Coming from a i09 interview with Castlevania's Netflix series producer, Adi Shankar...
AS: Okay, so, there must have been a period in your life where you were playing video games and people were like, “What the fuck are you doing?”
io9: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
AS: RIGHT. THAT’S FUCKED UP, DUDE. VIDEO GAMES ARE LIKE THE DOPEST ARTFORM that exists, today. It BLOWS MY MIND that, like, PHOTOGRAPHERS—I don’t want to call anybody out—are treated more as an artist than a video game designer blows my fucking mind. That’s ridiculous. And what’s cool about video games is, like—are you into first-person shooters?
io9: Little bit, yeah.
AS: Okay. If you’ve never played Overwatch and you’ve never played Call of Duty, like, you’ve played Halo... you can pick up the controller and you know EXACTLY what’s going on. You understand the language, because what’s happened is that a language has been created and we’ve all seen it evolve over the last few decades. If you’re a gamer, you’ve seen the language evolve.
io9: I’ve seen your quote saying “Castlevania is going to be the best video game adaptation” floating around. What do you think has been the problem with other attempts?
AS: The bar is very low. Right? And why is the bar low? People ask this question a lot. People are like, “Oh man, this guy’s really into video games, he understands how they’re made and the mechanics—why are video game movies so bad?” And I’m like, “Because they’re treated like video game movies.” It’s just storytelling. You’re just telling a story. You’re just telling the story badly.
io9: Now, do you think that’s because of the difference of the mediums?
AS: I think it’s a lack of respect. If you look at early comic book movies, they were totally bad, because people would go into it [reluctantly] and you could tell! You could tell when the actor—at least I can tell—I can tell when the actor is like, putting on a costume and thinks the costume is ridiculous. And it’s like, “I’m not going to commit to this role, because the fuck am I wearing?” You can literally tell within a few frames of shot design whether someone gives a shit about the thing they’re making or not.
And once things get into the marketing department, you can tell whether the studio [views] what they’ve made as schlock or as pure entertainment or as artistry. Right? You look at like, the poster of... pick a movie... The Wrestler, or Black Swan. A Darren Aronofsky movie. There’s actual thought put into the PR. Because the distributor is subtly communicating to themselves that, “Hey, we’ve made an important film! We’ve told an important story. And it’s been told very well.” Again—I don’t want to be the guy talking shit about other people’s things, because you can tell with certain posters.
from GoNintendo
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