Tendo City

From Nintendojo:

Quote:Earlier this morning, there came reports of John Woo optioning a film based off of the popular Nintendo franchise, Metroid. This is only one other major step in his involvement within the videogame industry since he is already knee deep in three original titles yet to be revealed at his own Tiger Hill development studio.


"We are very fortunate that there is such an extensive amount of material to draw upon for the film due to there being so many iterations of the game over the years," Woo said.

The film will reportedly center on Samus Aran's origins and her action-packed battles with the Metroids and Mother Brain.


"We have to assume the mainstream audience is unfamiliar with the property," said Brad Foxhoven, who also serves as a producer. "As for the rest of the film, we will stay true to the game and have Samus battling the Metroids and Mother Brain in a fight for control of the galaxy."

Producers Warren Zide and Craig Perry once optioned the film rights back in January of 2003 but has since let them expire. John Woo's Tiger Hill leaped at their first possible chance.

On a seperate note, Nintendo is all set to unveil the eighth Metroid title, tentatively known as Metroid Prime 2 during this year's E3 on May 11th. The game will be shipped to the GameCube in November. (als)

Source: GameSpot; Yahoo! News

I'm a huge fan of John Woo's Hong Kong work but he hasn't made a good movie since 1992's Hard Boiled, so I'm not as thrilled as I would be if this were the early 90's.

It'll be interesting to see what John Woo can do with a Metroid movie.

If the movie gets a good script then it can be good. The main problem with his Hollywood movies is that they all had terrible scripts.

So he needs to get good writers then.

I doubt the movie will get a decent script though... the only way I see a Metroid movie being good is if the guys at IG do make an animated Metroid flick.

Yeah, a CG or animated movie probably would be a better choice, but I still think it's possible to make a good live-action Metroid movie.

Possible, yes. Probable? No.

That's true, but remember that not too long ago people thought a first-person Metroid game would never be good.

Well that was doubted for completely different reasons. One, people feared that it would play like a normal FPS and two, it was being developed by a brand-new development studio that had numerous internal problems. There has yet to be a single good live-action video game movie made in the U.S., so the chances of a good one coming along are pretty slim.

Nobody screws with sam.

Um... yes, please. I didn't quite understand that post.


Edit: Never mind, I thought that giant sig was a part of your post. Get rid of it!

That sig is ridiculously huge. Don't worry, I'll take care of it.

There have been decent video game based movies, but as OB1 made a point of specifying, they are neither live action nor made in America. Aside from the rotten translation, Mewtwo's Revenge is a pretty fun movie.

It could turn out good, though the odds are certainltly against it.

Yes.

Yeah, I suppose so.

oh man, OB1, that's the best acion movie ever

cut off those side burns now!

big guy Wrote:oh man, OB1, that's the best acion movie ever

You talking about Hard Boiled? Hell yeah!

:topic:

Haha... that's lovely.

i was talking about the baby...but yes, what you said too

That baby is the best action movie ever?

Darunia's mom!

I still find it very funny that if she was skinny, it would be a good thing.

On the topic of Metroid; John Woo can be summed up with these three mental images - Doubled handed gun fights, white doves in slow motion and comic-book personalities who have problems in the home. Such as erectile dysfunction, poorly raising a child or a loveless marriage.

So imagine Samus Aran fighting Ridley while Shriek Bats scatter in slow motion and having an argument over who does the dishes. It could definitely work out though; it just has to emulate the style presented in the games. Mostly Prime simply because it gives us a deeper look in to what Samus sees in her environment. But one thing I noticed about Prime and its in game and cut scenes is that there's no slow motion. Ever. So if it's in the movie, it will feel wrong.

Some things I want to see in the movie:

The bird-like Chozo, not knowing why they need to, build the suit for the one that will protect the universe. They understand that they will someday find their home on Zebes and there they will spend the rest of their lives. They will also know that this planet is destined to die.

The Chozo traveling to dozens of planets and creating cities, places of worship and libraries not only for themselves but for the one that will be the protector of the universe. Creating shrines with gifts that will aid the one. Also, the Chozo deep in thought about why they have to create weapons when they live in such peaceful times

Over the course of millions of years, evolving past their physical bodies - leaving their cities behind them.

In contrast, the insect like species of the pirates systematically taking each planet they survey as their own, creating a hive-structure and proficiently draining the planet of its resources until it's dead. (The extinguished lives of the planets will have to play in to the story) On one planet, they will find an animal they will call the Metroid, a thing that even the pirates cannot control, instead they study it and present it to their queen; a super computer on board the pirate mother ship.

