D.I.C.E. 2013: J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell Tease Portal Movie

[uchytjes]

I still don't understand why people hate J J Abrams. Sure his movies aren't "ZOMG ITS TEH BEST THIS EVAR" but thats just it: Amazing movies don't happen ALL THE TIME. At least he is consistent in providing movies that are fun to watch, even if they are forgettable at times.

Also, I honestly hope he has learned from all the internet rage that he does in fact use far too much lens flare and hope he will correct that in his upcoming movies.

 

[Beryl77]

It would be interesting to see a Half-Life movie about the Seven Hour War. Obviously it's not going to be about our dear physicist but there's a lot of background story in Half-Life that they could use, same with Portal. I'm pretty excited about the potential video game as well.
Hollywood has made multiple offers to Valve for a Half-Life movie but they've turned them all down because all the ideas were terrible according to Mr. Newell. They must have some really good ideas to consider this. I think the biggest problem was that Hollywood doesn't really know Half-Life well and considering Hollywood's history with video game movies, that doesn't surprise me at all. However, J.J. Abrams is a fan of Valve and Half-Life if I recall correctly, so he probably knows how to make a proper Half-Life movie.
Well, I'm certainly interested.

 

[Nurb]

But the game is a mute solving puzzles with a taunting robot in a sterile facility, how can you make a movie out of that? Half-life would be a better option since other characters could do the speaking. I think I'd like a silent Freeman through a whole movie.

 

[Not Matt]

Gaben, J.J. Come here, i wanna show you something. these are a few of the good videogames that got a movie.

Spoiler: do not watch if you don't wanna cry

not to mention the uncharted movie which isn't made (thank god) yet (s**t). where drake and his family travel around solving agrological crimes

.......feel good about that? feel good about what you said about GLados and gordon and chell?

please don't do this. i know how self intitled we sound saying this but. DO NOT MAKE THE MOVIE.........[small]pretty please[/small]

 

[Moth_Monk]

"At least it's not Uwe Boll."

That will be the movie tag-line.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Let's all enjoy the freak out, shall we.

Maestro, some music please...


In the meantime let's take a shot evertime somone makes a lens flare joke.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

DAMNIT JJ!
WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT STAYING AWAY FROM THE THINGS I LIKE!

This just makes me sad, is Disney AND Valve so blind that they can't even see past the lens flares?

Also I have a niggling feeling that this will be like the Super Mario Bros. movie all over again.

Freeman and Chell deserve better than this...

 

[Steve the Pocket]

During the keynote, both men made their biases of medium pretty clear. Where Newell was naturally in favor of the free agency provided by videogames, Abrams was more critical of the unfocused nature of storytelling through games. "It's under the player's control how much of this world they're going to explore," said Newell. Where Abrams' thoughts are that "players are often driving the scene in the wrong direction."

Oh joy, he's one of those people. Look, while I'll be the first to admit that Valve pioneered the linear, setpiece-driven style of game design that's become the norm in recent years, they still know how to make games where the player feels like they're in control as opposed to more recent games that have turned into "guided tours" broken up by brief periods of actual gameplay. Valve doesn't need an actual filmmaker telling them that video games need to be even more like movies. I don't care if it's Peter Jackson saying this stuff; they do not know what they're talking about.

I'd be fine with a Half-Life movie directed by Abrams if Valve's own writers are still involved in the screenplay. As Moviebob pointed out, Abrams has a tendency to play it very safe and not try to do anything out-of-the-box, while Valve enjoys swerving in completely unexpected directions and blowing the player's mind, especially in recent years. A movie written by those people but reined in by someone with more experience directing live action (practically anyone will do) would be amazing.

 

[MarsProbe]

Personally I can't see this happening. Not that I don't specifically want to see a JJ Abrams Portal movie, I just don't think I want to see a Portal movie at all. Though if they must, if they could at least work in Cave Johnson warning in his usual fashion about the overuse of lens flare in a particular test chamber, I'd be fine with that.

