Portal might not be one of the best examples of why video game movies should be made but it would be kind of interesting if it was kicked up a notch or two. Fans of the game would surely be kind of miffed if it was changed altogether but after reading about and looking at the gameplay this title would need something to spice it up so that it could be seen as an enticing film. Otherwise the act of creating portals and jumping through them is interesting, but it kind of leaves a person wanting just a bit more. The idea of the main character, Chell, going up against an AI that continually taunts her is pretty interesting and could lead to a very well-designed plot that would manage to create a movie that could be very well-received. By adding in a great plot and a few more characters that could be used to round it out this could be a fairly successful movie.
Of course it might need a few extra touches to really get it there.
More characters are needed.
This could be a good addition or a bad one with the way the game is set up. Since it’s basically a challenge to get through the game the addition of more characters, not necessarily good or bad guys, could be kind of a distraction, but it could be a way to tell a better story of the various graffiti and whatnot as well. How this could be handled can vary between directors because some might decide to not add a single person in and allow the movie to play out much like the game with the AI taunting Chell as the game goes along. But adding at least one or two characters in there that could liven up the movie just for a few minutes here and there seems like it could get interesting.
The AI is great, but it can’t be the only antagonist.
GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is great simply because it’s an enemy that’s not an enemy and yet still antagonizes Chell the entire time and therefore becomes the villain. But all on its own GlaDOS is kind of an underwhelming villain no matter that it throws whatever it can at Chell. Villains in movies tend to need to be more than ideas and they are better served when they have believable henchmen that aren’t shaped like apologetic lozenges with legs (read the gameplay and you’ll understand). That’s a big reason why this game would need someone that is basically behind GLaDOS and the reason why Chell finds herself in her current predicament. If nothing else it would give viewers a better idea of just who is really putting Chell through this mess and why GLaDOS is being allowed to continue in this manner.
The overall story would need to be reworked a bit.
When you read the basic synopsis of the game it doesn’t seem like much, then you read the whole thing and it still feels like it didn’t go quite far enough to really push the envelope on something that could have been a technological thriller as well as a challenging and very meaningful game. How it was designed makes it obvious that it wasn’t meant to be another hack and slash game that would allow a player to count their kills while moving through one room after another, but instead a very technical experience that forced people to think and problem-solve on the fly. That’s all well and good, but the audiences of today tend to want something in their movies to pop out at them, to scare them, or to at least shock them in a way that they weren’t expecting. It doesn’t have to go for the cheap shock value that some movies still rely on, but allowing the film to benefit from the unknown effect that certain moments would have on the audience is still something that seems like a safe bet.
There’s been a short film made of it already that seems to incorporate at least a couple of these ideas, but so far that’s about as far as it’s gone. It would appear that someone is really trying to make this happen however, so maybe sometime in the near future we’ll be seeing this movie. Of course given the kind of development that would need to happen and the chances that anyone is going to favor this over the more popular action and thriller movies is kind of hard to see, but we can hope since the core idea of this is actually very interesting. There’s a lot that could be done with this story and a great many directions in which it could be taken. It just takes the right writer and a director with some real vision.
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