We're living in quite the dark age right now, and movie & TV adaptations of comics/books/games/whatever you enjoy are no exception - in fact they're probably one of the more obvious symptoms of how badly the culture has degenerated. Every time I hop onto KiA2, even the original KiA, or PDW there's usually at least one thread a day pointing out another shitty, woke-and-soon-to-be-broke adaptation that makes me die a little more inside.
So I thought it might be a better idea to turn that on its head and ask the board, what's a property you would like to see adapted to the big or little screen competently, once (if) we leave this absolute black hole of creativity and good writing the culture's stuck in behind?
For me it's gotta be Resident Evil. The first game's plot boils down to 'glorified SWAT team investigates strange murders in the backwoods, gets trapped in spooky mansion filled with zombies & traps/puzzles, eventually stumbles on corporate conspiracy and a traitor in their dwindling ranks'. It's basically a biopunk/zombie spin on a haunted house plot and should theoretically be perfect for a two-hour movie or an 8-10 episode season of TV. Which makes it all the stranger that literally no adaptation has ever gotten such a simple formula right - the new movie with raceswapped Jill & Leon comes the closest, but still shoots itself in the foot by insisting on adapting two games at once & mangling almost everyone's characterization.
All I ask is that one day, before I drop dead, I get to see a reasonably faithful and well-handled adaptation of the game. Jill Valentine/Barry Burton forming one half of the main cast & plotline, Chris Redfield/Rebecca Chambers the other, in a contained setting with only a few other characters running around (mainly Albert Wesker and the few other living STARS members). No full-blown zombie apocalypse, no Mary Sue OCs played by the director's wife even if she is hot, no ludicrous racebending or tearing one character down to lift up another for woke points, no attempt to shove an entire other game's plot or two into the show/movie, no teenage drama, none of the extra shit that's ruined every single past attempt to make a movie or show out of RE. The world can be gradually expanded by adapting the next games in the series afterward, not before.
Competently?
I wanna see Ar Tonelico.
The collective REEEE of the Twitter twits would resonate for years to come, out of this romantic traditional Hero's Journey.
And they better teach all the actors the full Hymnos language, and have it fluently spoken in the background.
Who wrote that? I’ll have to check it out.
It's a PS2-era JRPG series. It's actually pretty mid-tier, and I mean mid-tier for the era, graphics have aged hard, and it doesn't take many risks narrative-wise, but the author had some linguistics fetish and made a full proper conlang for his computer-hiveminded-spellcasters which is absolutely fascinating.
It focuses on statement of emotion-desire for that emotion-action-result sentence structure, which is very weird, but clever when you consider that computers would also be processing it, which allows them to unambiguously regard intent of the speaker.
"Was yea ra chs hymmnos mea" -> I am happy, and wish this happiness to continue into the near future, to sing in order to express my emotions for another.
It's a weird conlang, but that's what makes it a charming piece.