Gamertell

Caveat Lector: Spoilers for Bioshock are all over the place.

There’s been a great deal of talk this past week about Hollywood production studios courting Take 2 in an attempt to turn 2007 blockbuster Bioshock into a feature film. Variety’s The Cut Scene blog (a popular name, apparently) recently reported:

“[Y]ou’d be hard pressed to find a production company, studio, or agency with at least one videogame savvy employee that isn’t interested in ‘Bioshock.’ Take 2 has been bombarded with requests from producers and studios interested in obtaining the rights, agents interested in representing them, etc. But so far they’re playing it tight to the vest. While Take 2 hasn’t closed the door, it isn’t ready to make a deal yet. Are they waiting for the right offer? Hoping to parlay it into some bigger alliance with an agency or studio?”

There’s no doubt that the underwater shooter had some of the most immersive atmosphere, cinematic set pieces, compelling characters, and sophisticated storytelling in any game last year (and perhaps ever).

But could it be made into a film?

Or perhaps the bigger question, SHOULD it be made into a film?

The essence of the Bioshock experience was the illusion of control and interactivity, which became a sort of commentary on the entire medium of gaming. When the shocking twist in the middle of the game reveals that your character – and you, the player- have been manipulated and told where to go an do what to do, it puts the entire game and the entire context of what it is to play a game under a microscope. The words “would you kindly” have been used as a mind-control trigger to make your character act in a certain way (“would you kindly find a wrench”), but you – the player – obey without questioning, simply because that is how a game is played. You pop in a disc, you learn the rules of the game, and you behave in ways that are consistent with that world. Bioshock dares the player to question this relationship.

In fact, I would argue that this commentary on interactivity is precisely what sets Bioshock apart from any other big-budget cinematic videogame. A game such as Halo, for example, could be made into a film successfully (with the qualifier that the filmmakers know how to create a decent action Sci-Fi flick) because the story itself could be told well in the film medium. A straight-on retelling of the events in Bioshock would amount to nothing more than a pale imitation of a fantastic, innovative game experience. Frankly, we’ve seen enough of that in our game movies.

However, there is one sure-fire way a Bioshock film could succeed: make it a prequel. With the rich back-story and interesting characters present in the game, a prequel film could chronicle the rise and fall of Rapture, with a focus on Andrew Ryan’s vision and fall from grace. All of the Randian implications (the game’s dystopian setting borrows heavily from Ayn Rand’s objectivism) could be touched upon, the already-established characters fleshed out, and the narrative expanded and brought to life.

Following the prequel format would make sense - a fairly detailed back-story emerged from the audio recordings, visual clues, and staged events within the game, giving a potential filmmaker an excellent road map for the narrative. Plus, the epic scale and philosophical undertones of the story would lend themselves beautifully to film, and a skilled screenwriter could literally have a ball with all of the colorful characters.

In this way, a filmmaker could create work that doesn’t impede on Bioshock’s essential gameplay-as-story and gameplay-as-message core, and the film could still remain true to the property. The potential for an interesting, original, and legitimately good game-to-movie adaptation is there, and I hope that whatever arrangement Take 2 makes (if they do decide to go forth with a film deal) they keep this point in mind.

Read [The Cut Scene]

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