'Gears of War' Film Will Only Start the Action...Not Be the Action

"Gears of War," the popular video game for the Xbox 360, is being turned into a feature film with Len Wiseman ("Underworld") directing.

A while back, screenwriter Chris Morgan said that the film would not be a prequel to the first video game, but that it would show how the war depicted in the games began.

“Gears of War” centers on the members of Delta Squad, an elite squadron that consists of rough-and-tough soldiers Marcus Fenix, an ex-convict, and Dominic Santiago, a hardened soldier. They form a the squadron that wages war against an insurgent alien race called the Locust Horde — a deadly collective that’s already promised to surface heavily in the film.

"It would be a crying shame not to deal with Marcus and Dom," Morgan told MTV News back in October of 2008. "I would not be interested in the movie if we weren't dealing with them. I want to see those guys. I want to see 'Emergence Day.' I want to see this stuff happen."

Emergence Day is when the Locust Horde burst from the ground and began attacking humanity. The video game did not show that or anything about the beginning of the war as it was only described to explain the reason for immediately thrusting the player into the thick of the fight.

Now MTV News had the chance to talk with producer Wyck Godfrey and discuss the plot of the upcoming film.

"The hard part is how to make it into something that doesn't feel like a world torn asunder and people just in battle," he described. "I think we really want to focus on the idea of a world that's running well, and then it's Emergence Day and kind of make it impactful and immediate and the survival of those 48 hours as people survive Emergence Day. It's more like 'Cloverfield' or something like that."

As mentioned, the game immediately heads into battle against the vicious Locust Horde. It sounds like the movie won't take that approach, however, as Godfrey explained that jumping straight into the Locust side of things might not appeal to moviegoers given the current global atmosphere.

"Trying to tell the epic story of an alien planet that's living in a horrific environment just feels like the wrong mood right now," he said.

I'm always a bit cautious when it comes to breaking too far away from source material — and here I again believe that this is a mistake. One of the great parts about the game was getting straight into the action, and that is what made the game popular. Maybe the mood is wrong for some people, but the fans of the game (the main market for this film) probably aren't going to be very excited for an origins story. I know I'm not.

I don't understand why Hollywood loves doing origin stories. Does anybody are about how the war in the game started? Instead of just tiny flashbacks or something throughout the action, we're gonna get the first act where we meet everyone, the second act where we're invaded and then everything under the sun will be crammed into the last act.

I am also against the comparison to "Cloverfield." That was a cool movie in its own right, but very different from what I'd like to see in "Gears of War" in terms of scope and style.

For now, I'm filing this under the wait-and-see category. But my hopes aren't high for this film already if they're taking this approach.

More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Source: Latino Review, MTV News