Metal Gear Solid: The Movie?

In a recent interview with IGN, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts confirmed the script for a Metal Gear Solid movie has been finalised.

Vogt-Roberts(Kong: Skull Island), who signed with Sony in 2014 to direct the video adaptation, gave his thoughts on the finished draft:

“We actually just turned in the script… and I think it’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. It’s one of the coolest, weirdest, most [Hideo] Kojima things. Even being involved with it, I look at it as someone who was, like, I would make the hell out of this movie. But if I wasn’t involved in it, then I would still look at that script and be like holy s***!”

Self-praise may indeed be no praise, and this is not the closest we’ve come to a Metal Gear Solid movie. Back in 2010 we had a script penned by Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter. Avi Arad was producing with Kurt Wimmer set to direct and Christian Bale interested in acting. Alas, the stars did not align that time.

A healthy dose of scepticism is worn on every gamer’s sleeve when it comes to video game movies, a point Vogt-Roberts highlights in the interview. He pays heed to Snowpiercer and Edge of Tomorrow, both films which play out like video games, without taking games directly as source material. It will be difficult for MGS fans to envisage a worthy adaptation. Metal Gear is a beloved franchise, with a rich, crazy, sometimes hokey, lore.

The light at the end of the tunnel…

We all know the dark disturbing history of video game movies, but with every new adaptation comes a new ray of hope. Could a Metal Gear Solid movie be the mold-breaker we all long for? With Vogt-Roberts getting Hideo Kojima’s approval, and a script (possibly) written by Derek Connolly of Jurassic World fame, the stars may well be aligning. Vogt-Roberts acquitted himself well as a director with Kong: Skull Island, and his debut feature film, The Kings of Summer, was highly regarded at the Sundance Film Festival. He is also massively enthusiastic about this project, and, well, video game movie adaptations in general. Take, for example, what he had to say about another legendary franchise:

“I have a pitch for a Metroid movie. They’ll never let me. It’s too crazy. It legitimately would be [Samus] alone. It would be a little bit of her talking to herself. As soon as they introduce other talking characters in those games, to me it loses everything. You put her alone and it’s almost got more to do with the silence of a movie like Drive. Like the quietness and having it be like a real, intense mood piece, but mixed with sci-fi,”

Well, good luck with that.