The pirates eventually find their way to a populated star system, they massacre millions of people lead by Ridley, a general with an incredible genius who was built by the pirates and designed by their queen to be a leader on the battlefield.

Now in modern times, there is a war between Earth Federation and the aptly named Space Pirates over land and entire planets. With a powerful general and an omnipotent lifeless queen.

On the planet of Zebes, a child that survived one of the worst massacres from the pirates is being unknowingly trained by a Chozo spirit. On the other side of the paradise-like planet, the pirates have already claimed it as their own and are working hard to take whatever they can from the planet as per the queen's orders.

The spirit of the Chozo sends the young adult woman he was training to Earth where she learns about the pirates and grows in to a mature, beautiful woman. Fed up with the Federation's stance on Anti-conflict laws, She steals a Federation ship and a combat suit and heads back for Zebes.

She finds her mentor dead sitting on a thrown holding a sphere. When she touches it, it becomes a sphere of light - thrusting the history of the Chozo in to her mind and the memories of Samus Aran's early child hood where she watched everyone she knew and loved killed by pirates. Once she understands what must be done, she heads to the Chozo ruins of Zebes where she finds altars with statues depicting the Chozo and offering her gifts just as her mentor did. In the heart of the Chozo ruins, she will be given the suit that the Chozo built millions of years ago. Samus Aran then systematically tries to over throw the Space Pirate Empire on Zebes until she reaches their core of operations - a giant organic super computer in the depths of the planet that runs the entire industrial operations of Zebes, a computer that can re-build or destroy planets at will. The super computer that lead the pirates in to becoming the most powerful force in the universe has gone beyond its original state, it is now a living, breathing God.

The real meat of the story I think should be how Samus learns what the pirates are. At first glance, they're just an organized faction doing their best to become a powerful force. But a deeper look would reveal that they themselves can only operate on a hive-mentality and they must create a queen. The queen they create is based soley on development of the pirate empire and is the driving force in the destruction of all life. When the pirates created Mother Brain, they didn't realize that they succesfully invented a very real evil that will lead them on to the path of war and death, when at their heart, they are only industrialists who follow orders from a queen.

to drive this point to the audience, I think Samus should pick up Mother Brain's thoughts and form some kind of communiccation with her telepathically. And Mother Brain will lead her (just as it leads the pirates) in to it's lair where Samus will discover what Mother Brain is and what its ultimate goal has always been - To harvest and perpetuate the growth of the Metroid life forms. Which in the begining, was an endangered animal waiting to die on a lifeless planet, but is now a weapon weilded by a planet devouring God.

Samus will learn over the course of the story that the pirates have taken dozens of planets, even entire star systems. And she knows that it's her destiny to find the pirate bases and destroy them before their evil is re-built.

Another interesting story dynamic that I doubt the script touches on is the fact that Metroid (the first game) tricked its audience in to thinking that Samus is a man. The movie could do the same thing.

That would be cool, but it'd be an extremely tough secret to keep. You'd have to throw people off with casting, Samus would have to be in the suit at all times, she'd have to have a man's voice (which would be dumb), and word would quickly get out since every non-casual gamer in the world knows that Samus is a woman.

That's an odd interpretation. According to the pics, that chozo is certainly not a spirit, leading me to interpret the raising this way.

The Chozo build the suit in the current era, when Samus is but a child. They are not yet evolved into spirits. Such a thing wouldn't really require millions of years, it's spiritual, not biological, and those ruins in Zero Mission certainly don't look THAT old, just overgrown. The Chozo are spread across the galaxy, Zebes being but one world. The Chozo elder, as well as many others in that community, raise Samus on Zebes after her colony's destruction. After leaving, she eventually returns only to find it in ruins after the pirates attack. As for exactly when the stuff on Tallon IV occured, I dunno exactly, but it couldn't have been millions of years before, because the stuff written while they are still around still show that other life forms have certainly done the space travel thing by then, and that was pretty recent as far as Metroid 1's story says.

OB1, um, they would only need to keep it from the casual audience, not the cast. We know, but the average person wouldn't. Still, that was only "raw and edgy" in the 1980's, and it wasn't even the first contrary to popular belief. It's just not something that would be worth it.

Oh and, Mother Brain wasn't a god... Deus, that's a god.

You're wrong DJ. The Chozo exist outside the time continuum, they refer to time only when talking about the Newborn, otherwise they exist at any given time. Before they evolved in to that spiritual plane, they were physical beings that existed over one million years ago in the Metroid story.

