EDITORS NOTE: It's better on Creative Loafing, HEREGood news for you video game fans out there, Variety is reporting some advancement on a Mass Effect movie, with Legendary Pictures picking up I am Legend and Thor screenwriter Mark Protosevich to pen a script.
For fans of the game for X-Box 360, this is good news, as we will get a chance to see Commander Shephard and the Normandy take on our favorite bad guys, the Reapers with an eclectic crew of aliens and mercenaries. If you haven’t played the video game, however, you are probably groaning, getting ready to lecture me on how there has never been a good video game to movie adaptation (Prince of Persia, fingers crossed, isn’t out yet). While you are completely correct, I think Mass Effect could be different, here’s why.
With previous games, and potential games like Halo, the surroundings are beautiful, and rich, but the characters, while interesting from a gaming perspective, are quite shallow for movie characters. All you have is a traditional, hero in the Spartan, and while you could expand on it, the game doesn’t have that expansion, so the writer must take liberties. Mass Effect is an action Role Playing Game, and as such, the characters have much more depth, and the lines of good and bad can be blurred, with flawed characters and in-depth storylines already established.
The problem with the story, besides being written from a player standpoint, is that it is a space opera. And while Star Wars succeeded, and Star Trek’s reboot was a financial and critical success, very few others have succeeded on a large scale. There is also a very large cost for having what will probably amount to heavy computer graphics for the space scenes, and planet views. On top of that, the franchise’s audience is a very small audience of Xbox 360 players, so you might as well have a fresh concept, which is tough from a marketing standpoint.
So, for all Mass Effect fans out there, who would you cast in your favorite characters? I would have to choose Sam Worthington as Cmdr. Shephard. You may not like him, but he seems like the perfect choice. The Illusive Man is already perfect with Martin Sheen, and of course, everyone’s favorite pilot, Joker must return as Seth Green; but what about a love interest? My take for Ashley, my favorite love interest, would have to go to G.I. Joe’s Scarlett, played by Rachel Nichols. What about the rest? Who would you like to see?
For fans of the game for X-Box 360, this is good news, as we will get a chance to see Commander Shephard and the Normandy take on our favorite bad guys, the Reapers with an eclectic crew of aliens and mercenaries. If you haven’t played the video game, however, you are probably groaning, getting ready to lecture me on how there has never been a good video game to movie adaptation (Prince of Persia, fingers crossed, isn’t out yet). While you are completely correct, I think Mass Effect could be different, here’s why.
With previous games, and potential games like Halo, the surroundings are beautiful, and rich, but the characters, while interesting from a gaming perspective, are quite shallow for movie characters. All you have is a traditional, hero in the Spartan, and while you could expand on it, the game doesn’t have that expansion, so the writer must take liberties. Mass Effect is an action Role Playing Game, and as such, the characters have much more depth, and the lines of good and bad can be blurred, with flawed characters and in-depth storylines already established.
The problem with the story, besides being written from a player standpoint, is that it is a space opera. And while Star Wars succeeded, and Star Trek’s reboot was a financial and critical success, very few others have succeeded on a large scale. There is also a very large cost for having what will probably amount to heavy computer graphics for the space scenes, and planet views. On top of that, the franchise’s audience is a very small audience of Xbox 360 players, so you might as well have a fresh concept, which is tough from a marketing standpoint.
So, for all Mass Effect fans out there, who would you cast in your favorite characters? I would have to choose Sam Worthington as Cmdr. Shephard. You may not like him, but he seems like the perfect choice. The Illusive Man is already perfect with Martin Sheen, and of course, everyone’s favorite pilot, Joker must return as Seth Green; but what about a love interest? My take for Ashley, my favorite love interest, would have to go to G.I. Joe’s Scarlett, played by Rachel Nichols. What about the rest? Who would you like to see?
1 comment:
Game Informer had a great fantasy casting post about this. And, for the most part, I really liked their choices:
http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/05/25/casting-the-mass-effect-movie.aspx
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