Jordan Vogt-Roberts discussed his two upcoming film adaptations: Gundam and Metal Gear Solid.
The director spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the progress of both projects, first discussing his long road to making the Metal Gear movie and landing Oscar Isaac as Solid Snake. "Metal Gear is something I've been trying to Sisyphus push up the hill for seven-plus years," Vogt-Roberts said. "That game and Kojima-san's world mean the world to me, and that's something that I'm very proud of what we're doing. I think it's very Kojima, punk rock, twisty."
"You're dealing with these characters that are walking, talking ideologies," Vogt-Roberts continued. "They all represent different slivers and ideas of this basic question: How do we make the world whole again? They are all trapped in the cycle of pain."
In avoiding the problem that plagues many video game adaptations, Vogt-Roberts explained what his approach is when it comes to taking an experience he loves and translating it into a different medium. "Those aren't one-to-one translations," he said. "So, I think you really need to understand when playing a game, what it elicits from you, why it makes you feel certain ways, what the tone that it evokes is."
Vogt-Roberts went on to talk about the recently announced live-action Gundam movie coming from Legendary and Netflix. "Gundam, likewise, is the godfather of otaku culture in a lot of ways without exaggeration. It is the grandfather to modern anime and thus most Japanese things that we love. It really is wild what Gundam was doing on television in an animated format in the '70s and the complexity and the weight of the stories they were telling."
"My goal is for all of the people who might say, 'I don't know where to start [with Gundam],' I want to create this film and give them an access point where you can say, 'This is where you start. This is your entry point,'" Vogt-Roberts continued. "Where Gundam fans say, 'Yeah, this is my Gundam.'"
The director concluded by teasing that the two big IPs aren't the only existing properties he's working on. "There are other game things and other [intellectual properties] that I'm working on, but a big part of my driving force is to be a part of these things and to help rewrite the narrative of how people perceive these franchises and how they properly get translated," the director said.
For now, however, his focus is on the Gundam and Metal Gear Solid films. "I love both these things to death," he concluded.
Source: Entertainment Weekly