jigos
Ahto Spaceport Cantina
News has broken about a KotOR movie, possibly a trilogy, in the works.
I am not happy about this -- not one bit. Read below for why.
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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Movie[s]
- Thread starter jigos
- Start date
News has broken about a KotOR movie, possibly a trilogy, in the works.
I am not happy about this -- not one bit. Read below for why.
jigos
Ahto Spaceport Cantina
Gamers have always had tendency to call for a movie to be made of any game they find remotely enjoyable, and I have always found that incredibly stupid. Games are an entirely mechanically different media, and narrative construction for it does not translate well to the screen, at all. This, combined with the fact that games have historically had some shockingly bad writing as a general standard. Even beloved stories such as that of Mass Effect, while compelling as a game, would be little more than a B-grade direct-to-TV-level affair, if it was a film.
It's worse with RPG's specifically, because they're often tens of hours long and have a ton of interactive content, all of which materially contribute to overall experience. You cannot represent that in a ~2-hour movie.
All of this is borne out by the fact that there have been very, very, few video-game-movies that have not been utterly terrible. Further, I've always been of the opinion that good games should remain games, out of respect for the video game medium. The medium stands on its own apart from all others in abilities, and does not need anything from film.
KotOR itself, happens to be my favourite game of all time. It is the single best piece of Star Wars media since the Original Trilogy. My feelings outlined above are multiplied by ten for this game in particular - especially in context of recent Star Wars films that have been absolutely beyond terrible, and the slating of more movies to come from particular moron Rian Johnson; and also David Beinoff and D.B. Weiss from Game of Thrones Season 7-8 infamy. The apparently hired writer for this movie, Laeta Kalogridis, worked on the screenplay for Alita: Battle Angel. I'm an invested fan in that flawed-but-charming movie, and I know it very well. It just so happens that my biggest critique of it is, in fact, its screenplay. Kalogridis also wrote the script for Terminator: Genisys, which I don't recall being that great. On the other hand she also did Shutter Island, which I remember enjoying, and she was also an executive producer for Avatar, so there's that.
It should be said that the original news report is from Buzzfeed, so should be taken with a mountain of salt. I'm hoping that this story is just going to be another instance of that rag's stupidity, but I actually doubt it.
As I said, I do not like this news at all.
It's worse with RPG's specifically, because they're often tens of hours long and have a ton of interactive content, all of which materially contribute to overall experience. You cannot represent that in a ~2-hour movie.
All of this is borne out by the fact that there have been very, very, few video-game-movies that have not been utterly terrible. Further, I've always been of the opinion that good games should remain games, out of respect for the video game medium. The medium stands on its own apart from all others in abilities, and does not need anything from film.
KotOR itself, happens to be my favourite game of all time. It is the single best piece of Star Wars media since the Original Trilogy. My feelings outlined above are multiplied by ten for this game in particular - especially in context of recent Star Wars films that have been absolutely beyond terrible, and the slating of more movies to come from particular moron Rian Johnson; and also David Beinoff and D.B. Weiss from Game of Thrones Season 7-8 infamy. The apparently hired writer for this movie, Laeta Kalogridis, worked on the screenplay for Alita: Battle Angel. I'm an invested fan in that flawed-but-charming movie, and I know it very well. It just so happens that my biggest critique of it is, in fact, its screenplay. Kalogridis also wrote the script for Terminator: Genisys, which I don't recall being that great. On the other hand she also did Shutter Island, which I remember enjoying, and she was also an executive producer for Avatar, so there's that.
It should be said that the original news report is from Buzzfeed, so should be taken with a mountain of salt. I'm hoping that this story is just going to be another instance of that rag's stupidity, but I actually doubt it.
As I said, I do not like this news at all.
igyman
Lifelong LFN Member
I'm very apprehensive of the news, simply because of Disney's bad track record in handling Star Wars so far. However, generally speaking, I don't think video games should be avoided when considering things to adapt to the big screen, I just think more effort should be made to adapt them properly.
Generally speaking, they are no different from books or comics - each is a unique medium and when adapting either of them into a movie or a TV show, details will inevitably be lost. The ones doing the adaptation simply have to make sure that what's inevitably lost in translation isn't crucial to the atmosphere, characters and story. Unfortunately, screenwriters still seem to be struggling with this when it comes to adapting video games. For the most part, at least, as there have been some pretty solid adaptations, such as Warcraft (its biggest flaw was the editing which affected a lot of the pacing) and the most recent Tomb Raider movie.
Finally, on Kalogridis - I just wanted to add that she was also responsible for the Altered Carbon Netflix show, a book adaptation which turned out pretty good. But yeah, her work is not universally great, so it can go either way.
Generally speaking, they are no different from books or comics - each is a unique medium and when adapting either of them into a movie or a TV show, details will inevitably be lost. The ones doing the adaptation simply have to make sure that what's inevitably lost in translation isn't crucial to the atmosphere, characters and story. Unfortunately, screenwriters still seem to be struggling with this when it comes to adapting video games. For the most part, at least, as there have been some pretty solid adaptations, such as Warcraft (its biggest flaw was the editing which affected a lot of the pacing) and the most recent Tomb Raider movie.
Finally, on Kalogridis - I just wanted to add that she was also responsible for the Altered Carbon Netflix show, a book adaptation which turned out pretty good. But yeah, her work is not universally great, so it can go either way.
Please no... leave KotOR and the entire Old Republic era alone... ah, oh well, can't really do much about it. It doesn't really matter to me anyway since I've stopped consuming anything Star Wars related in the first place.
