Bioshock. The greatest game to release in 2007: certainly one of gaming’s Mount Rushmore years. Sinking into the underwater post-capitalist metropolis of Rapture for the first time is one of the most memorable vistas the medium can offer, dethroned only by the story that follows once you’re in there.
Bioshock demarcated new boundaries for what a game can be, at least from a narrative perspective. It used the medium to empower the plot, enhancing the weight of one of gaming’s best twists by knowing that you — not your character, but the one with the controller — have caused it. It uses the player’s ostensible free will in a choice-driven world to shock you further when the story unravels to demonstrate you never had a choice at all.
The brilliance of this synthesis between narrative and gameplay birthed a new neologism for gaming scriptwriting: ludonarrative dissonance. Coined by industry legend Clint Hocking, it describes the often contradictory nature between a game’s plot and the gameplay itself; series like Uncharted or GTA place you in control of who is supposed to be a charismatic crook or rogue, but who can simultaneously slaughter droves of innocent people for the fun of it.
It’s a perplexing, distinctly videogame-born problem that Bioshock sought to obliterate. So, why exactly are we trying to pull that same game onto the big screen, aka the terrain where the magic of its storytelling would be left behind?
Bioshock to the big screen:
Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games, Constantine) is bringing us a Netflix-produced adaptation of the game that’s taking just as long as the franchise’s newest game entry, and it’s hard not to ask what the point even is. Sure, it would be stunning to see the dually paradisiacal and dystopian hydro-city on the silver screen, but all signs point to this adaptation being a shallow and devoid way of bringing the destination of Rapture to life.
Just as the Halo TV series collapsed critically in the wake of its unmasked and talkative Master Chief, this upcoming Bioshock movie is certainly going to face a problem regarding its protagonist. In the game, you play as Jack, but Jack isn’t really there at all. Jack is you; he does not speak, and he’s nothing beyond a blank-slate vessel for the player to encroach their immersion onto. He is a storytelling tool, and a magnificent one, but undoubtedly someone who would not translate to the territory of a Netflix blockbuster.
Bioshock simply uses the controller in a way that wasn’t done by a shooter before. The story isn’t so ingenious solely because it was written well, but rather because it places complete faith in the player themselves allowing the twist to manifest. What occurs in the game’s latter half makes you feel used, guilty, and utterly entranced into your unfortunate role in this mad scheme. This same feeling would surely not work without the player being in the story’s driver seat.
This sentiment hits harder aligned with the recent news that Pirates of the Caribbean‘s own Gore Verbinski was also making his own (now-canned) adaptation of the game, aiming to feature multiple endings and a deep dissection of the Oedipal element to the game’s story. While this ambitious swing doesn’t guarantee success, his demonstrable passion for the game and experience with horror setpieces on A Cure For Wellness cemented him as a destined candidate for tranlocating Bioshock into a diegesis like this.
Finding the solution:
It’s a common criticism of game-to-film transitions that the story of the adaptation bears little to no resemblance to what it’s adapting. After all, the Resident Evil movies (or, more accurately, any of Paul W.S. Anderson’s adaptations) might as well be unrelated to their point of origin. Bioshock is one franchise where I believe this approach would not only be better, but sizeably more capable of critical success. A story within the confines of Rapture that isn’t trying to be a regurgitation, but an expansion.
Picture it: a meticulous look into the deep-sea chaos of this twisted oligarchy before the game takes place, and a vision of Rapture before its great collapse or flooded chambers that we see as a player. There’s ways to bring this IP to the big screen (or at least the Netflix one) that are additive and exciting as opposed to creating a total misfire that enrages the fanbase and sinks under the weight of commercial mediocrity.
If Bioshock must be welcomed onto this new, filmic frontier for the franchise no matter how many times its adaptations are cancelled, left or disavowed, I kindly ask that it be something original. The strength of this story makes it simultaneously a futile effort to bother translating it into any other medium; notice how the Bioshock books serve as prequels to the game’s story, rather than trying to retread old ground through weaker steps. Let games exist without needing to transmogrify them into a land unfit, and make the long-awaited Bioshock movie something worthwhile, as opposed to ignorant, greedy and disrespectful.
