Halo Movie Scribe Talks Game Faithfulness

simoniker writes "Author DB Weiss has confirmed that he's currently writing a Halo movie screenplay for producers that include LOTR/King Kong's Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. When asked whether he was concerned about criticism from the long-time fans of any of his movie adaptations, Weiss commented: 'There will be the 5% on the fringe of any hardcore fanbase that get angry about any change you make to the source material. The truth is that novels, games, comics, and what-have-you are not usually ready to be slapped up on screen as-is.' In fact, Weiss suggests of this particular issue: 'If you did do a 100% faithful version, 999 times out of 1000 it would be a mess, and even the 5%-ers would recognize as much.'"

Comments

Could be worst...

[__aaclcg7560]

When the guy who made "Silent Hill" was asked how he made his movie, he replied in a magazine article: "Suck and blow just like Uwe Boll!"

Different Mediums Require Different Elements

[conigs]

I still maintain that movies based off anything need to make changes from the original source material, especially when adapted from a video game. Films, books, video games and TV shows are all different mediums and should be treated as such.

A video game is an interactive experience. The audience (player) is involved in what direction and pace the story goes. That doesn't translate well into a passive experience like a movie. Just take the nuts and bolts of the game (characters & scenerios) and place them into a storyline related to, but not a carbon copy of the video game.

Though Halo (and the earlier Marathon series for Mac) does have a pretty good basis for a movie, I don't want to sit down and basically watch filmmakers play the game in real life.

Well, at least DOOM was faithful and successful!

[Patented]

Just like Mortal Kombat, Houses of the Dead, and Super Mario Brothers...

Oh, wait...

Games and Books are a little different...

[Andrew Nagy]

Making adaptations to games is a lot different than doing it with books. The reason both usually fail is because they are adaptations. Successful books require a level in depth and detail that is virtually impossible to achieve on screen. Games are targeted toward interaction, which is impossible on the big screen as well.

I read LOTR every year (yes, I'm one of those geeks), and yes, I was sincerely disappointed with the movies. Well, the second two. While I understand that changes need to be made for a book to go to a screen, those changes don't generally include major plot alterations and character distortion as was the case with Faramir, for example, or Theoden.

Now, back on topic. With games, you'd think it'd be a lot easier to transfer the ideas since it's one electronic, viewable media format to another. However, how often have you seen terrible adaptations of games? Wait, shorter answer... how often have you seen good ones? I think the reason there is because the makers are looking too much into how we like games. They think, "games don't offer much plot, depth, or detail (usually), so we shouldn't try to do too much in the movie." IMHO, this is completely backwards. We watch movies for visual plot, depth, and detail. A movie adaptation from a game without those things is like an FPS you can't play, but just watch. Not fun.

So basically, to adapt books, you have to pay way more attention to format than games.

Re:Games and Books are a little different...

[Okita]

Your first set of statements seem to be a little confusing. You say that "successful books require a level in depth and detail that is virtually impossible to achieve on screen," which I would agree with-- but then also say, "The reason both usually fail is because they are adaptations." In adapting a book to movie, you're taking the core themes and ideas, and playing to the strengths of the movie medium.

I also read LOTR every year, and I found the movies far from disappointing. The book, though I find it to be the finest fantasy novel series written to date, is utterly unfit for screen in its current state. The Battle of the Hornburg in TTT lasts a few pages at most, which would make for an anticlimactic and boring movie. While I was likewise shocked at the movie Faramir, I fully understand that in the books, that entire plot thread is devoid of conflict for a long time, which simply does not create a compelling narrative.

It seems like you're saying that media are different from each other, and therefore we shouldn't even try... But why can't we take the themes and ideas we find really cool about a game and make a great movie about it? Maybe we can, but it won't silence the people who complain character X was changed, or plot events happened in a different order than in the books. Some friends of mine have even complained that the Middle Earth map was different in the movie (when IIRC, the "original" map in the books wasn't even drawn by Tolkien himself, but extracted from his geographical descriptions). The point is, fans need to view these things a little more objectively.

And now, back on topic... If they can keep the great things we like about Halo while still making it Halo, I don't see why the movie won't be spectacular. I think the single greatest danger would be if they decided to leave off the Covenant side of the story, or neglect the criticism of theocracy and zealotry, which is highly relevant to the world we live in today. I do hope they leave out the excruciating and repetitive Library level, though.

our preoccupation with crap

[earache]

I think the subject says it all.

The rate at which we are recycling our own culture is increasing at a dramatic pace. I often wonder if this has some deeper meaning as it seems that human culture to this point has only really recycled nostalgia, typically recycling an era 20 years prior, but now we're really starting to eat and recycle our own waste in increasingly shorter periods of time.

