Metro 2033 Film Cancelled Because Scriptwriter Wanted to "Americanize" It - Glukhovsky Saves Metro from MGM

[Jaimas]

From PC Gamer:

Work on the Metro 2033 film that was announced in 2016 has been halted and the rights have reverted to Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the 2005 novel on which the movie was meant to be based. The reason, Glukhovsky told VG247, is that scriptwriter F. Scott Frazier had intended to "Americanize" the setting by moving it from Moscow to Washington DC, and it just wasn't working out. (Which is a nice way of saying that it sounds like it would have been awful.)

The Scriptwriter in question, F. Scott Frazier, has done fuck all that you've ever heard of, with his most famous work being xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. Why MGM thought this guy would be the best choice to write in the first place is beyond my reckoning, as the two other movies he's written for have ratings barely above thirty on Metacritic.

It then turns out that they wanted to move it to Washington, change the demographics, and remove Communists and Nazis. You know, the central fucking premise of what makes the Metro universe work. They also wanted it to center on black people, though I may be misreading what Glukhovsky has said here.

"A lot of things didn’t work out in Washington DC," Glukhovsky said. "In Washington DC, Nazis don’t work, Communists don’t work at all, and the Dark Ones don’t work. Washington DC is a black city basically. That’s not at all the allusion I want to have, it’s a metaphor of general xenophobia but it’s not a comment on African Americans at all. So it didn’t work."

"They had to replace the Dark Ones with some kind of random beasts and as long as the beasts don’t look human, the entire story of xenophobia doesn’t work which was very important to me as a convinced internationalist. They turned it into a very generic thing."

For those who don't know, the conflict between the Red Line and Reich in Metro is pretty much central to the entire universe in both the novels and game. Half of the first game is spent in either territory, and you go through both in the second as well. The Dark Ones look alien, but are actually humans, mutated by the chemicals and radiation from after the fall, blessed with formidable psionic abilities. They're not actually hostile, but it's easy to misconstrue them as such because of how alien they are and how their abilities work.

Fucking these up means basically fucking up every part of this universe, whether you're basing on either the book or game.

Glukhovsky said MGM decided to set the film in the US because "Americans have a reputation for liking stories about America." But one of the most appealing things about the Metro games is how marvelously Russian they are: Bleak, weary, hard, hopeless, but determined to soldier on to the next day anyway, AK in one hand and vodka in the other, if for no other reason than to spite the whole damn universe. That's obviously a very stereotypical take on Russian-ness, but it's also at the core of the Metro games.

As a fan of those games, that's what I want to see, and it's also apparently the kind of film Glukhovsky wants to see made.

"With Metro Last Light and Metro 2033 - the books and the games - selling millions and millions of copies worldwide, it’s probably not as improbable now that people would accept a story happening in Moscow because that’s going to be the unique selling point," he said. "We’ve seen the American version of apocalypse a lot of times and the audience that like the genre are educated and saturated and not really wishing to get anymore of that."

Glukhovsky said he's still "optimistic" about a Metro 2033 film being made, and expressed hope that the upcoming release of Metro Exodus will help the process by exposing the series to a wider audience. The new Metro game is slated to come out on February 22, 2019.

 

[IV 445]

This pull quote is interesting to me,

>Glukhovsky said MGM decided to set the film in the US because "Americans have a reputation for liking stories about America." But one of the most appealing things about the Metro games is how marvelously Russian they are: Bleak, weary, hard, hopeless, but determined to soldier on to the next day anyway,

@Desire Lines, you’re russian, is that an accurate statement of your countrymen?

 

[Penultimo]

What's the point of licensing something if your final product won't resemble the original in any way?

 

[GentlemanFaggot]

Sounds like the writer has some integrity, good for him! I wouldn't want to see Metro 2033 turn out like that.

 

[dopy]

america ruins something again by merely existing
ugh, thanks obama

 

[JB 236]

This is actually pretty good to hear.
Metro was a blast to play when it came out on PC, played the shit out of that and S.T.A.L.K.E.R, I don't think it should be made into a film though in all honesty because it will end up different, like this every time just on the Dark Ones alone.

 

[Graffiti canvas]

Has there ever been a movie based on a video game that was any good?

