Apparently Hogwart's Legacy is going to be a TV show now!

 Something's wrong, I can feel it...

See now this is what I was talking about! I have been keeping up with the Last of Us as it's ticked along in episodes, I and several million others if those generous viewing figures are anything to go by, and as good as the show is (if slightly rushed in events) I've always found myself disquiet about the precedent it's success will set upon the 'marketplace of ideas' that is modern Hollywood. And yes, I do use 'Hollywood' as a shorthand for all modern day media, even though I know that is factually a bit spotty; if only I cared enough to stop. Because the modern media machine is like a shark swimming around in the deep blue, all it needs is to catch the slightest whiff of chum from half an ocean away and that predator launches all over it's the prey like rats on a carcass. And The Last of Us has been no small success. If numbers are to be trusted, that show has to be one of the biggest hits of this year and last year too. All while being one of the most faithful video game adaptations we've ever had; copycats were an inevitability.

That being said, I do find myself of two minds upon learning that the Hogwarts Legacy team are in talks to produce their own TV show based on the world they constructed. On the one hand that sounds like yet another one of those hair-trigger adaptations shoot out from the barrel directly after the world's honeymoon phase with the game, whilst the bedsheet are still warm. Yes, Hogwarts Legacy has done gangbuster numbers, but that doesn't mean it's the greatest thing since sliced bread! And it's narrative isn't a touch on The Last of Us' story, in the slightest! On the otherhand, I can see the connection in name and setting as more of a case of happenstance, because at the end of the day there's not really any reason why a Hogwarts Legacy TV show would be an adaptation of the game; it would really just be a Harry Potter TV Show.

Surely the Warner Bros team have been thinking of making one for a while now. Ever since it became clear that J.K. Rowling would not step back from writing bad scripts for the Fantastic Beasts movies, it was clear that the Harry Potter franchise needed a new avenue if it wanted to relight itself for the new age. 'The Cursed Child' is rumoured to be getting an adaptation featuring the returned cast from the movies, but considering the general consensus around the actual quality of that story, such a promise sounds more like a threat. (I just hope that an adaptation will give us a full blow animated rendition of the supposed story where Astoria Greengrass jumps back in time to 'do the dirty' with no-nose. I need that insanity visualised.) Further rumours of a general Harry Potter reboot are met with universal retching noises from the supposed target demographic. And after the box office performance of 'Secrets of Dumbledore', or lack thereof, it's clear that the story of Newt Scamander will end as unfinished as it... actually, his story really wrapped itself up at the end of the first movie. He's been pretty much sleeping his way through the rest of the 'Fantastic Beasts' movies anyway.

Hogwarts Legacy in setting presents something of a fresh start and clean break away from all that happened in the 1990's. (The time period of Harry Potter.) The basic ties of familiarity are there, but the 1800's are full of their own concerns, with poachers hunting magical beasts, Goblins waging war against Wizards and Ancient Magic dripping off of every curtain. For the first time since 'Philosophers Stone', a new TV show set in this time would present a totally fresh opportunity for newcomers to jump into the franchise of Harry Potter, which would be the mounting point for newly minted millennial parents to introduce their bratty kids to the world they used to read about in school. (Look at me, I'm talking like a marketing stooge now. These courses are really starting to get the better of how I think, aren't they?)

The actual narrative of Hogwarts Legacy is surprisingly light and doesn't carry all that many personable characters behind it's script when it comes to the protagonist or their school friends, which makes it more than likely that any TV show set in this time would, by share necessity, have to construct it's own guiding narrative. Which suits me just fine because the game I played left more than enough room for any such story to slide on in around the events of that game without causing any ruckus whatsoever. In many ways, the only point of this game was to conjure a world for the Harry Potter mythos that could exist without the glasses kid or his painfully extended lore, and everything else the game delivered was just a bonus ribbon on the package. A TV show could happily exist within that newly minted world, doubling down on it's affirmation by bringing actual characters and complex narratives into the framework, which is the one thing holding back the game from being truly legendary in my eyes. There could actually be a world were both the TV show and this game series exist without treading on each other's shoes at all.

