So, this is going to be different from what I normally release on my blog. This blog is meant more to focus on heavy metal music, festivals, and culture. However, I want to try something a touch different. I want to talk about something else that I find interesting and share some thoughts on it. I want to talk about the Bioshock movie.
Gaming
Growing up, I was a bit of a gamer. I believe I’ve talked about how Guitar Hero was a significant factor in me becoming a metalhead. In short, I shared a PlayStation 2 with my brother, we had the first three games, and they were a ton of fun. But, I played other games than Guitar Hero. My brother and I loved playing Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet and Clank, among other titles. I especially loved playing Ace Combat. Eventually, my brother and I got an Xbox 360, and Halo entered our lives. And then a friend of mine from school told me about Bioshock.
Bioshock is a game from 2007 where you traverse an underwater city and unravel the mystery it contains. There is significantly more to it, but that lays a decent foundation. It was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. It combined elements of shooters, puzzle games, horror, real-time-strategy, survival, into one unique experience. But the one element that always stood out was its story.
Bioshock
I want to try and keep spoilers to a minimum, but this is the gist of it. Your flight crashes over the ocean, and you swim towards a tower, because where else are going to go? Then, you enter a submarine-looking thing, where you get transported to the underwater city of Rapture. In Rapture, you help a man named Atlas try to reconnect with his wife and kids while fighting off enemies. However, the city controller, Andrew Ryan, is actively impeding you however he can. When Atlas’s family is blown up in a sub, you go after Ryan. However, throughout all of this, you get a feeling that not all is well with Rapture.
Rapture leaves inklings that help portray its demise in each level. Eventually, you get to Ryan’s office, where he utters two phrases. Those phrases are, “Would you kindly?”, and , “A man chooses. A slave obeys.”. You kill Ryan after his monologue, but those phrases make you (the player) think. The game reveals it’s twist when Atlas asks you for one final task. Atlus is actually a pen name for a lead mobster of Rapture who has been alive all this time. So you find him, and take him down for good!
There is more to the game than that, but that covers most of it. The whole thing challenged so many tropes of gaming at the time. However, the biggest thing it does is challenge the player with regards to how much control, if any, they truly have. The amount of input required from the player is paramount to making that revelation work! You (the player) have to put in the effort to get to that point. And then the games asks you if you were really making these decisions of your own volition.
This is a story that works perfectly for a video game, due to the requirement of input. There are plenty of YouTubers that have covered it, like The Act Man. But, the way it’s told and the shock it delivers along with it is perfect for a medium that works primarily with direct interaction. So, you could imagine how I reacted with word of a Bioshock movie was in the works, from here and here.
And I want to ask: Can we just… not do this? Can we not turn Bioshock into a movie?
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Okay, I know this is a tangent, but stay with me – it’s relevant. Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest shows of all time. The incredible artwork and storytelling have cemented it as one of the best. Hell, Iroh’s quote to Zuko after explaining the elements is my life’s motto! Its impact on animation and media cannot be understated. It has remained a timeless show, even if its successor (Korra) didn’t exactly live up to the same level.
In 2010, M Night Shyamalan made a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, that covered pretty much the entirety of Book 1. And it was horrible. That movie is generally disregarded by Avatar fans around the world. In 2024, Netflix made their own live-action adaptation of Avatar. And yeah, it got mixed results. Outside of this, Avatar has been present in comic books, which help to flesh out the world and continue the story after the cartoon finished. The comics have done wonders for continued interest in the world of Avatar.
This all begs the question of why do we adapt the IPs that we adapt into mediums that they don’t work with. I mean, I get it – studios see dollar signs banking off of Nostalgia. But, why do we keep thinking that IPs will work in certain mediums?
The Challenge of Adaption
When you have a story to tell, you pick a medium to convey it. Mediums include Literature, poetry, music, movies, video games, TV, books, etc. Each medium has its advantages and disadvantages, which can make or break a story you want to tell. Certain mediums work better than others depending on the story you want to tell.
Sometimes a story can work equally well in multiple mediums. For example, I’ve talked about Deceased multiple times here. Their songs on Fearless Undead Machines and Supernatural Addiction show how this is possible. Fearless Undead Machines adapts Romero’s “Night of the Living” dead trilogy well, and Supernatural Addiction adapts works of American literature. I am far from saying that this is impossible. But Deceased picked a medium that works for telling a story like “Night of the Living Dead”.
With Bioshock being adapted into a movie, I’m convinced that it will just end up like other video game adaptations. It will just be boring and forgotten if not outwardly hated. With movies, you don’t get that input from a viewer. The input needed from the player for the twist(s) to work just won’t hit as hard as it needs to for the twist to work. At the end of the day, you (the viewer) are not in control of the main character of the movie. And for Bioshock’s movie adaptation, which is following Bioshock 1 closely, I don’t think the twist will work at all.
On top of that, movies have time limits. Run times can only go for a certain length of time, maxing out at like three hours. Bioshock 1 playthroughs average about 12 hours. The issue this poses is that you will have to cut things from the game to account for the movie’s run time. How well is this movie going to explain plasmids, Adam, the Big Daddy’s and Little sisters? How especially will it do this if it has a runtime of say two hours? What of these do you cut? How do those cuts impact the story?
Conclusion
You’d think that after two attempts adapting Avatar, people would learn to let certain IPs be. Sometimes an IP isn’t meant to work in a certain medium. And that’s okay! Books can be adapted into movies very well. Hell, Lord of the Rings is a great example. But video games to movies don’t always work, like with Silent Hills, and Warcraft. There have been exceptions (Five Nights at Freddy’s and Sonic being the immediate properties to think of here), but they are few and far between. IPs and mediums aren’t always meant to get along.
I think if studios are to adapt media, they need to make an effort to determine if it will work with the IP. Realistically, I doubt this will happen. Studios and Execs will probably only care about getting something on the air. They have the goal of making a profit – they’re businesses. To quote CJ the X, “Profit isn’t value; value is value. Don’t let them convince you they’re the same thing.”
IPs like Avatar and BioShock have value, regardless of whether they make money. They bring people together, via characters and storytelling. And they do so in mediums that best tell the story they want to tell. Can BioShock work as a movie? Maybe. But with the concerns I mentioned earlier, I have my doubts. Biased as I am, I just don’t see the value that a BioShock movie brings.
So, those are my thoughts on the idea of a BioShock movie. This was an interesting post for me to try out. Maybe I’ll try doing other things like this in the future. It could be fun. Thanks for reading.