Credit: Indie God of War
On an August week filled with video game movie news, IGN’s Max Nicholson interviewed God of War writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton about a movie that I did not even know existed. Anybody else tired about hearing about video game movies that are probably going to hold back society, insert your anger here. Or here.
Fortunately though, the writers have a better vision of Kratos’ origins a la Batman Begins. Dunstan states:
“In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition, we were attempting to do that with Kratos so that when we meet him — like they’re doing in this newest game, which is sort of a prequel to the original — we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.”
Melton explains:
“In the game… there’s that attack from the barbarians and Kratos has to call upon Ares to help him. Really, that’s going to be our first act break. Before then, he’s going to be mortal, and he’s going to have his family. We’re going to learn about him and understand how he operates. So it’s potentially 30 minutes — give or take — of building up this character so that, when he does turn and becomes the Ghost of Sparta, we understand him as a human and we understand the journey that he’s going to take. We’re emotionally invested, so that it could go beyond just this one movie.”
According to IGN, their background in film writing includes SAW IV, Piranha 3DD and the Feast trilogy.
Oh boy.
However, Melton clarifies their direction of going from low budget horror to high budget action:
There’s almost an element of relief. When it comes to God of War, we are first-time visitors, and we have a wealth of imagination that has built up from our appreciation for the sword-and-sandals films of our history… We know it doesn’t have to be done for a million bucks in a garage. [Laughs] That helps, too. But also, with a bigger movie like God of War, you have to go quite a bit deeper into the character as opposed to a horror film, in which you generally need to get things going; people are concerned that the audience won’t have patience, so it’s go go go go go.
With God of War, the studio’s saying, ‘We’re going to spend $150 million to make this movie. We really need to understand this character and get behind him and feel his pain and feel his emotions so that, when he is in these giant set pieces, we’re in there with him and we’re feeling it.’ That is a critique of some of these big action films is that they often get too big and just become noise; you’re not invested in the character.”
“There was a recent movie, which will remain nameless, that depicted the main character without any fear. When you do that, how are we supposed to be afraid through him? How are we supposed to gauge anything as a legitimate threat? It’s become this dulling element. So with this, we take an intimidating presence such as Kratos, fighting and pursuing a bloodthirsty vengeance trail to the God of War. How do we make that genuinely scary? The man of action must prevail, but it’s got to hurt to getting there.”
The writers also have a vision for Ares. Melton notes:
“In the game, you know, he’s immortal, and he doesn’t really do much besides raid Athens. So we’re trying to build him up a bit more, too, so that he can become a true villain.”
It looks like Melton and Dunstan have a certain direction for the characters. With a proper director, they might have created their best and most notable work yet. Heck, maybe they’ll become directors of the movie.
I do not see the film going that close into the Christopher Nolan direction, although Melton and Dunstan may develop characters that we care about. Maybe the action will be more like Christopher Nolan. I do not know enough about the special effects designers to know if it would have been closer to Scott Pilgrim.
Also to note, Dunstan reworked David Self’s screenplay, because there were so many movies like God of War coming out and he wanted the screenplay to be changed- Clash, Wrath, 300, Immortals.
Oh boy. Immortals..