Oh, and somewhere in this thread someone made a comment about Armageddon being a mediocre movie. Well, they're wrong, and mad.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I still don't understand why people hate J J Abrams. Sure his movies aren't "ZOMG ITS TEH BEST THIS EVAR" but thats just it: Amazing movies don't happen ALL THE TIME. At least he is consistent in providing movies that are fun to watch, even if they are forgettable at times.

Also, I honestly hope he has learned from all the internet rage that he does in fact use far too much lens flare and hope he will correct that in his upcoming movies.

It isn't that his movies aren't great/good.

It's that they lack soul/substance/passion/creative vision etc. EDITI realized it didn't make sense)the fact that his movie lack that touch is why everyone is riled up.

NOT:
"J.J. ABRAMS IS SUCH A BAD DIRECTOR, HIS MOVIES SUCK! ZOMG!"

BUT:
"WHY IS HE DIRECTING IT AND NOT SOME ASPIRING FILM STUDENT/SOMEONE TO WHOM THE SUBJECT MATTER IS PART OF WHO THEY ARE?"

 

[uchytjes]

It isn't that his movies aren't great/good.

It's that they lack soul/substance/passion/creative vision etc. that kind of mediocrity is why everyone is riled up.

NOT:
"J.J. ABRAMS IS SUCH A BAD DIRECTOR, HIS MOVIES SUCK! ZOMG!"

BUT:
"WHY IS HE DIRECTING IT AND NOT SOME ASPIRING FILM STUDENT/SOMEONE TO WHOM THE SUBJECT MATTER IS PART OF WHO THEY ARE?"

Oh, that is an EASY question to answer: money. Producers will hire people that are a safe bet rather than someone that is unpredictable.

Also, I'm completely against people directing things because of their nostalgia. If they are doing it out of pure nostalgia all they can produce is something that is, at best, a copy of the original. When you have someone that doesn't have nostalgic feelings towards the original material, it gives way to A: innovation and modernization of the original material and B: a brand new story instead of a re-hash of an old one.

Of course, as is possible in any situation, all hell can break loose and the project could just go to shit regardless of who is directing it.

 

[Gentleman Adventurer]

I still don't understand why people hate J J Abrams. Sure his movies aren't "ZOMG ITS TEH BEST THIS EVAR" but thats just it: Amazing movies don't happen ALL THE TIME. At least he is consistent in providing movies that are fun to watch, even if they are forgettable at times.

Also, I honestly hope he has learned from all the internet rage that he does in fact use far too much lens flare and hope he will correct that in his upcoming movies.

It isn't that his movies aren't great/good.

It's that they lack soul/substance/passion/creative vision etc. EDITI realized it didn't make sense)the fact that his movie lack that touch is why everyone is riled up.

NOT:
"J.J. ABRAMS IS SUCH A BAD DIRECTOR, HIS MOVIES SUCK! ZOMG!"

BUT:
"WHY IS HE DIRECTING IT AND NOT SOME ASPIRING FILM STUDENT/SOMEONE TO WHOM THE SUBJECT MATTER IS PART OF WHO THEY ARE?"

I don't want to get into a debate about if JJ's movies have "souls" or not. But most of the complaints I've seen really do boil down to, "ARGGGGGHHHHH JJ SUCKS AND LENZ FLARE!!!!!!!"

 

[RyQ_TMC]

That means either a movie based on a puzzle game with subtle cues for player to piece the story together, or a very definitely non-silent Gordon Freeman.

You know they would write him to throw one-liners at a rate of five every minute.

You know they would.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

It isn't that his movies aren't great/good.

It's that they lack soul/substance/passion/creative vision etc. that kind of mediocrity is why everyone is riled up.

NOT:
"J.J. ABRAMS IS SUCH A BAD DIRECTOR, HIS MOVIES SUCK! ZOMG!"

BUT:
"WHY IS HE DIRECTING IT AND NOT SOME ASPIRING FILM STUDENT/SOMEONE TO WHOM THE SUBJECT MATTER IS PART OF WHO THEY ARE?"

Oh, that is an EASY question to answer: money. Producers will hire people that are a safe bet rather than someone that is unpredictable.