 

[the autist of dojima]

Has there ever been a movie based on a video game that was any good?

Do the old lara croft and pokemon movies count?

 

[HiddenFist]

The movie sounded like no would watch it and be nuked by critics anyway.

 

[Basketball Jones]

So...strip it of everything that makes it not only good, but what makes it Metro, blackwash the Ruskies, make the Dark Ones a generic monster (I can only assume because audiences are too stupid to understand anything outside of zombies/vampires/werewolves), set the story in D.C., and 86 the Communists and Nazis... oh and give script of the movie to a guy known for writing trash who doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia article because he’s so trash and who was also tasked with writing THIS future abortion...

I bet anyone could write exactly the plot this dude wanted to have while hitting every common generic movie beat and trope with minimal-to-no effort.

Americans like stories about Americans

Explain Anime.

 

[Graffiti canvas]

Do the old lara croft and pokemon movies count?

Pokemon had a successful anime already.

Croft wasn't all that good, IMO... but I suppose it wasn't shit like DooM

 

[ZehnBoat]

Story: it's important that it's set in THIS PLACE at THIS TIME with THESE PEOPLE

american scriptwriter: OKAY SET IT IN THE U.S. MODERN DAY WITH GENERIC ACTION MOVIE LEADS

 

[HG 400]

Fuck America.

 

[DragoonSierra]

Has there ever been a movie based on a video game that was any good?

Mortal Kombat?

 

[Basketball Jones]

Dig into this guy more because I’m nosy. Turns out he used to test games. His game bio linked to his LinkedIn which had a blog on it that was last updated in 2009.

By accident, I clicked a link while scrolling through the entries (only to realize I had reached the end) and before backing out I saw the title and decided to read through it. And then I came upon this line:

Art and commerce are important. They cannot live without one another. They each force the other to do better. The creator cannot starve; he must be paid to create and to flourish. The marketer cannot sell without a product; he must pay for content to be created. From an outside perspective, it’s easy to label one man a shill, another a sell-out. History will separate and showcase the most successful from each category.

Irony: a writer had to tell Fraizer, another writer, not fuck up their art by rewriting it into some generic movie schlock. I think it’s pretty easy to tell who the sell-out is...

Also he did an interview with a puppet and I haven’t watched all 4 parts but they’re pretty short so here.

[EDIT] btw he was hired to write this in 2012.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

I honestly can't believe MGM is still around.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Has there ever been a movie based on a video game that was any good?

Does Batman: Assault on Arkham count? The game it would have been based on never materialized, sadly, but...

 

[Pozzingmyfilthyneghole]

What's the point of licensing something if your final product won't resemble the original in any way?

Less marketing dollars to spend.

 

[Judge Holden]

The whole "MURICANS DONT WANT DIRTY FOREIGN PEOPLE OR PLACES IN THEIR MOVIES!" concept is just another example of why everyone in the marketing industry needs to be dragged into the streets and ritualistically castrated before baying mobs

Infact it is such a goddamn terrible and wrong idea that it can be dismissed with but a single word

If you want to find a country that is 90% drooling and ill educated hicks and that is fucking bursting at the seams with ultranationalist masturbation and "FACK YOU OUTSIDE WORLD!" sentiment, then you would be really hard pressed to find a better country than China. I mean the government just straight up intercedes to give native chinese films and foreign films which openly praise china a boost at the box office for fuck sake. And yet, one glance at the top grossing films in chinkyland show that this hive of of badly educated foreigner hating jingoism is....actually really happy to watch foreign movies that have fuck all to do with china and indeed have no asians in general in the mix.

With regards to murica and inflation adjusted, out of the top 10 most profitable movies you have 5 which have straight up nothing to do with the US and are filled with foreign actors, and this includes shit from half a century ago so I really cant see where this moronic concept came from.

Now if you want to argue that mass US audiences dont care for films that are not in english and are thus subtitled then you may indeed have a point, but this is hardly limited to the US as just about every nation's theatre audience will have few within whom are willing to spend half the movie reading

 

[YourMommasBackstory]

it better be killed by its creators then by critics and disappointed viewers

but anyway -

ебаные пендосы опять все заруинили