Jordan Vogt-Roberts Looks to Break Video Game Movie Curse with METAL GEAR SOLID By Leaning Into its Weirdness

Video game movie adaptations are typically not well received by audiences. Prince of Persia wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great. Super Mario Bros was utter garbage. Then you’ve got Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Warcraft, etc. It’s like how anime movie adaptations struggle. However, Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is hoping to make a good video game movie with Metal Gear Solid. His idea is to lean into what makes the game so weird. At San Diego Comic-Con, Vogt-Roberts told ScreenRant his plan:

“You know the beauty of Metal Gear and the reason I give our producers and the studio a ton of credit is because I went in and said, ‘Let’s embrace the fact that this is weird.’ Let’s embrace the fact that there are supernatural elements to this game that are horror elements to this game. Let’s embrace the fact that there are weird Japanese quirkiness and idiosyncrasies and oddities that are all framed around this very self-serious world and let’s lean into those things and let’s have it be unique and unlike anything else because it represents those things and let’s have the rest of the world fall in love with it because of that as opposed to trying to make it something else.”

There’s certainly plenty of weirdness in those games. I’ve heard stories of some people needing to change the controller port mid-game. Do you think embracing the weirdness of Metal Gear Solid is the key to making it a good video game movie? Do you think this is a lost cause?