Shadow of the Colossus movie?
(Are you sure they didn't mean
Ico? I
could imagine that.)
Most announcements of this sort are wrong anyway, so I'm not going to bother with pointing out that it's a very poor fit for film, or that its emotional impact depends on the player's control of the character, or even that its ethereal mood can't be paced to fit a movie. The comments have already addressed all these things, and the movie most likely will never progress beyond speculation.
But what would such a movie be like, if it were made, and if it were good? Think about it.
Start with Gaiman's Law of Superhero Movies: "The closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is." (Read "game," obviously.) People loved
Shadow, I think, for the beauty of its vistas, its opportunities to explore at leisure, its moments when the colossus appears over the horizon and you realize it cannot possibly be killed: that the game was just toying with you; that it will crush you and you will die. People loved being able to read the stories of their own lives into the enigmatic relationship between Wander and Mono, I think. Most of all, I think people admired it for its venture into metaphysics, the way it raised questions about Wander's orgy of slaughter while refusing to allow him any other choice. These are the feelings a
Shadow movie would need to evoke.
Maybe if the film did a small chunk of Wander's story, two or three battles at most. That would give enough time to, well, wander. Eat the fruits and shoot the birds. Shrug ruefully at Agro. Sit at the edge of the cliffs and look out at the ocean. Fight and lose, and eventually win, only to be overwhelmed by shadows. Wake up looking at Mono and wonder why he's doing this.
Single character. No dialogue, except maybe a few lines with Dormin. Can't be done. But I've been wrong before.
words from chris, 2009-04-09 21:11:54, los angeles
