The Grand Theft Auto franchise is best known for its open-world element, but the games’ storytelling has been consistently brilliant over the years and each installment has featured unforgettable characters. So, a film adaptation of the games might be on the cards one day, especially as franchises dominate more and more of the moviegoing landscape and studios grab at any existing intellectual property they can turn into the next MCU.
There are some directors who would be perfect for a movie adaptation of the GTA games, while there are others who would undoubtedly screw it up and make the whole endeavor feel pointless.
10 Should: Quentin Tarantino
The casually crime-ridden streets of Quentin Tarantino’s Los Angeles are the perfect template for depicting GTA V’s Los Santos on the big screen. While he’s been focusing more on westerns recently, Tarantino’s early crime movies still rank among the genre’s most influential works.
However, Tarantino has pledged to retire after his next film and it’s unlikely that he’d make a video game adaptation as his final contribution to cinema.
9 Shouldn’t: Zack Snyder
Zack Snyder seems to be able to get his hands on any beloved property he wants to adapt, but he should be kept away from Grand Theft Auto. The GTA games have a sumptuously naturalistic color palette, capturing the authentic grit of classic crime movies like Le Doulos and The French Connection.
If Snyder adapted them for the screen, he would saturate the colors and fill the action scenes with arbitrary super slow motion. The games also have complex storytelling and nuances that movies like 300 and Batman v Superman lack.
8 Should: Guy Ritchie
To successfully adapt Grand Theft Auto into a movie, a director would need to be well-versed in both gritty crime movies and explosive, big-budget studio action movies. Few filmmakers have mastered both genres as well as Guy Ritchie.
A Ritchie-helmed GTA movie could have the dazzling action of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. mixed with the biting dialogue of Lock, Stock and Snatch.
7 Shouldn’t: Paul W.S. Anderson
Owing to his increasingly dire work on the Resident Evil movies, Paul W.S. Anderson is notorious for messing up video game adaptations. He shouldn’t be let anywhere near a GTA movie.
The latest video game property he’s taken a stab at is Monster Hunter, but the recently released trailer hasn’t inspired much hope from fans.
6 Should: Nicolas Winding Refn
The slick neo-noir style of Nicolas Winding Refn’s work could be the perfect conduit to bring the crime-infested world of the GTA franchise to the screen.
Refn’s GTA story would likely revolve around a brooding, softly spoken protagonist like the Driver trapped in a neon-drenched criminal underworld.
5 Shouldn’t: Len Wiseman
Len Wiseman is a Hollywood action director who’s often called upon to deliver a solid, middle-of-the-road action tentpole like Live Free or Die Hard. There’s a lot to love in John McClane’s Wiseman-helmed fourth outing, but it goes way too far in a lot of places (like when McClane jumps onto the wing of a fighter jet and then slides down a broken highway to escape its explosion).
Plus, Wiseman totally botched Total Recall. He made a remake of Total Recall that didn’t go to Mars. If he did a GTA movie, it might not feature any cars.
4 Should: Martin Scorsese
Essentially, a film adaptation of the GTA games would be a crime movie in an urban setting, and the undisputed heavyweight champion of the city-dwelling crime film is Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese could bring Franklin Clinton or Niko Bellic or Tommy Vercetti to life with as much detail and pathos as Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle or Mean Streets’ Charlie or Goodfellas’ Henry Hill (who, like Tommy, was played by Ray Liotta).
3 Shouldn’t: Todd Phillips
Thanks to Joker’s mostly undeserved praise, Todd Phillips is currently one of the most talked-about directors in Hollywood. If a GTA movie was in development at a big studio, then the guy who made an R-rated brand-name crime film for $55 million that went on to gross over $1 billion might come up.
But if War Dogs and Joker are anything to go by, all Phillips would do with a GTA movie is a pale imitation of what Scorsese would do. He’d copy Scorsese’s style, but leave out the substance.
2 Should: Michael Mann
In the mid-‘90s, Michael Mann already made the quintessential Grand Theft Auto movie, except Grand Theft Auto didn’t exist yet and he called it Heat. The intensity of the action in Heat – particularly the shootout following the bank heist – comes close to capturing the adrenaline rush of physically engaging in firefights in GTA.
Ultimately, each GTA game is a study of crime in the American city. Heat is the definitive example of this in cinema. It heavily influenced Christopher Nolan’s depiction of Gotham in The Dark Knight.
1 Shouldn’t: Michael Bay
The bombastic, explosive, go-big-or-go-home filmmaking style of Michael Bay (creatively dubbed “Bayhem”) might be able to adequately recreate the carnage of a Sunday drive in the Grand Theft Auto universe, but the action is just part of what makes GTA great.
The storytelling and character work in the GTA games is genuinely nuanced. Bay would lose this aspect – subtlety is hardly his strong suit.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply