Writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan have the unenviable task of adapting Sony’s hit video game, God of War, for the big screen. The series centers on a badass named Kratos, a former Spartan general who loses everything, becomes an immortal killer and vows revenge against the Gods. Think Gladiator meets Clash of the Titans with a mega 300 scope.
In fact, the existence of those films forced Melton and Dunstan to come at the story in a completely different way and, in a new interview, not only do they discuss how they’re approaching the film, they break down a few of the major beats in the script. Read their quotes and ideas after the jump.
Melton and Dunstan, the writers of Feast, Saw IV through VII, as well as re-write on Pacific Rim, spoke to IGN about their adaptation. They explained they were brought in to give David Self’s original script a rehaul because it’s now around five years old and had a lot of visuals fans were used to because of movies like Immortals, 300, Clash of the Titans and more. So they decided to take a page from another successful film franchise for their version. Here’s Dunstan:
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 added the following:
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.
Also of paramount importance to the duo is that people care about the character during this huge set pieces:
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.
They also plan to flesh out Ares, making him the main villian in the series, Melton said:
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 sounds like the pair have a good idea of what this movie needs to be. Hopefully their script will attract an exciting, visual director who can make the film into the first of a new, fantastic action franchise.
Do you think God of War will break the curse of the video game adaptation?
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