Agreed.
That’s utterly retarded. How would you make Gollum work in Lord of the Rings without CGI by ‘knowing how to place a camera’? Since all games are basically CG imagery, should we go back to the days of shitty ass ‘interactive movies’ and just make sure we get directors who know how to place a camera? What about all-CGI movies like the brilliant films of Pixar (Toy Story, The Incredibles, Wall-E)?
CGI, when used properly, is a tool. Put it in the hands of non-dumbass directors who know how to place a camera, including a virtual camera in a CG scene, and it all adds to the brilliance of a movie. There were people making shit films with shitty effects before CGI became widespread, it just wasn’t as easy.
I wonder what the movie would be like from Alyx’s point of view. Of course, you would pretty much have to start the movie in Half-Life 2 and somewhat find a way to make the rest of the plot from Half-Life 1 make sense, but this seems like a logical move to me because Half-Life 2 was much stronger in story than Half-Life 1. Half-Life 1 was pretty much “cascade, stop it” and Half-Life 2 had you feeling for specific characters, oppression, more G-man mystery, Breen, Combine. Anyway, I think Alyx would be a better choice than Gordon for a few reasons. Alyx already has a given personality, and it’s a nice combination of drama and action which would be perfect for a good movie. Not only that, but she’s around during most if not all of the main plot but is only really with Gordon in short bursts so you could still have Gordon, you just wouldn’t need to make him the much cared for dramatic main character with a deep past.
ALL CG I said. LKike Beowulf. Is there any REAL reson that couldn’t be live action? Polar express? And the glassy eyed uncanney valley characters weren’t even that convincing!
It’s when people make all CG movies and try to replicate realism 100%. THAT is when it becomes a cop out.
I have to agree on this aswell. CG is a requirement for all movies, but it has to be used properly.
Beginning Credits
“Dr Freeman I presume.”
“…”
“I’m Alyx Vance, you worked with my father back at Black Mesa, I’m sure you don’t remember me though.”
“…”
“Man of few words aren’t ya.”
If Gordon doesn’t present much in the game, then why should he be in the film at all? All you’re doing is limiting yourself to a very rigid central character and introducing a whole lot of problems. You’re closing the walls around your creative control and restricting yourself.
Freeman is the obvious choice, I’ll give you that. But obvious doesn’t mean best. If you hand over the film rights to Hollywood agents a la Doom, Tomb Raider etc. then they’ll go with Freeman and destroy the game’s soul. Freeman isn’t the heart of the game - he’s just a viewpoint, a television camera - some vehicle or window through which the player can play, an excuse for a playable character.
If you want full creative control, and a game with as much good design as HL2 needs to take full reign over creative control, then the logical step would have to be to take Freeman away. If you really want me to and when I have time, I could quite easily give a list of the limitations that having Freeman as a main character would impose upon the film. Instead of having Freeman, you could easily have two separate characters that take on Freeman’s lack of personality if you will. You implement dialogue and already you have a relationship in the film - another dimension - instead of just a simple run and gun film.
A HL movie would be all well and good, but I can’t wait for a TF2 movie, actually. I imagine it would tie into the “Meet the team” videos, as kind of a half documentary, half normal movie type thing. You’d have the interviews and stuff from the meet the team videos, and the movie has the rest of the documentary on the red team.
Think about it. It’d be fun.
Well, if you want to take Freeman away, just call the film The Seven Hour War.
I am talking about Half Life 1 here, so Gordon is the obvious choice. Also, I don’t think Valve is going to hand over the rights to Half Life to Hollywood. They know exactly what they would do.
If done right, Freeman in Half Life would work perfectly. See, I don’t care about “Freeman cant talk!1!11” because it’s obvious that Gordon’s Silence is simply part of the game. There are several instances, I think, in both games where it seems as if Gordon would have said something to the speaker.
Also, JeffMOD, I would LOVE a Team Fortress 2 Movie. 