Being put to TV, Hogwarts Legacy could benefit from telling a wider story that covers a wider breadth of the wizarding world. For example, and keeping to the narrative of the game, we could follow a bevy of characters from across the wizarding world that all have conflicting perspectives on the Goblin rebellion, with supporters and dissenters all being given their breadth of humanity and purpose to pack some extra layer of nuance behind the somewhat important movement at the heart of the world's story. Maybe we could have one character be a Goblin who is outspoken about improving the lot of his folk but whom doesn't resort to crude tactics of his more brutish brethren at the beginning of the series. Then we might witnesses as throughout the series that Goblin is subjected to injustice after injustice, a beating here to a protest turning into a massacre there, until by the end of the series his taking to arms against the wizarding kind feels almost just and necessary, at least given his situation. That's the kind of muti-layered characters that can't be built in a fixed-perspective world like the one Hogwarts Legacy presents in it's game form.

Of course, I refer to any future with a Hogwarts TV series as a package deal with an upcoming game sequel, because at this point it's pretty much a done deal that we're getting more Legacy games. Although nothing has been written in the stones as of yet, Hogwarts Legacy made around 850 million within the space of two weeks and the team didn't have any DLC plans ready to capitalize on that flurry of fans. So making a sequel is just basic business sense. Plus, Warner Bros. have been needing a win for the Harry Potter franchise for a while now, so investing into more games in this series seems like a no brainer. Plus, there's plenty of wanting features that the Legacy team are coyly teasing might worm their way into a sequel, proving the idea is definitely buzzing around the studio. (Such as playable Quidditch!) We could feasibly have a climate where the future Hogwarts Legacy 2 releases alongside a future series of this supposed TV show for some of that sweet cross promotional marketing all the kids are raving about these days.

As far as news could go for upcoming video game to TV adaptations; this is by far the worst idea I've ever heard of. In fact, I'm almost happy to welcome any expanded Harry Potter media that doesn't have Ezra Miller in it, because that actor's entire deal just makes my stomach churn. I just hope that whatever happens the key-most rules of adaptation are adhered to- don't try to overwrite the legitimacy of the game's narrative with a new one unless the new narrative is objectively better, don't overwrite the custom character of the game (thus robbing fans of their place in the universe) and don't mention Zootopia porn. Because after Resident Evil, you just never know what these rapid show executives are going to come up with next.

James Marsden is not real

 I'm not crazy!

I know what you're thinking. Probably something along the lines of: James Marsden is most assuredly real you absolute windbag!- but just hold onto that thought and ask yourself... what if he isn't? The 49 year old actor still very much holding onto his baby face, what you think that's natural, you think a man can just do that? Hell, he looks about my age and he's nearly twice as old as me! And that is because... well, I could probably get a bit more sun, to be honest. And maybe do a bit more moisturising around the eyes. And get some more sleep... But it's also because James is in reality the single most advanced CGI computer rendering of a man that we've ever seen. I'm talking a rendering so good it defies that natural effect of the eye to spot the fallacies in even the most detailed picture. That would explain so very much not just about the man and how he looks that way, but also why his career trajectory has gone the way it has of late and why that fits in perfectly with selling the illusion of just another youthful faced Hollywood heartthrob. (Aside: Is James Marsden enough to be considered a 'Heartthrob'? It's not really my scene so I couldn't really say personally, I might be talking a bit out my ass with that one.)

Firstly; X-Men Franchise. Great movies, Bryan Singer did a good job. Maybe the first time superheros were treated somewhat seriously by a movie going public, largely on account of the amazing cast of actors including Patrick Stewart, Ian Mckellan and... James Marsden. Well what do you know? Playing the leader of the X-men, Scott Summers AKA Cyclops; you'd expect him to be the main character. But oh no, instead he plays second fiddle to the audience's viewpoint 'Wolverine' played by some Huge Jackedman from Australia. Now on the surface this is because just like every kid who grew up reading X-Men, Bryan and his writers became giant Wolverine stans on account of his no-nonsense 'stab 'em all and let god sort it out' attitude so they decided to front him as the lead of their entire X-Men series. (Arguably to the detriment of narrative cohesion come the third movie.) 

