Jordan Vogt-Roberts Wants His Metal Gear Movie To 'Double-Down' On The Series' Weirdness
Video game movies have a long way to go before they reach the same tier of critical acceptance superhero movies have managed to achieve, but director Jordan Vogt-Roberts thinks his adaptation of the Metal Gear series may be able to crack the code.
Speaking an interview with Collider, the director says his roadmap for success involves doubling-down on the series' weirder aspects, not smoothing them out with the hopes of pleasing the palate of a wider audience.
"We need to not just make a Metal Gear movie, but we need to double-down so hard on the oddities that make Metal Gear idiosyncratic and what it is," Vogt-Roberts said. "Kojima's voice, the fourth wall, the goofiness, the anime, the manga, the hyper-violence, the talking philosophies, the characters who just represent ideologies. These things are Metal Gear."
The Kong: Skull Island director says if he takes the right approach with his Metal Gear adaptation, the movie could come out looking like an entirely new genre. "When you look at Guardians of the Galaxy, it's like, 'What genre is that before that movie came out?' James [Gunn] doubled-down on that world and said, 'No. This is what's going to make people love it,' as opposed to saying, 'Uh, it's kind of like this' or 'It's kind of like that.'"
Vogt-Roberts expressed hope that the success of risk-taking movies in the superhero genre like Guardians of the Galaxy, Logan, and Deadpool may have paved the way for his adaptation to reach the screen with all of its idiosyncrasies intact.
The director also talked about the form his movie's story might take, using inspiration from the entire series rather than adapting the plot of one single game. Part of his willingness to take risks, he says, comes from a talk he had with the game series' creator, Hideo Kojima.
"I asked [Kojima] point-blank in front of an audience," Vogt-Roberts said. "Because we had a long conversation about him and film and I said, 'What would your advice be to me? What would you have to say?' And he said, 'Do what I would do. Betray your audience.'"
With a wide-reaching story that spans more than fifty years and features dozens of eclectic characters, including vampires, cyborgs, and multiple super-soldiers who are offspring, siblings or clones of each other, it's probably for the best that Vogt-Roberts doesn't seem intent on exactly replicating any one chapter in the Metal Gear narrative. "I want to be very respectful to the canon," he said. "I want to be very respectful to the characters and the story, but it will not be a pure adaptation, necessarily, of one of the games."
Vogt-Roberts has been attached to direct a Metal Gear movie for Sony since 2014, and is currently still tending to its development process. For a look at some of his other video game-related work, check out the insane live-action trailer he directed for Destiny 2, and read all about some high-profile video game adaptations that never left the development phase in our feature on video game movies that never came to fruition.