:jizz:
It’s not just that he doesn’t speak, he has - by design - no character whatsoever. In order to translate him into film they’d need to re-invent him as an interesting and dynamic character. I’m not opposed to the concept of a mute lead actor and in fact I’d be interesting to see how a skilled filmmaker might pull it off.
However, as has already been said HL2 is a MUCH stronger candidate for a big screen adaption as it has the characters, scope and a backdrop that can support it. The HL1 back story, again if done skilfully, could be covered in the first ten minutes before the title sequence. I do like the idea of the whole thing being taken from Alyx’s perspective since she was present at Black Mesa and there could conceivably be snippets of dreams/flashbacks that would give the viewer the shape of the back story (not unlike Reese’s dreams in Terminator.)
Of course you still have to have Gordon in there somewhere and there is a danger that casting him as an often talked about but rarely seen main character may become gimmicky, if not handled intelligently. It can be done though, again using the original Terminator movie as an example, John Conner and Skynet had a huge presence in that movie and yet neither were depicted (until the sequels.) The difference being of course neither of those had an active and parallel role within the narrative, with HL2 you’d have to see Alyx cross paths with Gordon on at least two or three occasions.
Either way, if they ever actually do it I’d like to see the guy who directed ‘Children of Men’ in the director’s chair with Weta and whoever Guillermo del Toro uses doing the creature effects. 
I’m trying really hard, but I just can’t agree with most of you on this. Gordon, for me, would have to be in it as the main character (I don’t fucking understand why people would not mind him being absent in any way).
As for re-inventing his character, it wouldn’t need that much to put him into a movie. Just have him as a naturally quiet guy that can turn up the heat when he needs to.
I guess the trouble with including Gordon as anything other than the camera’s perspective (like he is in the game) means he has to be given a character, and there is no possible way of doing that which won’t ruin someone’s idea of who Gordon is, since that is a gap left for the player to fill as they see fit. I.e. some might imagine him quiet, some like what we see in Freeman’s Mind, and others as a somewhat loud and outgoing charging maniac with a gun and a crowbar…
So, given the trouble of filling in that gap, making a movie that parallels his story rather than tries to tell it, is a nice looking alternative.
Although that may seam like the obvious thing to do, the result would most likely be a bog standard action hero, just without the “snappy one-liners” and the personality of a plank of wood.
Actually, if they were to cast Keanu Reeves…
do want.
i’d love to see half-life:opera, rly!
:facepalm:
First of all:
After all that Valve has done you still don’t have faith that they could effectively create a character for Gordon that isn’t a shallow “bog standard” action hero with a personality of a “plank of wood?”
Secondly, planks of wood have personality and feelings too my friend.
:facepalm::facepalm:
If you actually read the post I was directly responding to, you’ll see I was addressing the suggestion that Gordon would be just “a naturally quiet guy that can turn up the heat when he needs to.” Such a simplistic characterisation in a movie about shooting aliens in the hands of an average film studio would IMO most like produce the aforementioned mute plank of wood.
Also at no point did I express a lack of faith in Valve, so I have no idea where you’re getting that from.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that movies cost a lot of money to create, and if you have a mute Gordon Freeman running around it wouldn’t do too well. Sure, fans of Half-Life would probably be fine with this, but people with no prior Half-Life experience would just be like “What the fuck?” “This movie is a heap of shit”.
Movies need to make money or they don’t get made.
As for my opinion on how the movie should be made;
I like the idea of not exactly following Freeman (for reasons above) but possibly just a random civilian… Or even better Alyx. Throughout the movie you could have mention of Freeman, but you don’t actually need to see him. This would of course take away the ‘Half-Life’ storyline though… only focusing on the general events surrounding the main story such as Flashbacks to BM, life in City17, the uprising and the journey to White Forest for Civilians.
Half-Life was made so that YOU are Gordon, this creates many different interpretations on how Gordon thinks, reacts etc. This would make it VERY hard to directly transfer the storyline into a movie as it would be extremely hard to keep the many fans, and the general public happy all at once.
