Following the critical and commercial success of Kong: Skull Island, American director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has found himself in high demand. Rather than shy away from the limelight the young director has used his newfound success as a stepping stone to what promises to be the first truly epic big-screen adaptation of a video game property with his planned Metal Gear movie. Speaking recently with Collider Roberts elaborated on what he has planned for his vision of Hideo Kojima's classic series...
"With Metal Gear, absolutely, my thing is we need to not just make a Metal Gear movie, but we need to double-down so hard on the oddities that make Metal Gear idiosyncratic and what it is—Kojima’s voice, the fourth wall, the goofiness, the anime, the manga, the hyper-violence, the talking philosophies, the characters who just represent ideologies. These things are Metal Gear, and I think, when you look at Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s like, “What genre is that before that movie came out?'"
"James [Gunn] doubled-down on that world and said, 'No. This is what’s going to make people love it,' as opposed to saying, 'Uh, it’s kind of like this' or 'It’s kind of like that.' 'It’s sort of a little bit of that.' No. That was able to be what it needs to be, and so for me, in the success of Kong, in the success of Logan, in the success of Deadpool, I’m able to go to the studio and say, 'Let’s double-down on this and make this the absolute best version of Metal Gear that it needs to be.'"
"The first draft that we were doing on Metal Gear, I didn’t have the standing that I, to some degree, do now in the success of Kong and so, there always was a little bit of trying to sort of thread the needle, but making something that people felt could get made and was safe. I give so much credit to my people at Sony and my producers at Metal Gear now, because post-Kong, I was able to sort of say, 'Hey, let’s all put our heads together and let’s acknowledge that this previous draft, as much as I was trying to fight for what I believed Metal Gear was, we were still trying to kind of thread the needle a little bit, because we needed to get that movie made.'"
"Then you’re like, 'Okay. We’ll fix this later. We’ll fix it,' but I was able to stop and say, 'No. This is not the approach. Let’s make this exactly what it needs to be, which is Kojima’s voice, and find a way to filter that through a cinematic language.' I think most video game movies have a problem, because they do try and have one foot in one door and another foot in a completely door."
"On one hand, I’m trying to make a game that Metal Gear fans who are so passionate say, 'That’s my Metal Gear. I’m so proud that this is on screen. I’m so proud it’s on screen this way. This is exactly what I knew it could be a movie. When I first played Metal Gear or when I first played Metal Gear Solid' or whatever they got in the franchise when they were a kid playing that game, the movie they saw in their mind, I’m going to make that."
"On the other hand, it’s a tricky thing where I just gave an hour-long talk with Kojima at E3 and I asked him point-blank in front of an audience, because we had a long conversation about him and film and I said, 'What would your advice be to me? What would you have to say?' And he said, 'Do what I would do. Betray your audience,' which is just such a Kojima thing to do. I want to be very respectful to the canon. I want to be very respectful to the characters and the story, but it will not be a pure adaptation, necessarily, of one of the games."
"I’m going to be … I’m doing something really interesting with a time device that I’m excited about that I’m so happy, once again, I pitched this. Much like when Kong when I pitched that kind of Harryhausen movie with 'Platoon.' I thought they were going to laugh me out of the room. This is the type of idea I pitched to Sony saying, 'This is what I think would be fucking badass' and they were like, 'Cool. Let’s do that.' We’re playing with all of the different elements of it and we’re sort of combining different themes and different arcs and things like that, but I can’t really get into specifics on it."
Read the full interview HERE where Vogt-Roberts also talks about his clash with YouTubers Cinema Sins, his work on the live-action trailer for Destiny 2 and the forthcoming Godzilla vs Kong.