Deus is not a God. Mother Brain isn't either, but anything that can destroy a planet at will certainly has my respect. I was saying that for the contect of the story, Mother Brain should be refered to as a God. A story of "Man Vs God, Man Vs. Nature" is always a good story.

Also, how could the Chozo have built the suit in the current era when they are completely irradicated from the universe in the very first game? Believe me, i've been through this. The way they exist now; they're completely omnipotent and sending Samus the old Chozo warrior was the only way they could communicate to her. If they would have tried to communicate to her as they are, she would have gone insane. They ARE the universe.

I'm not so sure though. I think you misunderstand what I mean. She got the powersuit as a kid after all, from the Chozo. The storyline in Zero Mission pretty much says she was raised by living Chozo, not dead ones, and they were all completely wiped out by the space pirates themselves, who had only recently showed up. When I say "current era", I actually meant in the era when Samus was alive. So, I used the wrong term. I meant they made it when she was a kid for when she grew up. As I saw it, only some turned into those spirits, and those were on Tallon IV. They do seem to exist within time, because all the info you read off the walls that is from them AFTER the transformation make CLEAR references to things changing, time flowing on. If they existed outside time, they would know all at once. They also certainly don't seem to be the actual universe itself. I know it's a nice melodramatic way to view it, but I just can't see that being the case with what I've read in the games themselves.

She didn't get the Power Suit until she proved herself to the Chozo spirits by giving up her life for what she's destined to do. She proved herself, by shooting a mirror of herself, destroying her human form and becoming the fully powered Samus Aran.

The suit she wears before that, and the suit you see in Prime after you lose all your upgrades wasn't designed by the Chozo; It's a Federation Combat suit. The Chozo, being fully aware of the future, created the Power Suit (giant shoulder pads), the Varia Suit and the Gravity Suit as the ultimate upgrades, along with weapons and weapon upgrades, making her nearly flawless in battle.

In Prime, (which takes place right after Zero Mission) she has her shoulder pads and spikes, after being hit by the energy beam, she loses all the upgrades that the chozo gave her. And she's back to square one, her combat suit and Beam cannon.

There was also a comic that showed dozens of men wearing combat suits, fighting pirates on k-12, they look almost exactly like the suit Samus wears before the upgrades.

The Chozo were already manifested as spiritual beings when the meteor hit over 200 years ago from Prime's time-line (when Samus arrives). The scribes make clear reference to that. They also say and I quote: Chozo Lore: "Some of us ran to our original homeworld on Zebes, others stayed to fight the great poison (Phazon) but in our current forms there is little we can do. All we can do, is put our hope in to the Newborn (a word used to describe the human race)."

Pirate Data: "There's no telling where they (the Chozo) went, but the ruins they left behind are older than our instruments can tell. These ruins will be scavaged for what little they have to offer and will then be destroyed to make way for our glorious empire"

The Chozo exist everywhere and at every time but they can only watch. They have no powers or abilities but they know and see all. The only time the Chozo can manifest their powers is through Samus Aran which is exactly what they planned from the start. "our warrior" etc. Some of the messages were made while Samus was on Tallon 4, they were communicating to her to guide Samus.

Chozo Lore: "This newborn has so much wieght on her shoulders. Does she know why she must fight? Does she understand who she is? Does she remember us? Only time will tell. The worm (evil) grows stronger."

And finally, the Chozo do not age. The spirit that was sent to her manifested a physical form of a weak old man because that is how they view themselves; humble and physically drained.

Dude, trust me. There's no one else in the world that knows Metroid like I do. Except the creators... but just gimme a few more years.

One last thing.

You say the suit Samus is wearing before you recieve any upgrades (Fed. Combat suit) was built by the Chozo when she was a child. Yet in Zero Mission, on the walls of the ancient ruins it depicts a Chozo warrior wearing the Power Suit (shoulder pads).

It's because they knew what the technology would be on the day Samus would begin her journey hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago when the Chozo still had a physical body.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:OB1, um, they would only need to keep it from the casual audience, not the cast. We know, but the average person wouldn't. Still, that was only "raw and edgy" in the 1980's, and it wasn't even the first contrary to popular belief. It's just not something that would be worth it.

Keeping it a secret would be impossible and pointless. Like I said, you'd have to keep Samus in the suit during the entire movie (that means no childhood stuff) and make her mute or give her a man's voice.