I’m sure there are other examples, but the news Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kings of Summer) will direct the adaptation of the video game Metal Gear Solid for Sony has me thinking of Marc Webb going from 500 Days of Summer to The Amazing Spider-Man and Colin Trevorrow going from Safety Not Guaranteed to Jurassic World and I can’t say I’m a fan of giving these indie directors these multi-million dollar, cookie cutter franchises as their second feature films.
I’m not at all a fan of Webb’s Spider-Man films, even if I thought The Amazing Spider-Man 2 showed a tiny bit of improvement, and as much as I enjoyed Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed, it’s one thing to direct a low budget sci-fi and quite another to step into the shoes of Steven Spielberg for a major, summer tentpole. Now, Vogt-Roberts is going to go from a “kids in the woods” coming-of-age dramedy to a black ops video game adaptation? Is it just me or does this seem like studios seeing an opportunity to get a competent young director they can boss around rather than assigning a director with some sort of track record? Hell, even Gavin Hood wasn’t ready to take on X-Men Origins: Wolverine after Tsotsi and Rendition.
The Konami video game centers on a character named Solid Snake, a soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility to neutralize the terrorist threat from Foxhound, a renegade special forces unit. Snake must liberate two hostages, one the president of a major arms manufacturer, confront the terrorists, and stop them from launching a nuclear strike.
Given the track-record of video games-turned-movies I have little to no confidence in this movie, especially with Vogt-Roberts at the helm. Kings of Summer did nothing for me, playing like little more than a “Sundance movie” with a few jokes and little kids playing in the woods. I don’t know, maybe you saw something there that led you to believe he’d be the guy, especially on a film they’ve been Deadline]