Also, I'm completely against people directing things because of their nostalgia. If they are doing it out of pure nostalgia all they can produce is something that is, at best, a copy of the original. When you have someone that doesn't have nostalgic feelings towards the original material, it gives way to A: innovation and modernization of the original material and B: a brand new story instead of a re-hash of an old one.

Of course, as is possible in any situation, all hell can break loose and the project could just go to shit regardless of who is directing it.

A:JJ is incapable of transferring any feelings into any of his movies, even Super 8, where the opportunity to prove himself as a director was glaring right before him, and Half-life isn't so old that it needs modernization; the story has a unique vibe to it that when removed, would make the story rather bland and uninteresting, leaving only the unique gameplay, and as we all know, gameplay is the hardest thing to transfer onto cinema.

B:THAT could work, but again, you'd need to keep consistent with the theme, otherwise it's a spinoff, and the only "good" vg-movies that worked with that kind of approach were the Resident Evil movies, but they work because of their slightly schlocky/bad movie feel.

To quote Yahtzee:

"A game(in this case movie, but I believe that it still applies) that fails due to over-ambition is still better than a game that fails because its beep-boop committee designed sludge coughed out by a corporation staffed by robots(in this case J.J. Abrams)"

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

"ARGGGGGHHHHH JJ SUCKS AND LENZ FLARE!!!!!!!"[/quote]

That's cause its the most immediate reaction to this article.

 

[uchytjes]

A:JJ is incapable of transferring any feelings into any of his movies, even Super 8, where the opportunity to prove himself as a director was glaring right before him, and Half-life isn't so old that it needs modernization; the story has a unique vibe to it that when removed, would make the story rather bland and uninteresting, leaving only the unique gameplay, and as we all know, gameplay is the hardest thing to transfer onto cinema.

B:THAT could work, but again, you'd need to keep consistent with the theme, otherwise it's a spinoff, and the only "good" vg-movies that worked with that kind of approach were the Resident Evil movies, but they work because of their slightly schlocky/bad movie feel.

To quote Yahtzee:

"A game(in this case movie, but I believe that it still applies) that fails due to over-ambition is still better than a game that fails because its beep-boop committee designed sludge coughed out by a corporation staffed by robots(in this case J.J. Abrams)"

To counter your points:

A: Wasn't Super 8 a nostalgic tribute to old Speilberg movies like E.T.? (I never watched it, so I'm going off of what I remember from Movie Bob's review) So wouldn't it be pretty likely that because of his feelings from the past he fumbled while trying to emulate it? I don't know, I could be wrong about that.

B: Well, if either of these movies (portal or half-life) were to be made, they would most CERTAINLY need to focus on something that barely touches the original story of the games. For portal I would like to see an Sci-fi action movie about Aperture's collapse at the hands of GlaDOS. For half-life, however, I don't know of any approach they could make.

Either way, the movies should NOT be about anything having to do with the main stories of either game. The best videogame movies always seem to be far removed from any plot in the games.

Also, on a tangentially related topic: What if the portal movie was an interactive puzzle where the entire audience had to cooperate to finish each puzzle? That would be an interesting experiment.

 

[awesomepanda]

the title of this article is rather misleading.

 

[ash12181987]

Grrrrrrr...

JJ Abrams is really starting to get on my nerves. He's making Star Wars Origins: YODA, Star Trek 2: No, I Swear we Aren't Ripping off tWoK, and now a Valve game movie? Can someone get his superior Compatriot Joss Whedon onto even One of these products before Abrams' ego attains sentience?

 

[Metalrocks]

well, it could be worse. it could be uwe boll.
but him doing either a portal movie or half life movie, that cant be good. but at least i have some small hope he will get few things right were boll screws up enormously.

 

[Farther than stars]

What are you talking about? "Portal" can't be a movie. It's not about the portals. It's about viewing the world from your own perspective and having that perspective skewered through portals. That kind of first-person connection would be completely lost on a movie, at least any non-indie movie.
Now Half-Life on the other hand... That might just become my favourite film. A Half-Life story in which I don't have to be mauled by striders and hunters together? That would be phenomenal!