But let me tell you the real reason that the team lead of the X-Men isn't the lead of the actual movie. Because that cast, all famous and verifiably real actors, would all be acting around each other all day. If the lead that they were supporting never once showed up on set because he was entirely added in post, don't you think that would cause a bit of confusion among the set? Maybe ruffle a few feathers and cause the dire secret of his clandestine technological conception out before it's time? So no, instead he's just another supporting character, largely sidelined by the loner of the gang, until the third movie grew to be so ambitious that they had to unceremoniously kill off Cyclops in the first act in order to save on budget. Think about it- this makes sense, doesn't it?

Now let me fast forward to the first movie that really set this off for me: Hop. One of those 'animated character comes to the real world' stories staring James Marsden and... Russell Brand as the rabbit? No, I've got to be misreading that... Nope, there it is. Russell Brand is the... Easter bunny. Right... So the movie is trash and no one cares what it's about but the crux is that James is the real man acting alongside the CGI rabbit as he's attempting to become the new Easter bunny or something, I can't remember. He's definitely the lead for this movie, but think about his supporting cast- the family members he barely interacts with and another character who exists purely in post-processing! Just tell the real actors that he's sick on the days when he's supposed to show up and the lie gets perpetuated. All so that you can have a CGI bunny interact convincingly with a more dense and realistic cluster of 1s and 0s, selling the illusion of an otherwise somewhat complex marrying of the two genres in order to create a profitable kids movie. Bring in the kids to see the animated bunny monster, bring in the human to keep the parents from blinding themselves with boredom. And maybe there's a little bit of fund smuggling going on behind the scenes too, with producers pocketing the 'supposed' Marsden's acting pay check or something. (I haven't ironed out all the details of this conspiracy just yet.) 

Which brings us to the big and iconic one; Sonic The Hedgehog. Now let me ask you, why in the hell would Sonic, an established pop-culture icon with a proven strong enough personality to carry movies and TV shows as the sole lead, need to play second fiddle as the side kick to a human? Well for the formula, is the only possible excuse. Kids movies need the animated character to come to the human world and attach himself to a standard generic human in an unhealthily close relationship that serves as a blatant analogy for some real life conundrum he's going through. It's the bare basic make-up of the check-list plot synopsis that any aspiring Children's director is required to write down before a Disney executive will even consider reading their pitch. But then actually look past that and watch the movie, then ask yourself; how important is James Marsden to that plot? 

Sonic is always spending the majority of purposeful scenes playing games with Carrey's Eggman completely solo, often going off on his own entirely to have fun scenes totally free of his human handler's influence, Marsden's interactions are more tedious hinderances to the progression of the story. The man is of no consequence to the entire plot! Take him out and the movie wouldn't change! You think a real leading man would accept a role like that, where he plays second fiddle to his own side kick? How about where, in the sequel, he's phased out of the movie entirely after the opening set piece? Of course not, that would be degrading and humiliating for a nearly 50 year old man to commit to. But what if that wasn't a man acting there, but an algorithm designed to cater to a specific role so that this movie can be greenlit as something more market friendly before the actual content of the movie itself veers off dramatically in a direction more cinematically appealing? Food for thought.

Now what about the Smurfs? "Wait, isn't the movie starring Neil Patrick Harris?" Yes! Or is it? Because you see whilst that computer rendering of a marketing executive, sharing scenes with singularly distinct blue wizard snacks, might look a hell of a lot like famed actor and comedian Neil Patrick Harris, I have serious reason to doubt that. For one, Neil Patrick Harris is an actor, Wikipedia and Google say so, even though throughout the entirety of the Smurfs his performance can best be described as 'windows screenshot of Neil Patrick Harris with mp3 audio played on top of it'. He never emotes, never acts out meaningful physical cues, never performs any of the little intricacies that make an actor's work professional. And yet he is an accomplished actor? No way; he's a James Marsden. Let me explain. Computer generated James Marsden compiles it's image as an age defying actor when it needs to fill a role without requirements, but when they need that role to be of an established actor for better marketability; all it needs to do is swap out the model. What looked likes James Marsden now looks like Neil Patrick Harris; but it's just a mask, a façade- underneath it's still a cold and emotionless AI, thus it cannot match the performance value that a real actor would bring.

