It is no secret to those deeply rooted in gamer culture that video game film adaptations – be they live action or animated – have lackluster track records. Classic examples like the live action Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter films have been notorious for being very imperfect films, and even recent adaptations, like the Assassin’s Creed movie, have been critically panned and/or failures at the box office. Now, the planned Metal Gear Solid movie director is weighing in with his theory on why these video game adaptations have missed the mark.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the director of this year’s hit Kong: Skull Island film, spoke with Gamespot about game-to-movie adaptations of video games and why he believes they failed in the past. Vogt-Roberts is currently attached to direct the upcoming Metal Gear Solid live action movie, and is currently involved with the writing process for the film’s script. He purposefully signed onto the project quite early in its process – a rarity in filmmaking – because of his reported love for the franchise created by Hideo Kojima. When asked about what could be the reason for this misstep, Vogt-Roberts said:

I think that [filmmakers] have looked at a video game movie and said, ‘Oh, that’s flashy! That’s cool!’…and there’s very little desire to really understand the tone and the atmosphere. A big part of it is not fully committing to the source material, being able to say ‘No, this is what makes this great, so let’s figure out how we translate it.'”

Vogt-Roberts also compared what needs to happen with video game films to the recent comic book films the past two decades. He acknowledged that Sam Raimi’s Spider-man projects worked so well and influenced the superhero films in the years that followed because Raimi grew up with a love of comics. Because of this, he knew how to stay truthful to the feeling of the source material while making the proper changes to translate the comics to the big screen. The director hopes that his upcoming movie will ignite the same spark of filmmakers bringing the games that his generation grew up on to the silver screen. What do you guys think about the Metal Gear Solid movie director’s comments? Let us know in the comments below!

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