16 Reasons Why the <em>Shadow of the Colossus</em> Movie Will Be Better than the Game

[This entry is also posted on my GameSpot blog.]

In 2007′s Reign Over Me, in which Adam Sandler played an uncharacteristically but surprisingly effective dramatic role as a man who lost his family in the 9/11 attacks, Shadow of the Colossus took center stage as the game that he and Don Cheadle’s character – Sandler’s character’s college roommate – would play together. Unlike many films which use generic, pregenerated footage for video games (based on popular titles but not actually from anything real), this movie chose to go with a real game. And what a choice it was: for perhaps the first (and, so far, only) time in film history, video games were portrayed maturely and significantly – and to great allegorical effect.

So I think we can all agree that it’s about time that Shadow of the Colossus got to star in a movie itself – or, rather, be a movie. That’s exactly what’s going to happen, too, if Sony Pictures goes forward with its plans to adapt. To which I say: Great! Because Shadow of the Colossus is really more fit to be a movie than a game.

Now, I know that might be a hard pill to swallow – the book is always better than the movie, and movies based on video games have a horrific track record thus far (as I have observed before). But I’m prepared to support my assertion with sixteen – count ‘em! – SIXTEEN reasons that the Shadow of the Colossus movie should be a superior product to the game upon which it is based.

Counting down:

16. Star Power

This seems pretty trivial, of course, but everything is inevitably better with as many major celebrities attached to it as possible. It’s worked for countless ensemble movies (Troy, the Spy Kids franchise, and other lesser examples) and those games with big stars attached to them are invariably better than their star-less competitors. Just think of how much better Tachyon: The Fringe is compared to similar games because of Bruce Campbell’s participation!

For Shadow of the Colossus, there are endless casting options: they could use a TV heartthrob, like Smallville frontman Tom Welling, or go for the big bucks and bring in Bruce Willis or Johnny Depp. Alternately, they could appeal to the young, mostly pre-teen audience which obviously comprises most game players and cast the Jonas Brothers as Wander. That’s right: all of them.

15. Constant Reminders of the Title of the Movie

Shadow of the Colossus‘s title makes sense, I guess, since colossi are big and cast shadows (or something?), but the game’s script definitely doesn’t get its money’s worth on it. The movie should, like smart adaptations such as the recent Watchmen, insert the title of the movie into any bit of dialogue where it could possibly fit so that we don’t forget what it is we’re seeing.

14. We’ll Be Able to Understand What They’re Saying

The characters in Shadow of the Colossus (and its equally-garbled predecessor Ico) mumble their way through the entire experience, using something that is clearly supposed to resemble actual speech (though in what language I can’t even begin to speculate). The sounds these characters make sound like the sound director (somehow!) fumbled the “talking noises” that have given such delightful characterization to figures in games like Okami and Banjo-Kazooie. Realizing their mistake, it seems, Team Ico provided subtitles and invented a “make the best of a bad situation” story about “unique languages” of the “game world” (though I don’t think anyone’s really buying that; what do gamers care about intricacies like language, culture, and society? We can’t kill those things!). Fortunately, a Shadow of the Colossus movie would certainly be localized appropriately, as long as Mel Gibson didn’t suddenly attach himself to the project.

13. Cooler Gear

Let’s face it: Wander’s inventory’s pretty pathetic. Fortunately, Hollywood’s dream-makers could easily spruce it up with some really awesome stuff, like a lightning-bolt-thrower-gun or hydraulic jump boots for Argo. It would make Wander’s job easier and he’d look cooler doing it.

12. A Theme Song

Like any self-respecting video game property, a Shadow of the Colossus movie would have to have a theme song, probably composed and performed by one of today’s hottest pop (or maybe alternative rock) acts. I mean, how perfect would it be if the Jonas Brothers played Wander and wrote a rockin’ theme song to play over the end credits and forever signify the movie? Pretty darn perfect, says I.

11. Shorter

Shadow of the Colossus isn’t that long of a game, but these days the average American can’t be bothered to pay attention to any one thing for more than about fifteen seconds at a time. With a few liberties taken with the plot (what there is of it!), the Shadow of the Colossus movie could easily clock in at no more than an hour and a half – and that only because if it were any shorter it wouldn’t really be a movie anymore.

10. Less Frustrating Obstacles

We all know that nothing could shrug off arrows as easily as colossi do in the game, and having to jump through the game’s exhaustive hoops to kill every colossus (and then figuring out a whole new strategy for the next one!) was dreary and irritating. No one wants to scale one colossus only to have to ride the next through the sky and chase the third around on your horse while firing arrows at it. The movie will at least take the burden of these tasks out of our hands, and at best will let Wander kill these things with some Legolas-style archery.

9. More Awesome Protagonist

That seems like a good segue into this point. Wander’s kind of a wimp. Look how he runs! And he’s all sad about his girlfriend of whatever. Whatever. In the movie, Wander will be what a real hero should be like: capable of surfing down staircases on shields while firing arrows with pinpoint accuracy, only to spit some snarky comment to his fallen foes afterwards. “Looks like it’s my shadow you should be worrying about now, colossus!” And how!