And now that's been established, why stop there? Why stop when we can then point our gaze at another 'animated character meets real person' movie; 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' and it's many, obnoxious sqeek-uels. What can be said about Jason Lee's 'Dave' that already hasn't been said? Jason's performance is soundly outdone by a CGI Chipmunk on a sped-up voice machine. He sounds like he's paid a flat rate for everytime he screams "Alvin", but due to diminishing returns his payout, and thus his motivation, shrinks with every utterance. You'd be forgiven for believing that he died the moment the first movie began, and each time he shouted 'Alvin' you can mark the last vestige of the spirit of Jason leaving his body as they become weaker and weaker until it's so infinitesimal that he doesn't even appear on screen anymore by the last couple of movies. Why even hire him at all? Why indeed, when you can program an AI to give out that performance, wearing that face, and not fork over a single dime? The conspiracy runs on!

And finally let's come back around to another supposed Marsden performance. How about a performance in one of the most coldly cynical and creatively bankrupt children's franchises of the past decade? A movie franchise which is, surprisingly, not a CGI-real hybrid! (I know, I didn't know James bothered acting in those sorts of movies either!) What if I told you that James Marsden is the protagonist of the Boss Baby? Well, you would call me a liar and say that Toby Maguire plays Tim Templeton. Which would be right, except that for the older iteration of Tim they decided to cast James to replace him. (I guess the studio just didn't believe that 47 year old Toby Maguire could sound like a grown-up.) Now we have Jimmy boy stepping into another franchise where he doesn't have to act around others, doesn't need to put in much of a performance at all, (because his character is literally supposed to be soulless and drained in comparison to his younger self) and the role doesn't need to have a 'celebrity' casting at all. And it doesn't have a celebrity casting, because that would be waste of money, and why would they need to waste money when they can program an AI for free?

Together we have uncovered a perfidious and far stretching conspiracy that Hollywood has been trying to keep a lid on since the early 2000's now. Why? To get cheap labour without involving the unions and strike action that would be mandated if it ever came out they were employing CGI as actors. And all fronted by the vultures over at Fox, the X-Men creators! Oh, and Sega with Paramount for Sonic. And Illumination with Universal who made Hop... and Disney through their revamped '20th Century Studios' for Boss Baby... and Sony pictures for Smurfs and... Fox again for Alvin... Okay, either this is the point where the conspiracy gets too many cooks in the kitchen for it be possibly plausible that this would conducted without anyone hearing about it from the masses of leaks that happen everyday, or we just start believing that everyone in Hollywood is joined up in a secretive mega-cabal that preserves this one secret until death. The tipping point for any conspiracy to slip into becoming a cult! Well, I'm partial to not spending the next 5 years becoming terminally online until the point where an even bigger internet nutjob cult assimilates my own beliefs into their collective and me along with it, so I'm just going to call the whole thing off and decide that James Marsden is probably real. Which means I should probably start apologizing for calling his performances in these movies tantamount to being an AI... but I won't. He'll never read: thus I can say anything!

How to Adapt a franchise like: Assassin's Creed

 Crystal Ball time

You know what, I am being a bit too mean to poor Ubisoft recently. I admit it. They're going through it right now, and though I think they're absolute plagues on the concept of creativity within our industry, I don't want them to just disappear from existence. They're never all that successful in their attempts to poison the gaming well, and therefore I figure they deserve to stick around and have the chance to fix up their image. Unfortunately I'm also a realist, which means I know that as times become dire Ubisoft are going to do what they do best and copy someone else hoping to leech off of what bought them their success. What pulled CDPR out of the gutter? Cyberpunk: Edgerunners? Well then, just wait for the new Assassin's Creed live action adaptation with bated breath!

Now we've actually had an Assassin's Creed live action adaptation before, and if you're only just slapping yourself in the head and wondering how you forgot that until just now, don't worry, you're not the one at fault here. The Micheal Fassbender starring Assassin's Creed movie was so legendarily forgettable that one can quite easily brush by the way that movie actually singlehandedly ruined the potential trajectory for the Assassin's Creed franchise. Okay, maybe not 'singlehandedly', the franchise had already slipped over itself and was floundering about for a while, but the movie kind of sealed the lid on the coffin and made it nigh on impossible to restart the purpose of this game franchise without bold and substantive narrative reform, both adjectives that simply don't appear in the Ubisoft employee handbook. But how could it have been that bad?

