According to a much-quoted comment on the red carpet Angry Director George Miller would love his biggest fan Hideo Kojima is set to make a Mad Max video game. “You know, I’m one of those people who would rather not do anything unless I can do it at the highest level,” says Miller, who has an acting role in Kojima’s upcoming film. Death Stranding 2told Gaming Bible“I just spoke to Kojima here […] and he would take it on, but he has so much fantastic stuff in his head that I would never ask him to do it.” It’s a polite, professional compliment from one writer to another, modestly assuming that Kojima has better things to do.
My first thought was to agree. Whatever you think of Kojima and his games, he definitely has a distinctive vision and his work carries a strong personal stamp. Making a film adaptation seems like a waste of his talent, even for such a film-obsessed creator. You wouldn’t expect George Miller to make a Metal Gear Solid movie, would you?
My second thought was: Damn, a George Miller Metal Gear Solid movie would be impressively.
My third thought was: Isn’t it a double standard, even a kind of snobbery, that Miller and Kojima don’t consider themselves suitable to adapt each other’s works? Nobody would bat an eyelid if a famous film writer (such as Paul Thomas Anderson) adapted a novel (such as Thomas Pynchon’s Wine countrywhat Anderson is according to rumours at the moment). Such an adaptation is seen as a conversation between two great artists, with one bringing his own perspective to the other’s work. But we’re conditioned to think of crossovers from movies to video games (and vice versa) as mere brand extensions – because that’s what they mostly are. (Including the not-bad, not-great 2015 Mad Max Game, which Miller told Gaming Bible, “was not as good as [he] wanted to be”, deserves an angry answer by one of the developers.)
In his comments on Kojima, Miller dared to dream of something better. So we follow this Platonic ideal of adaptation and assume it is possible, if only because it should be possible. Does Kojima really fit Mad Max? I’m not sure. Miller’s world is famously a world of few words. (Anya Taylor-Joy says she went months on Angry‘s set without speaking.)
Kojima’s worlds… are not. Mad Max’s aesthetic is anarchic, crude, unabashedly metal. Kojima’s aesthetic is techno-organic, militarized, sinister but tasteful. Kojima’s gameplay is meticulous and detail-obsessed; Miller’s action films are about grand gestures on a blank desert canvas. I think Kojima would smooth out Mad Max and flatten its pop iconography with too much world-building.
Turn it around, though – imagine a Metal Gear movie where the dialogue is stripped down to the bare essentials, the nuclear fear is implied rather than spelled out in philosophizing monologues, the imagery amped up even more. Consider what it would look like if Miller’s talent for extravagant introductions of offbeat characters was applied to the big Metal Gear antagonists like Psycho Mantis. Think of the insane intensity he would have his actors bring to Kojima’s operatic spy story. Consider that Miller would insist that the props department make a actually working Metal Gear mechanism.
Of course, that could never work. Aside from anything else, Miller would have to work with Konami instead of Kojima Productions on the project, and Konami, which hasn’t shown a great sense of Metal Gear’s appeal since an acrimonious split with Kojima, might not understand it either. I’m sure there are many reasons why development on the actual Metal Gear Solid movie has stalled, but I’d bet Konami is one of them.
So no, I’m not seriously suggesting that George Miller, who turns 80 next year, should spend his time making a Metal Gear Solid movie. He’s got too much fantastic stuff on his mind. But imagine that. It would be awesome.
