures, and the universe of intrigue, paranoia, espionage, and occasional batshit insanity that makes up the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
One of my favorite past times for the last 12 years has been playing “Cast the Metal Gear Movie” with my friends, but it was always in vain, because for the longest time Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear’s creator, never seemed interested in a movie, or at the very least, was wary of making one, or letting one be made. Well no longer! At the 25th Anniversary Metal Gear Solid Event, plans were announced for a movie to be made.
Believe it or not, Hideo Kojima is nearly 50 years old. There must be something in the water in Japan.
While there is no direct quote from Kojima himself, Avi Arad, CEO of Marvel Comics, looks to be included in the project, possibly in a producer role. Avi Arad is behind a multitude of comics movies that you’re no doubt familiar with, and one look at his body of work goes to show the guy knows how to get projects off the ground and running. He even had this to say about the Metal Gear movie:
“For many years I fought to bring comics to theaters. Comic books are now the biggest genre in cinema. Videogames are the comic books of today…We will take our time and tell the story with all the nuances, ideology, cautionary tales needed.”
Via [Examiner]
I appreciate the guy’s enthusiasm, I really do, but when you’re responsible for turds like Man-Thing, or the more recent, The Amazing Spider-Man, it makes me worry. However, his work on the very successful and well made Marvel Avengers franchise lays some of that worry to bed. Mostly, I’m just excited to see some of my favorite video games characters finally realized on-screen. Way back when, I remember sitting through the very cinematic end credits of Metal Gear Solid, for the PS1, and thinking about how great a movie it would make. Now that there’s at least 4 games that tell the main story, not counting any of the spinoffs or side stories, it’s a story so epically long in length and depth, you’d need at least 3 movies to accurately adapt the entire series. What with every movie now being legally required to be three movies long, there’s a possibility somebody could actually adapt a story that suits the format of being made into a superfluous trilogy. Either way, unless you focused on one particular game, you’d end up with a really confusing film on your hands.
Metal Gear? Confusing? Never!
My suggestion, if I was producing, would be to plan for one movie, and a prequel. You adapt Metal Gear Solid, try to keep it as faithful as possible, because that story is near perfect. Perhaps you add in a subplot and role that plays up Big Boss’ part, (Played by Sean Connery, of course), and then make a prequel movie, that’s an adaptation of the truly perfect Metal Gear Solid 3. While MGS4 has the best action set pieces that would actually adapt into a movie perfectly, it’s almost completely made of up plot threads and characters who were previously introduced, and it’s story would be so lost and muddled by trying to be condensed, with its 9+ hour running time of cut scenes.
Well, no matter what, I’ll be looking forward to hearing more about the project, and I’ll finally get back to realistically speculating who would play Snake in a movie.
Michael Fassbender perhaps?
Grizzly Bomb 