Simple. Around about the time that the movie was being worked on, the games had been running along a very formulaic but progressive thread which kept the draw of the games, the historical tourism action, connected by way of an overall meta storyline that was slowly unfolding. Until, of course, Ubisoft went for the big conclusion wrap-up event a little bit too early and decided to kill off their leading protagonist and antagonist in the same game. Now whilst in one way you could argue that this was a way to expand the potential of the series further by branching out into new modern day characters and explore their individual struggles against the tyranny of Abstergo bearing down on the Assassin cells- that never really was the point of Assassin's Creed, now was it? In Assassin's Creed the real 'characters' were the ancestors of the historical period (Desmond was never on the boxart, now was he?) and we came into the games in order to follow their stories of heroism throughout their historical heyday, learning about the modern day decedent character was more of an 'easter egg' side activity for the really dedicated. Keeping him around as a passive vector through which to explore the real excitement of historical fantasy action would have let the story progress in it's natural, perfectly serviceable, pace. But Ubisoft are stupid.

Thus the franchise ended up wandering about totally rudderless for a while, propped up by the strength of Black Flag's core narrative alone, until the premier of the Assassin's Creed movie. Now by natural extension of the 'live-action means legitimate' fallacy, rather than use this movie as a means through which to introduce the wider public to the basic set-up and framework of the Assassin's Creed universe, Ubisoft attempted to do a crash course introduction whilst also trying to make Michael Fassbender's character the new main hero of the franchise. So much did they buy into this narrative that they gifted the writers of this movie the single biggest potential over arching villain in the franchise which the games had been building up to for nearly a decade until that point, Abstergo CEO Alan Rikkin. Since the death of Vidic in 3, Alan's name was the only thing remaining as a feasible threat for these stories to build around. Without him, the modern day storyline of these games totally evaporated into a puff of smoke. It's telling that the most movement the main story of the franchise has seen since then is through the DLC missions in Watch_Dogs Legion, which weren't themselves very exploratory.

But despite that total franchise-wide disaster, it's inevitable that the Assassin's Creed brand will return to live action screens and we just need to ask ourselves now; in what form? For one, it has to be a TV show. The movie tried to juggle a modern day narrative with Spanish Inquisition era 'action sequences'. I can't call those historical sections a 'story' because we spent so little time there learning anything regarding character names, plot stakes or personal/ overall motives. There simply wasn't enough time to cover both the modern and the historical. I propose that with a TV show we could more appropriately split screen time without losing either plot, and split in into the appropriate ratio, which should have been 7/10 to the historical stuff. (The movie spent more time in the modern day. Cheaper budget, more boring movie.)

What about the Assassin themselves? Well personally I'm always a proponent for these adaptations telling their own stories with their own characters within the established universe. (I know there's people out there who think otherwise, but they've clearly never seen Hollywood try to adapt anything directly. At least this way fans can easier divorce the probable dumpster fire with the franchise that they love.) However I know that Ubisoft are deeply boldness-phobic, especially given their shift of fortunes recently, and they'll probably want to stick to a story that has worked in the past. As such there's only one real stop on our search for a historical protagonist Ezio. Altair may be the OG, but he's also practically personality-less, Ezio is the perfect mix of watchable, morally agreeable and action literate. If you want to launch a franchise that deftly darts around the potential moral impact of 'murdering for peace' like the games do, make sure you do it with a man so charming you want to die by his hands.

