Halo Movie Scribe Talks Game Faithfulness

simoniker writes "Author DB Weiss has confirmed that he's currently writing a Halo movie screenplay for producers that include LOTR/King Kong's Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. When asked whether he was concerned about criticism from the long-time fans of any of his movie adaptations, Weiss commented: 'There will be the 5% on the fringe of any hardcore fanbase that get angry about any change you make to the source material. The truth is that novels, games, comics, and what-have-you are not usually ready to be slapped up on screen as-is.' In fact, Weiss suggests of this particular issue: 'If you did do a 100% faithful version, 999 times out of 1000 it would be a mess, and even the 5%-ers would recognize as much.'"

Re:our preoccupation with crap

[kthejoker]

Interestingly, Unoriginality in Hollywood *is* something new [everything2.com], but you are wrong in your assumption that this is a sign of a lack of depth in the film industry. It was simply poor oversight on their part to not take advantage of likeable characters and existing media before the rise of the Bond film series, the Rocky, Star Wars, and Superman franchises, and so on into our current state.

The simple fact is that we can have our cake and eat it, too. American filmgoers like their sequelized, franchised, overmarketed, easily-hyped crap, but they also like their intelligent, thoughtful works. That's why every major studio has their vanity arthouse studio, too - so you get Fantastic Four and Elektra, but you also get Donnie Darko and Clerks. And, if anything, Hollywood is becoming a bit more enchanted with more budget-conscious movies (witness the frat boy populist comedies of Will Ferrell and the Wilson brothers) and arthouse cinema as an industry itself - to suggest that somehow Hollywood's artistic sensibilities have suffered due to the rise of the sequel and the adaptation is patently false.

If anything, Hollywood is just now starting to stabilize the entire system - the adaptations/blockbusters running on top of the flops, which all help subsidize their "high art" films and other, more mass-marketed (but cheaply made) pop fare (Adam Sandler movies and CGI family films.) The ship is open to all takers; the idea of originality vs. success is a false dilemma.

Re:Well, at least DOOM was faithful and successful

[Jakhel]

I would argue that Mortal Kombat, the first one in the trilogy, doesn't belong in this list. It was actually well done for a video game to movie adaptation. Well done in the sense that it stayed true to its video game roots, special movies and actors in the movie were pretty much dead on with the video game, and was not a complete suckfest like Mario Brothers or House of the Dead. Also, the storyline was not altered too much.

Re:Games and Books are a little different...

[Okita]

Your first set of statements seem to be a little confusing. You say that "successful books require a level in depth and detail that is virtually impossible to achieve on screen," which I would agree with-- but then also say, "The reason both usually fail is because they are adaptations." In adapting a book to movie, you're taking the core themes and ideas, and playing to the strengths of the movie medium.

I also read LOTR every year, and I found the movies far from disappointing. The book, though I find it to be the finest fantasy novel series written to date, is utterly unfit for screen in its current state. The Battle of the Hornburg in TTT lasts a few pages at most, which would make for an anticlimactic and boring movie. While I was likewise shocked at the movie Faramir, I fully understand that in the books, that entire plot thread is devoid of conflict for a long time, which simply does not create a compelling narrative.

It seems like you're saying that media are different from each other, and therefore we shouldn't even try... But why can't we take the themes and ideas we find really cool about a game and make a great movie about it? Maybe we can, but it won't silence the people who complain character X was changed, or plot events happened in a different order than in the books. Some friends of mine have even complained that the Middle Earth map was different in the movie (when IIRC, the "original" map in the books wasn't even drawn by Tolkien himself, but extracted from his geographical descriptions). The point is, fans need to view these things a little more objectively.

And now, back on topic... If they can keep the great things we like about Halo while still making it Halo, I don't see why the movie won't be spectacular. I think the single greatest danger would be if they decided to leave off the Covenant side of the story, or neglect the criticism of theocracy and zealotry, which is highly relevant to the world we live in today. I do hope they leave out the excruciating and repetitive Library level, though.

Why the hate for Lord of the Rings?

[Rapter09]

Peter and Fran changed some things. Some of them were small. Some of them were so big that they stood in the face of lunacy. But the fact remains that the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies were a near-perfect adaption, and a celebration of the Greatest Book of All Time. If they can channel that into Halo, I think it will be a great movie.