At some point, we're going to need to inject depth and meaning into our popular culture, because you can only recycle McDonald's so many times. If you catch my meaning.

Re:our preoccupation with crap

[kthejoker]

Interestingly, Unoriginality in Hollywood *is* something new, but you are wrong in your assumption that this is a sign of a lack of depth in the film industry. It was simply poor oversight on their part to not take advantage of likeable characters and existing media before the rise of the Bond film series, the Rocky, Star Wars, and Superman franchises, and so on into our current state.

The simple fact is that we can have our cake and eat it, too. American filmgoers like their sequelized, franchised, overmarketed, easily-hyped crap, but they also like their intelligent, thoughtful works. That's why every major studio has their vanity arthouse studio, too - so you get Fantastic Four and Elektra, but you also get Donnie Darko and Clerks. And, if anything, Hollywood is becoming a bit more enchanted with more budget-conscious movies (witness the frat boy populist comedies of Will Ferrell and the Wilson brothers) and arthouse cinema as an industry itself - to suggest that somehow Hollywood's artistic sensibilities have suffered due to the rise of the sequel and the adaptation is patently false.

If anything, Hollywood is just now starting to stabilize the entire system - the adaptations/blockbusters running on top of the flops, which all help subsidize their "high art" films and other, more mass-marketed (but cheaply made) pop fare (Adam Sandler movies and CGI family films.) The ship is open to all takers; the idea of originality vs. success is a false dilemma.

Re:our preoccupation with crap

[david.given]

U.S. Dept. Of Retro Warns: 'We May Be Running Out Of Past'

That was nine years ago.

Re:All I care about.

[Drachemorder]

Of course you have to make changes when you adapt a story to the big screen. The problem, though, is that the powers-that-be tend to make fundamental changes to the nature of the story, or to the personalities of the characters, for reasons that most fans would consider unjustified. For example: the changes to Faramir's character in Lord of the Rings didn't really serve any constructive purpose. They're explained away as increasing the dramatic tension of the movie by leaving Faramir's motives ambiguous until near the end of the second movie. Most fans consider that a fundamental change to the way Tolkien originally wrote the character, which is something not to be done frivolously. On the other hand, the decision to remove Tom Bombadil and otherwise streamline the first part of the Fellowship movie has very real justification, in that you have a limited amount of time in which to tell the story. You simply cannot include everything; therefore things that don't contribute directly to the Main Quest are legitimate candidates for deletion. (Tom Bombadil, it's argued, serves an important purpose in the book, but it's not one that contributes very much to the downfall of Sauron).

So, to my way of thinking, if you're adapting a book or a game to the movies, you need to try to preserve the fundamental character of the story as much as possible and not make changes that frivolously undermine it. Nearly all adaptations I've seen have failed in this to one degree or another. Sometimes the end result can overcome these flaws (as in LOTR, which was a very good set of movies in its own right), but sometimes the failure is pretty much absolute (a vast array of movies I could name).

Bungie wrote a bible already...

[Jtheletter]

IIRC when the movie was first being shopped around it was mentioned that Bungie had put together a 'Halo Bible' of sorts to provide clarity and guidance on the storyline. Is he even using this Ultimate Reference? Personally I don't consider myself one of these 5% fringe fans who feel wronged by every edit, but if Bungie has in fact made available a document which provides all of the Halo-world information to make a true-to-form movie then it would be stupid not to at least start with that and then make alterations as needed.

Bungie has already done all the hard work here, they've created the universe, the storyline, the characters, and have sold it to millions of fans who know and love THAT particular version. Working from anything other than the Bungie story source is essentially just throwing all that work out. Stay true to what Bungie created and you're guaranteed almost the entire Halo playing audience without much effort.

Oh, that and shoot Uwe Boll on sight if he wanders near the set. ;)

Re:Well, at least DOOM was faithful and successful

[Jakhel]

I would argue that Mortal Kombat, the first one in the trilogy, doesn't belong in this list. It was actually well done for a video game to movie adaptation. Well done in the sense that it stayed true to its video game roots, special movies and actors in the movie were pretty much dead on with the video game, and was not a complete suckfest like Mario Brothers or House of the Dead. Also, the storyline was not altered too much.

Why the hate for Lord of the Rings?

[Rapter09]

Peter and Fran changed some things. Some of them were small. Some of them were so big that they stood in the face of lunacy. But the fact remains that the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies were a near-perfect adaption, and a celebration of the Greatest Book of All Time. If they can channel that into Halo, I think it will be a great movie.