The best part about an Ezio series is that just embarking on that journey will present the audience with three pre-written stories right off the bat. At least, that's three free historical written stories; and this is where it gets interesting. What I propose is that we have a distinct modern day narrative which follows another descendant of Ezio Auditore whi isn't Desmond. They'll still follow the same rough events, witness the same Ezio life events that Desmond once did, but perhaps come away with different lessons and develop different skills and personality quirks as a consequence of experiencing them. Picture this; a new distant relation of Ezio who is swept by the excitement of the clandestine Assassin's and their war against the Templars, who wants so desperately to stand up against the oppressive world only she seems able to perceive and believes the Assassin order to be the kindred spirits she has searched for all her life. Only then, through some means I can't be bothered to concoct, she learns herself to be a descendant of a simply legendary Renaissance Assassin who she simply must learn more about! Cue the seasons of discovering her ancestor and learning his skills through the 'Bleeding effect' and coming to love the rebellious spirit she is seeing during her Animus trips. But as the series goes on, and Ezio's journey becomes more grim, she finds her expectations tipped on their head, as the real human toll of living your entire life as a blunt-force tool chipping away at an unyielding darkness to serve some vague ideal of freedom starts to really play out across her various Animus sessions. Sacrificing your youth and all potential for contentedness and love, watching friends give up the fight or end up being killed in a never-ending back and forth of revenge doused by revenge, and ending up wearing your former pithy confidence as more a nostalgic mask of the passion you used to have, rather than a true-to-life reflection of the burning soul therein. A husk of a hero until his final years. The modern day protagonist we leave with at the tail end of the season is a young woman weighed down by a much older soul, tempered but humbled by the life she's sped through, approaching the world of Assassin's and Templars with a more sensible and prudent head on her shoulders.

A basic framework I literally came up with as I wrote it, but that there is an example of just how much potential I think an Assassin's Creed series could really have if you just put someone in charge who likes the franchise. I shouldn't need to even say that, but we've seen so very often how the people who man these adaptations more-often-than-not seem to actively hate the product they're working on and simply wish to use it's characters as flesh-puppets through which to speak their own stories that have nothing to do with the originals. Velma is just the latest example of this, it's like the 'in thing' to do across the entertainment industry. A great show would absolutely send butts racing to the digital isles to shore up Ubisoft sales, a lot more reliably than another NFT collection would, I'll tell you that for free! So I guess we can just sit here and wait for the inevitable show announcement to be made and then we can see if they're making the same mistakes they did last time, or are at least trying to reshape their approach like I propose. Either way, I expect back-pats for my incredible soothsaying when the announcement is made. I'll accept congratulatory comments too. (What do you mean they already announced a series?- Goddammit Netflix!)

The Last of Us Director proves why we can't have nice things

 >Sigh< They never learn, do they?

You know I did just do a blog about this which covers most of my usual points rather succinctly, but I feel the need to get a bit more specific now that we've got an actual fresh example to ruminate on. Example of what, you may ask? the sheer unfounded elitism of traditional media to any and all other forms of entertainment. And in some cases, such as the fellow we're talking about today, I will go so far as to say that it's probably a largely unconscious elitism. I don't think the show runner of the upcoming Last of Us show would agree to go sign onto a project like this if he wasn't at least enticed by what this game in particular had to offer him in adaptable material; but good lord does his blind arrogance echo a far more prevalent and widely accepted sentiment around the world that video games, animation and pretty much anything that isn't live action isn't quite real art in comparison to what they do.

A lot of the time in the past it has been by extracting this very clear underlying prejudice from very pointed comments, that I have been able to see the lack of respect so blatantly slathered on the faces of all those recent video game adaptation studios. The Halo TV show team lauded about how not a single one of them played the game, and then delivered a product that failed to capture the vibe, charm or point of the source material. (Shocker!) The Resident Evil TV show was just helmed by a man who suffers from terminal CW show brain, and decided to run the decently adaptable Resident Evil franchise through the 'creativity' blender to spit out one of the most disappointing soggy messes of a one-and-done 'series' I've sat down and endured in a very long time. Which isn't to say that lack of respect for the source material will automatically result in a worse product, mind you; but not everyone out there is Stanley Kubrick with his hands on a Stephen King novel. Unless you're an auteur, it's probably advisable to stick to the original material and what made it special.

To which The Last of Us show is said to be a rare exception according to the director behind the games, although I wouldn't exactly take the word of Druckmann at face value, I'm inclined to agree that for everything I've seen, this show looks frighteningly accurate to the games. But then, The Witcher series was driven by people who regularly proclaimed how much loved the books, only for the show to veer wildly from the source material and ultimately veer of in it's own direction. Same with Rings of Power; same with whatever adaptation Netflix and co are working on next. This isn't me trying to establish the precedent that The Last of Us is going to veer into mediocre territory, that's just an unpleasant side product of all these deviations, what I'm trying to highlight is the sheer lack of respect from modern adaptors for the material they're working on, particularly when that material comes from video games. 

