Mass Effect Movie - Drew Karpyshyn's Opinion

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Drew Karpyshyn gives his opinion on how the upcoming movie adaptation will have to make some concessions. He hopes the focus of the movie will be on humanity as the newcomer on the galactic stage.

Kotaku asked Drew Karpyshyn, the man who lead the creation of the series’ universe, what the movie should do and not do. “I know fans don’t want to hear this, but you have to remove some of the characters. I think you just have to realise we can’t tell everything that’s in the game in a two-hour movie. Some of them are just going to be cameos, like in Ocean’s Eleven. ‘Oh, that guy was in there. I don’t even remember his name, but he’s the bomb guy.’ It’s going to be a muddled mess if you don’t do that.”

“If you say ‘We want this relationship between Shepard and Liara because it parallels humanity’s relationship with the various alien species,’ then you don’t even use certain characters at that point. Now Ashley’s gone. Then people are going to go ‘Oh, Ashley’s gone. What the heck?’”

The movie version of Shepard will also present a problem, as it’s impossible to reflect the millions upon millions of different versions that exist because of character choices. “Obviously, you’re going to have to define Shepard which is going to annoy a lot of the fans. That is something you just can’t avoid as a film. You just have to bite the bullet and realize that’s going to happen,” Karpyshyn says.

Whatever concessions need to be made, Karpyshyn really hopes the main focus of the movie will be mankind’s status as a newcomer on the galactic stage. “As far as what I think they really need to leave in, for me, Mass Effect is really about this idea that humanity is the newcomer and trying to prove themselves to the other races or trying to find their place.”

“Humans as newcomers will allow you to have these different species and lets viewers react to them. Shepard is trying to find his way through as the first human Spectre. For me, I hope that’s one of the things I really hope they’re able to capture in the film if and when it ever gets made,”
Fingers crossed everyone. Drew should be the lead writer, or at least give his knowledge for the script.
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Mass Effect is really about this idea that humanity...
Cut the crap, make an action movie, put Garrus sniping and Miranda butt in it and it's sold.
 
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Garrus definitely has to be sniping stuff. He also has to do some calibrations.

Anyway, I would be rather surprised if this doesn't fail miserably. No offense, but the story has already been told in a rather cinematic way, so unless they tell a different story with a different set of characters, the movie will likely end up being a B-version of Mass Effect.
 
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Make it a mini series instead and you won't have to cut so much stuff and you leave more room for character development.
 
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Make it a mini series instead and you won't have to cut so much stuff and you leave more room for character development.

Ditto. Even though i'm not much of a fan of the Mass Effect games as a whole (mostly because of inane gameplay and stupid deus ex machina ending) i still liked the story enough to want to see it done justice in another medium. The only thing is their story just wouldn't work well as one movie. There's plenty of these little story arks and planets in the game, that could work very well as episodes in a miniseries (And that quite honestly are much more interesting than save the universe from ancient evil). Tying this story together to make one movie out of it would mean, that pretty much all of what defined the game would have to be cut and the extremely boring and cliched overarching story would be the only thing left.
 
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It's just going be yet another shitty movie based on a video game. I'm surprised anyone is still trying this with the record that game to movie adaptions have. In general, they've pretty much all been terrible.

The only films that I thought were semi-decent were the first Resident Evil and Silent Hill movies, and even those were sub-par by most standards. The rest of them range from mediocre to downright embarrassing.
 
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Well, one day we're bound to get a strong movie doing justice to the material. It's just a matter of time. When that happens, Hollywood is going to go crazy and they'll start making movies of every hit game that ever came out.

THEN we'll have a real reason to be sick of games that become movies :)
 
I suspect the first one will be the Warcraft movie, simply because Blizzard won't accept a half-assed version of Warcraft. The brand is worth too much at this point, so they'll definitely have an AAA budget, actors and director.

It won't be very original, but it will be a blockbuster.
 
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Bioware expanding the exploitation of the Mass Effect franchise. That is their best asset.
Most high profile if not the only Sci Fi franchise over the last decade.
The scifi franchise that has shaped a whole generation of players.
 
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Yes, but only if they make it a good movie. If they make a typical game-based B-movie, it will only weaken the franchise the way DA2 weakened the Dragon Age franchise.
 
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At this point I honestly don't care. I played Mass Effect, I finished it, and I'm done with it. They can make a movie, but I won't watch it. I'm sure the clips of Miranda's butt will wind up on Youtube soon enough. :)
 
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If Garrus does the awkward dance with the corny/silly line to Fem Shep, it's sold for me ;)

Just kidding. I'm not interested in movie. I reckon ME2 was already interactive movie and I don't need to watch it again. I haven't read much about it, so I don't know whether the movie is about ME series or ME1, but if it is ME1, hell, I'm not watching for sure. Hated Kaidan.
 
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