Duncan Jones' Warcraft - Part 3

[Octoberist]

Yes!

 

[Octoberist]

And treat Link as if he's Mad Max or The Driver. Speaks only when it's needed. Give him like 15 lines of dialog.

 

[StormC]

That's why I hope if there is a 'Legend of Zelda' movie, it's done in a way where there is a strong Studio Ghibli influence. Less medieval, more fairy tale in tone. Plus it has creatures that are NOT orcs or the usually fantasy troupes.

Yeah, I'm not a big medieval fantasy fan, but I've always loved the Zelda games because Hyrule and the other settings are all so colorful and varied. Imagine the City In The Sky from Twilight Princess in live action. It'd be stunning.

And treat Link as if he's Mad Max or The Driver. Speaks only when it's needed. Give him like 15 lines of dialog.

Oh, I love this idea.

 

[Victarion]

They should pull from Majora's Mask - I haven't played the game, but it has some weird critters and looks fun.

 

[StormC]

Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game, but it might be a bit too offbeat to open a movie franchise with. It's very weird. It would be great to incorporate elements of it in a sequel, though, once the audience is comfortable with the series.

 

[Octoberist]

Yeah, I'm not a big medieval fantasy fan, but I've always loved the Zelda games because Hyrule and the other settings are all so colorful and varied. Imagine the City In The Sky from Twilight Princess in live action. It'd be stunning.



Oh, I love this idea.

yeah there's still knights and castle, but it's done in a Disney's Sleeping Beauty kind of way. They're not married to the idea of being realistically medieval. I think works for some stories like Game of Thrones.

That's why the Hobbit movies sorta suffered because the original story was written as a fairy tale. Because Jackson had to retrofit it all due to continuity, it feels like medival. The original dwarves where the types that had colorful hoods, not chain mail.

 

[Victarion]

Weird's my hook...

...that's why I liked the worldbuilding in the Mario movie

Is Mask a standalone game, sequel, or where does it fall in the game timeline?

 

[Octoberist]

I think that's the problem with high fantasy or at least, Hollywood's take on high fantasy. Some franchises are just stuck doing the Lord of the Rings model when you can do whatever you wanna do. Espcaillly when it's not 'earth' per say. Go Star Wars/Trek crazy with the creatures.

 

[StormC]

Is Mask a standalone game, sequel, or where does it fall in the game timeline?

It's a sequel to Ocarina Of Time starring the Link from that game, but it takes place in a parallel dimension with little to no connection to the storyline from OOT. It reuses characters from OOT but as alternate universe versions of them, and mostly focuses on Link dealing with the fallout of a Skull Kid that steals the Majora's Mask and causes chaos throughout the land.

No description can really do the game justice though. It's so bizarre and strange. I love it, but when it first came out people didn't really know what to think of it. Only as time went on did people really recognize it as one of the best in the series.

I think that's the problem with high fantasy or at least, Hollywood's take on high fantasy. Some franchises are just stuck doing the Lord of the Rings model when you can do whatever you wanna do. Espcaillly when it's not 'earth' per say. Go Star Wars/Trek crazy with the creatures.

This isn't necessarily just a problem with Hollywood. Video games and literature have had the same problem of sticking too much to Tolkien's version of the genre. Colorful adventures like TLOZ and ATLA are more the exception to the rule, sadly.

 

[Octoberist]

I had to figure out what ATLA was...Avatar: TLA.. Yes that took the model and gave it a nice Asian vibe, while Korra made steampunk cool.

 

[Victarion]

The Dark Tower could be one of the first big fantasy pics to do that. Depending on how well its made.

These are the more fantastic critters you'd find in the Dark Tower:

Spoiler

 

[Octoberist]

That's my fear with the Dark Tower; they may water down the 'weird'.

 

[Octoberist]

Even Willow attempts to be different with their creature designs.

 

[StormC]

I'd love to see them seriously keep the fourth wall stuff in Dark Tower with Stephen King in some capacity. Same with a theoretical Metal Gear Solid adaptation (though I doubt that will ever get off the ground now with Konami's current situation).

 

[Octoberist]

With Konami, I read up on them and how mis-managed they are. They wanna make pinball machines, and have demoted some of the employes to janitors. What in the world?

 

[StormC]

They got out of the AAA game business because they have no franchises with real clout in that area except for Metal Gear, which had been seeing diminishing returns for a while. Instead of trying to work with Kojima, they strangled their golden goose and pretty much forced him to leave after his contract was up - and thus Silent Hills went up in smoke too.