I think video games get the most dismissive of adaptations because our passtime is seen as the most juvenile of established entertainment vectors. It's also the most profitable which provides some of the more toxic flavours of the hipster phenom, where snotty TV directors can wax lyrical at how the 'mindless masses' flock to 'inferior platforms of entertainment' because they simply 'don't know better'. Animation, anime, video games; are all lesser forms of art in the face of these higher people, who somehow never learn the simple lesson of how certain platforms can simply do some things better than live action can. Hands down. Animation is better at realising fantastical characters whilst imbuing human emotion that an audience can connect with; but Disney still made their photorealistic (because the term 'live action' is a wild misnomer here) Lion King movie. Anime can covey bombast and speedy movements better than real actors could ever hope to; but there's Cowboy Bebop with it's crappy live action adaptation! And games... we'll get into it.

There's no point picking apart the statement until we absorb it for ourselves. So here it is, an excerpt from a larger interview with the man who is show running the upcoming Last of Us TV adaptation. "When you're playing... when you die you get sent back to the checkpoint. All those people are back, moving around in the same way. Watching a person die, I think, ought to be much different than watching pixels die." Now the responses have very much been obvious; poking fun at the fact that 'hey, films are fake too, my man!' To diving into the actual meaning behind the statement (Which he touches on a bit later in the interview) and picking apart how the desensitisation of violence is not a video game specific occurrence, painting a whole medium with a single brush is always, invariably, going to bite you on the arse. But even beyond everything that has already been said I just have to remark, personally, about how genuinely disrespectful it is. 

Because I understand the poorly chosen words spoken by a man who is trying to hype up his show, and everyone gets a little marble mouthed and says the wrong thing here or there, but to phrase what he did in the way he did speaks volumes about the way he's trained to view gaming as a medium. He doesn't see it as valid. He sees games as flat and emotion-compromised, lacking the impact of the 'higher art form' which live action represents. That his mind could only conjure up a compliment of his medium by denigrating ours tells us all we need to know about the mindset of the man, and talented though he may be, and the man is talented, it sucks to hear that. Because at the end of the day, my problem is the confidence with which this man talks about a medium he clearly knows absolutely nothing about.

This isn't the first time he's done this, by-the-way, but I regarded the last remark as too flippant to really dive in to. But let's go back this time. In another interview with Empire magazine the man said "It's an open-and-shut case: This is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games." And again, I can't help but draw issue with that sentiment. With what experience does he make such a bold assertation? Is he taking into account the sweeping narrative of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater? The greatest James Bond story, and it doesn't even feature James Bond? Is he placing his series above the original Bioshock, the first game to subtly slide past the confines of the Magic Box and ask the player, not the protagonist, but the player with the controller in their hands; what the concept of 'agency' even means? Surely he's accounting for 'Fallout: New Vegas', the expertly complex web of stories so robustly constructed that they can come together in an uncountable number of narratively coherent variations! And what about Yakuza 0? The greatest crime drama story told on any medium, perfectly balancing melodrama, absurdity, romance and heartbreak! He must have factored all those into account, right? And the dozens upon dozens more examples beside? Of course not, because he knows nothing about any of those games.

Which is fine, by the way; the man doesn't need to know a single thing about the wider gaming market to adapt The Last of Us. All he needs to know, is The Last of Us; (But he has to know it well; we don't need another 'Halo the TV show' situation on our hands.) everything else might as well be white noise. But to use that platform of privilege that he has been granted as the showrunner on the most anticipated video game TV adaptation to date, placed on a pedestal as the unofficial (and I'll bet unwitting) ambassador of video game narratives to the mainstream world, and to spout indirect, and more recently actually direct, disparaging remarks about matters he knows nothing about is simply asinine and insulting. I trust the man knows what he's talking about when it comes to making TV shows and everything that happens in the world of TV entertainment and I genuinely believe he's going to make, at the very least, a watchable show out of The Last of Us. (Which would itself be a vast upgrade from the usual offerings) But with the utmost respect, which he clearly does not return, he needs to sit down and stay out of his lane because he is a frank embarrassment to our medium. Stick to TV, Mazin; play to your strengths.