Inspired by the conversation about Bright on the other thread:
Somehow, you’re the director who’s been landed the franchise rights to the Shadowrun Movie Universe. You’ve got to make the first one, but the studio have indicated that they’re looking for a series of interlinked films or sequels, as long as the first one works.
What would you do?
For me, I’ve thought about this a while and would go with the following:
Shoot entirely as a CGI flick, in the style of Final Fantasy Spirits Within, for a number of reasons:
It allows for seamless integration of dragons, orks, trolls, elves, sasquatch, blackberry cats, along with the “human” actors, without anything appearing as “dodgy” CGI.
You can customise the scenery and landscape as you want, and create some of the weird and wonderful 6th world locations again without disjunction
You can also have the matrix and astral elements done with a theme, but also in the same style as the main action.
Pure CGI means you can integrate spells and effects more directly with the cast with less risk and danger.
Granted, there may be less engagement without the traditional actor – but I think the genre would fit well.
Astral space would be a very monochromatic experience and slightly ethereal – I picture the Xavier looking for Rogue using Cerebro sequence from Xmen as a good example of how you convey the world to the audience – especially the non Shadowrun hardcore fans.
The Matrix would be very bright, vivid, in your face and neon – a Tron style affair but with a less limited Palette.
Otherwise the world is a gritty and dark place, with all the grunge and despair of the background, the split between haves and have nots. It’d be set in Seattle (at least to start) probably in 2060 – but that’s because I’m a 3rd ed player at heart and that is “golden era” timeline wise for me.
The movie would start with a LotR style flashback sequence, narrated by a big name (fulfilling the role of Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars – lending the big name wow factor and respectability to an otherwise unknown cast of new actors) – this would cover the “And so it came to Pass” section of the rule book and set the world.
Then, open with a nice fast car chase / gun sequence – like the opening of the Matrix with Trinity escaping from the Agents, just to get the audience involved.
Cut away, to a team of fresh new runners, just elevated from gang level, talking with the wizened old fixer in the bar (voiced by the Sir Alec style actor) – who takes them under his wing, seeing some promise in them, and teaches them to survive in the world (and incidentally giving plot and background exposition) to the audience, or a nice fuzzy feeling of “hey, he’s talking about Dunklezhan! I know who that is!” To the SR fans.
The first movie is a lot of scene setting and hinting at roots and backstory, introducing the Big megacorps, the state of nations, the barrens and technology / magic, but ending up with a nice heist on a corporate facility that goes wrong, with massive running gun battles, serious spell mojo and dramatic rescues from riggers and deckers doing their things at the right time.
The team would be made of 6 characters, a mix of street sam, mage, phys ad, decker, rigger and face, with clear characters and some internal conflict to drive them into at least opposition with each other and some dramatic tension.
At the end of the movie, during the getaway, one of the team definitely dies in a horrible, messy and spectacular fashion, just to let everyone know that you’re playing in a nasty world, and the heroes won’t always win and get away to live happily ever after.
Despite that, the team get away with a reasonable score, and some new enemies, and start to plan their next run. Cut to scene of Evil corp planning something nasty and soul destroying that will impact the team in some way as the setup for movie #2.
I’d go with realistic gore for the setting, and accept that it’s almost certainly going to be an 18 for the theme and content – but I think there’d be a big enough audience after some “adult” action thriller film to make that viable.
So, what would you do, in what style and with what actors or themes?