Oscar Isaac Offers Brief Update on His METAL GEAR SOLID Movie
It’s taking forever to get this Metal Gear Solid movie made! Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has been developing this film adaptation for years. He’s teased what he’s been looking to do with the film, he’s been getting fans pumped up, but there hasn’t been much movement or discussion on it recently.
The biggest thing to happen to the project in the past couple of years was the casting of Oscar Isaac in the role of Solid Snake. He’s perfect for the role! He previously explained the creative team was still "searching" for the right story, and compared that search to "climbing through air ducts" like Solid Snake.
Almost a year after saying that, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. In a recent update with CB, Isaac said: "We want it to happen. Be excited. What's the script? What's the story? What's the take? [...] But hopeful that comes to fruition because there's so much potential for that. It's an incredible game. It's my favorite."
The story for the original game follows Snake, a soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility to neutralize the terrorist threat from Foxhound, which is a renegade special forces unit.
When previously talking about the adaptation, the director said that he is shooting for an R-rating. He wants to bring the full-on insanity of the game to the film: "It’s about doing it for a price so you can make the riskier, balls-to-the-wall, Kojima-san version of it."
The director also talked about a script that was written for the movie by Derek Connolly, saying he loves what he has: “Even if I wasn’t involved in this movie I would read that script and say, ‘Holy shit.' It represents a different approach to a video game movie. It represents a different approach to how a three-act structure is put on screen.”
So, why aren’t they just moving forward with that script? Why are they still searching for the right story? Maybe when Isaac came on board, he wasn’t so enthusiastic about it. Vogt-Roberts previously explained that he believes he figured out a way to make the story work on-screen, saying:
"The thing about Metal Gear is it’s intentionally sprawling and it’s intentionally dense. It’d be super easy to do one sliver of it or do too much at once. And we’ve spent the last little bit really trying to figure out, to me, the most Kojima-san inspired way to tackle as much of that story through a device that I think allows you to tap in…how to put this without spoiling it?…regardless, we have a device that I think allows us to respect the breadth of the franchise, respect the sprawling nature of the franchise, respect the somewhat convoluted nature of the franchise at times. But to still show you the mirrors. What I mean by that is all those timelines fundamentally exist because they show the repetition of war throughout time. They show the repetition and the cycle of pain throughout time. So it ’s almost impossible to tell just one story now. You need the full throughline of what this game is about."
The filmmaker also shared some concept art for the film, which you can check out here. Hopefully the film project actually starts to make some real movement soon. This is a film I’ve been excitedly waiting for!