Well I did misunderstand your post and I apologize. The reason i misunderstood is because when I read it it sounded similar to what I have been hearing a lot of people saying. That creating a character for Gordon would be impossible without turning him into a generic action hero of the week with snappy one liners. It bothers me when I see people immediately rule out Gordon Freeman from a movie just because in the game you were meant to be him. They believe that just because he was silent in the game that he would automatically have to be silent in a movie. Or that any attempt to create a character for Gordon would result in a very cliche, crappy character. That’s why I brought up the lack of faith in Valve to handle Gordon’s character.
People keep saying that Gordon has, “by design”, no personality. But I think that if he really is just our window into the game then who’s to say that Gordon, as a character, could convey the same emotions felt by the player when they are playing the game?
Instead of deny Gordon, the iconic character and poster boy of the HL series, a role, why not tell us what you think his personality should be like as you see it? What emotions did you feel during the game that Gordon would most likely display too?
When you looked out into the skyline of City 17 from the precarious, symmetrical ledges of the Citadel did you feel awe-inspired by the beauty and detail? Were you cautious and scared of the huge drop below? What you felt as the player is what defines Gordon. And in my mind those reactions define character traits that do define the character’s personality.
Half-Life will always be about the players, and until the players actually SAY what they want out of Gordon as an on-screen character (Other than just “He can’t talk”), of course VALVe won’t be able to make any sort of good adaption! And I know for a fact that Gabe Newell would LOVE to see a Half-Life movie, so long as it was done right, and so would most of the players.
Give constructive criticism! Instead of nitpicking about how the character wouldn’t work, try and help the cause by giving a list or something of how you would define Gordon as a character (a simple list of a few words is all). And if you really can’t think of anything, thats fine too, but there are some who just simply refuse to do ANYTHING to help out, and obviously everyone is curious about a Half-Life movie or else there wouldn’t be such widespread discussion over it 
For me the character would most resemble Jim Norton’s portrayal of Bruce Banner. He only had, what, like 25-30 lines in that whole movie? THAT character was also the silent type, and when he spoke his words were well chosen by the writers. He only spoke when he needed to say something. (His first line of dialogue in the movie was just because some chick was being harassed, and his next line of dialogue was spoken to prevent being mugged!) Characters can very much be the strong silent type, that doesn’t mean they are a silent protagonist though, keep that in mind.
Thats just my opinion, whats yours?
At last a(nother) good idea (c:
Not that I can think of what to contribute to it right now (dang work getting in the way again…)
I can’t speak for anyone else, but what I mean when I say that Gordon has no personality “by design” is precisely because he’s the player’s window on the game world, which is at the core of Valve’s immersive gameplay. Any emotional reaction the player might have would be specific to each individual so trying to get an idea of what his character might be like based of a general canvassing of players isn’t likely to produce a consistent picture (which is rather the point.)
Having said that, Edward Norton’s performance in the newest Hulk movie isn’t a bad template for Freeman, however, don’t get too wrapped up in the idea that Gordon’s lack of characterisation stems only from his lack of dialogue. It stems from his lack of anything other than the odd grunt of pain, since we never see his face or body language and know next to nothing of his life before the resonance cascade.
Of course an actor doesn’t need lines to build a character and indeed the very fact that a character is quiet can in-and-of-itself be central to informing the performance.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that because Freeman’s character is specific to each player and that we all have our own ideas, conscious or otherwise about what kind of a person he is so any attempt by a writer, director and actor to portray him will out necessity require that certain choices be made and in all likelihood, will not agree with the pre-conceptions of the vast majority of fans.
Is it possible that they can make him a three dimensional, compelling and non-cliché ridden character? Of course they can, but it won’t and can’t be the same character we’ve each constructed in our heads. I think this is why most seam to prefer the idea of Gordon as a central yet rarely seen character. The more ambiguous the performance the greater chance that “our” Gordon is preserved.
Of course having said all that, to me the reality is that IF they ever make a Half Life movie, it’s highly unlikely they’ll do so without Freeman being front, centre and a non-mute. The question of whether a talking/fully characterised Freeman will mean it’ll be a “bad movie” would really depend on how good the rest of the movie is.