So now Metal Gear's corpse is being waved around on pachinko machines, and Kojima is making independent games at Sony. As a massive MGS fan I'm saddened, but at least Kojima is free to make the games he wants to now.

 

[Octoberist]

You can kinda say that the Japanese market is in a weird state right now. Square is fine because they have Crystal Dynamics and Eidos. Capcom is stuck doing the same franchises, but at least they're still relevant. I don't know what's going on with Namco and Tecmo anymore.

It seems like From Software is exploiting it, and has been on a roll for the past few years.

 

[Victarion]

What kind of issues would this movie have if Jones decided to adapt the Arthas storyline instead of the beginning of the war?

@Consona - Where would you categorize something like Robin Hobb's assassin novels? The only exotic creatures there are dragons that start out as larval sea-serpents; there's also humans that undergo mutations from existing in close proximity to dragons and start looking like Suicide Squad's Killer Croc

 

[The Big G]

What kind of issues would this movie have if Jones decided to adapt the Arthas storyline instead of the beginning of the war?

First off you need to introduce a few things:

1. Lorderon-Arthas is the prince of the largest Human Kingdom, which is on the other side of the Eastern Kingdoms. So they would have to find away to naturally move the story from Stormwind to Lorderon, without the Second War. Because the Second War is really the Horde vs the humans of Lorderon (because the Horde burned Stormwind to the ground in the games).

2. Paladins/The Holy Light-When we first meet Arthas he's a member of the Knights of the Silver Hand. Which is a group of Knights who got trained to use the power of "the Holy Light" to complement their martial abilities. You could remove them being Paladins, and just make them knights...but then you would lose out on some cool magic/sword combo action.

Plus your probably going to have to do a time skip. Of like at least 15 years. Arthas would probably be about 3 years old at the time of the first movie.

Also you have to figure out what to do with the Orcs/Horde. Now for the Human/Scourge campaigns of WC3. Their was minimal Orc/Horde presence. It was mostly Humans, Undead, Elves, and a few dwarfs. So you could technically leave them out...but I think that might alienate fans.

In addition you have to decide how you want to pace the movie. Because really Arthas's story of becoming the Lich King...could technically be 3 movies. One movie being the human campaign, the second being the scourge campaign, and then the 3rd being the scourge campaign from the Frozen Throne. And for that to work you need Illidan. And to get Illidan you need to do the Orc & Night Elf campaigns of WC3. I'm sure the are a ways of slimming things down...but the ilidan vs Arthas fight at the foot of icecrown is just too good to cut out.

And then some fans might take issue with the ending...because after he becomes the Lich King...he pretty much goes to sleep until Wrath of the Lich King.

Long story short...there are hurdles. Some big, some small.

 

[Octoberist]

I think maybe Warcraft's mythos are just...too big. There has been novels right? How good were they?

By using the novels as a guideline, it can help streamline the narrative a bit.

 

[Victarion]

I think maybe Warcraft's mythos are just...too big. There has been novels right? How good were they?

By using the novels as a guideline, it can help streamline the narrative a bit.

I'm no filmmaker, but adapting them like you would a comic movie might work. There you don't adapt a specific comic, you take the good stuff and supplement it with your own to put out a watchable product.

 

[Punisher_MAX]

Elder Scrolls might make for a good movie if you focus on a story set in the world without having to follow any real quest line.

 

[StormC]

I'm no filmmaker, but adapting them like you would a comic movie might work. There you don't adapt a specific comic, you take the good stuff and supplement it with your own to put out a watchable product.

This is how I've always felt about video game adaptations. Make a new story with the lore, characters and spirit of the material you're adapting. You could make, say, a really killer Mario cartoon doing this because the games have so much material to work with.

 

[The Big G]

I think maybe Warcraft's mythos are just...too big. There has been novels right? How good were they?

By using the novels as a guideline, it can help streamline the narrative a bit.

The novels set in the Warcraft universe have all been pretty side stories/quests about NPCs that have little to some impact on the world. There are a few books that you can take some notes from.

My idea for WC2 actually takes some good notes from Day of the Dragon by Richard Knaak.

And I don't think Warcraft's lore is too big...its just that there needs to be major planning to make a cohesive sensible narrative. Its just to get to the big characters (Arthas, Jaina, Thrall, Illidan, Malfurion, Tyrande ect) you got to go through WC2. That being said there's some major wiggle room that this new timeline could give Duncan and Blizz the wiggle room they need to for the most part bypass WC2

 

[OutOfBoose]

82% drop in US. Well, as everyone predicted, Dory (with a bit of help from Conjuring 2) hit the final nail into Warcraft's box office.