It Takes Two movie writers talk the hard parts of adapting a beloved video game. Released for most major consoles in March 2021, the two-player game tells the charming story of Cody and May, a married couple on the brink of divorce who are turned into their daughter's handmade dolls after she cries over them. There is no solo option for the split-screen cooperative multiplayer, requiring players to learn to collaborate just like its protagonists. It Takes Two was a commercial and critical hit, winning Game of the Year at the Game Awards 2021, and a film and television adaptation were announced in January 2022.
While speaking with the It Takes Two movie below:
Casey: That’s the challenge with any sort of action-heavy movie, including It Takes Two and Violent Night, is to think of ways to vary up all the sequences and with It Takes Two, how to incorporate some of those special gameplay elements in a way that feels movie-like instead.
Miller: If anything, [video game developer] Hazelight made it hard on us because there’s too much good stuff from the game. So it is kind of like there’s a bit of triage of ‘oh no, well we can’t fit all this in. What’s the best stuff to keep?’ You try to think of if there are ways that you can meld one level with another level so that fans of the game will get it, they’re like, ‘oh, I see, they combined these two things.'
Can It Takes Two Copy Sonic's Success?
High-quality video games adaptations for television are having a moment recently, with projects such as HBO's The Last of Us, Amazon's God of War, Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane, and many others making their way to the small screen. Television is a popular medium for video game adaptation since most video game stories take several hours to complete, lending themselves more easily to multiple hour-long episodes. In the past, some film adaptations of video games have let fans down, such as the infamous Resident Evil movie franchise and 1993's Super Mario Bros.
Video game adaptations are sometimes judged harshly due to high expectations from their built-in and ionate fan bases. However, they face a particular set of challenges due to the average length of a film, often many hours shorter than the game being adapted, and innately less immersive new medium. Miller and Casey, as the writers mention above, must attempt to 10-15 hours of gameplay into three, maximum, while managing the hopes of It Takes Two fans. When looking to success to try and emulate, the creators of the movie may look to take a page out of their book from the work they did on the Sonic the Hedgehog movies.
Despite a rocky start with the original movie's first trailer, which started an online campaign to change Sonic's movie look, 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game adaptation that combines real life with animation and successfully compiles decades of the games' stories and lore into a cohesive, amusing, and occasionally sweet story. Boasting appeal across demographics, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was even more of a hit, becoming the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time. Miller and Casey's approach in streamlining certain levels of It Takes Two to create the most impactful film experience could result in similar success for the movie, so long as fans of the original game become invested in the adaptation.
Source: ComingSoon.net
