Activision and Paramount announced that they will be working together to make a Call of Duty (COD) film, but with no details as to which Call of Duty series they’ll be adapting or who will be part of it, the announcement leaves me feeling apprehensive about the project.
The last time Paramount adapted a game into live-action was the Halo series, which was a critical success but not a fan favourite, as it deviated from the source material.
Knowing that Paramount has deviated from a franchise’s source material in the past, it doesn’t give me any confidence that they will be faithful to the adaptation of COD.
They can simply mash up elements from sub-franchises and call it a day, but I don’t want that.
I want them to give us an adaptation of one of Call of Duty’s sub-franchises, and have it be accurate to either one of the mainline games, Black Ops or Modern Warfare.
Both of those franchises are beloved in the Call of Duty universe, and if they were to make a faithful adaptation of either one of those games, it would be great, but for this to happen, they need to bring in a writing team that has played the games.
One of Hollywood's biggest problems when it comes to making video game adaptations is bringing people onto the project who have never played the games.
This leads to the film just adding in a bunch of set pieces and moments from the series, and adding them into the film as a reference for fanbases to find.
This style of adaptation is honestly annoying because it feels like I’m playing a game of “Guess this Reference” every time I watch a video game movie.
Another thing studios love to do is to hire high-value actors who don’t fit the role of the character, for example, Mark Wahlberg as Sully from Uncharted.
Though some would say Tom Holland wasn’t a good Nathan Drake, I think he sold the part well, unlike his co-star Mark Wahlberg, who just never felt like Sully, which is possibly due to the writers not understanding what type of character Sully was.
For the COD movie, I don’t want them to have a beloved character like Captain Price and completely miss the mark with his character.
I want the actors and writers to understand each character deeply and to have some knowledge of the franchise by playing the games.
Often, then not, directors say that not playing the games gives them a chance to give a different take on the franchise, while that may be true, that just means they want to make their own film with the IP’s name on it.
In reality, what directors and producers of Video Game adaptations need to realize is that they aren’t making their own project; they are adapting an already existing project onto a different medium.
You aren’t reinventing the wheel, you’re just making it more complicated.
For this film to work, every person involved in this production just needs to experience the Call of Duty universe and understand what they are adapting and maybe then will my fear lessen and my hopefulness rise.