When the words "videogame" and "movie" appear in a sentence together, it's natural for the stomach to involuntarily knot. Whether or not filmmakers stay true to the source material, there's always a risk of facepalm-worthy adaptations . The secretive Deus Ex: Human Revolution film won't hit theaters anytime soon, but director Scott Derrickson ( Sinister ) and co-writer C. Robert Cargill state in an interview with CraveOnline that the film focuses on its cyberpunk influences over the hurdle of bringing a videogame to the silver screen.
"The chief philosophy is we're not making a videogame movie, we're making a cyberpunk movie," Cargill says. "We've taken a look at what's worked in videogames and what hasn't, and really what we've broken down is what we think the audience really wants and [what] the audience that loves Deus Ex is going to want to see out of a Deus Ex movie."
So far, so good. I haven't yet thought a single "Oh God no!" from Cargill's comments, but his next remarks sound a little more hairy: "And it's not a rehashing of the game. What [viewers] want to see are elements of the game that they love, but they want to see things that they hadn't quite seen in the game, that the game didn't allow them to see.
"So it's really allowed us to expand upon the things that happened in the game, and the game has such a great cinematic story to begin with that those elements are very easy to extract. But really, at its core, we just keep telling each other, 'We're not making a video game movie, we're making a cyberpunk movie.' And Scott and I are such big cyberpunk fans from way back in the day that that just really charges us up. Because that's what's so great about Deus Ex to begin with, is it really gets cyberpunk. Eidos Montreal really understood the nature of cyberpunk and made 'the' cyberpunk game, and it is just fantastic, and we've just had a great time adapting it."
Eidos Montreal and CBS Films haven't discussed possible casting decisions yet, nor how exactly Cargill and Derrickson's vision jives with Human Revolution's already phenomenal atmosphere beyond a slight tweak to main character Adam Jensen's background from corporate security to cyborg SWAT officer. My skepticism augment stays switched on for now, but as I load up the tech-tones of the Sarif Industries theme to soothe my anxiety, I ask you: who would you like to see become Jensen in the Deus Ex film?