8. More Plot

The plot of the game is pretty straightforward: kid takes sword and goes to kill monsters for an inadequately established reason. In keeping with many film adaptations, thankfully, a Shadow of the Colossus movie would have to add at least one other romance (besides the inadequately explained relationship between Wander and the girl he’s trying to resurrect) and probably a few extra characters so that there’s a conspiracy or something going on (maybe with those soldiers who show up near the end of the game). If the movie is at least PG-13 they can add some much needed “action”, if you get my drift.

Likewise, if they’re really on their game, they might add other extra features to spice things up. Like, maybe we’ll find out at the end that the colossi are actually interdimensional beings!

7. Better Graphics

Even considering that Shadow of the Colossus was on the PlayStation 2, a last-gen system, we can’t really give it any props for graphics. I mean, I guess the buildings and the colossi and stuff looked all right, but things like leaves and grass looked completely two-dimensional. And don’t even get me started on how eerily smooth Wander looked. With the power of a major motion picture budget, and groups like Industrial Light & Magic, we can definitely expect much better looking foliage. Maybe they’ll even make the movie look really awesome by giving it a Beowulf-style treatment.

4-6. More Characters, Character Depth, and Personality

There’s so much left (literally) unsaid in Shadow of the Colossus that the script writer is practically working with a tabula rasa here; if there’s anything we’ve learned from video games, it’s that silent heroes don’t work – there’s no way to characterize them unless they talk a lot. The script writer, Justin Marks – whose recent work includes Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (which I haven’t seen but am certain is the best thing Kristin Kreuk has been in since Smallville) – can hopefully take the childish, lackluster characterization of our protagonist, Wander, and turn his journey into the kind of “gritty, realistic character piece” that he made out of The Legend of Chun-Li. Team Ico has done so little world-building in their actual games that, as Marks points out, “it’s so sparse that you can start building right away.” Slap in some witticism and tongue-in-cheek pop culture commentary and we’ve got a really great movie there.

Granted, Wander will need someone to talk to in the movie, since he’s alone for most of the game (save for his horse Agro), but Hollywood will hopefully manage what they’ve done with many other properties that lacked: add a comedic relief sidekick. Heck, if they wanted to, they could just make Agro a talking horse. (As long as we are realistic this should go fine; as much as we’d all like to see something the caliber of a Jar Jar or a Scotty from the new Star Trek, we have to be prepared for something less.)

3. The Colossi

I think it goes without saying that the movie’s art team would throw away the faux Mesoamerican look that the sixteen colossi in the game enjoyed because, hey, it’s kind of weird. No doubt they’ll trade this style for something much more appealing and awesome: near-skeletal beasts which almost appear of have robotic parts, or gigantic undead animals, or good old-fashioned reptiles in the spirit of Jurassic Park 3 and Reign of Fire.

Of course, visual style isn’t the only thing we can expect change in: watch for the colossi to gain personalities (some villainous, some comical, all beneficial!), special powers (like laser eyes), and some kind of evil plot to perform so that we can really tell that Wander needs to stop them.

2. Atmosphere

Shadow of the Colossus presents the player with this huge, open world rife with ruins and mystery which is just out of reach, never to be solved except in the player’s imagination. The sun always shines and the whole place is suffused with a soft golden light. This is all well and good, but we’re talking about a kid killing monsters, here. In the movie, the world will be darker in the right places, thanks to the evil that the colossi bring with them. We’ll probably also see some clear signs of how they brought down the civilization which left the ruins behind or something in a poignant commentary on man’s effect on nature or something. A shift in atmosphere can also add suspenseful moments when Wander is journeying down dark tunnels, uncertain of what might be around the next corner, as the music reaches a fever pitch. Much better than this monotonous, “wonders of an ancient glory” stuff from the game.

1. Good and Evil

Finally, the filmmakers can fix this huge snafu in the game where what Wander is doing doesn’t seem like it’s totally right. I’m sure that’s just a problem of sloppy writing and poor localization, but there it is. Throughout the game, I had a hard time figuring out what evil the colossi were committing for which I was punishing them. The dialogue also gave the (I’m sure mistaken!) impression that my actions had consequences, which as we all know is not the case in video games, where we can just do whatever we want. I had to spend a little too much time (meaning any) trying to figure out what was right and wrong in the game, and I realized I just didn’t have enough information. Sloppy.

So the movie can take all this and rework it a bit so that it can tell us, the audience, who we need to root for (Wander) and why (because slaying the evil colossi will bring his girlfried back to life), and we’ll have the added bonus of not feeling like we’re doing something wrong since we won’t actually be doing anything. (Seriously, the agency that players have in video games can sometimes be a real detractor from the experience, can’t it?) Lastly, of course, the movie can fix that WTF moment at the end where Wander turns into a monster or something and kills those soldiers. I’m sure they were from an evil empire or something but the game just didn’t explain it well. I, for one, will feel a lot better when the movie can make up for the game’s mistakes in this area.

And there you have it: 16 ways in which the Shadow of the Colossus movie will be better than the game. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a great game, and it deserves all the attention it gets. But it does have some flaws that the movie can fix. We’ve probably still got a while to wait for this movie to even start production, much less hit theaters, but when it does I’ll be first in line.