Michael B. Jordan Is Getting in on the Wave of Video Game Adaptations

Are hyper-accurate video game adaptations going to be the new comic book movies? That certainly seems to be the trend. There was a time when studios seemed to have a sense of disdain for the games that they were adapting. Look no further than Super Mario Bros. starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. That thing has very few similarities to its source material. Now, we just got an animated Mario movie that may as well have almost no throughline save for its need to assure you that it’s familiar with the game.

And it doesn’t stop with the folks at Nintendo! Decades after the release of a movie where Jean Claude Van-Damme played a totally American hero, Guile, in a film that could, at best, be described as “tongue-in-cheek,” we’ll be getting a Street Fighter movie that feels more in line with the video game (and, ironically, has a Guile that I take even less seriously). Before that, we’ll get another Mortal Kombat movie that heard all of your complaints about the first movie (like introducing a boring new character and not having a tournament) and will be giving you Johnny Cage and, yes, a tournament!

What if the video game you are adapting hasn’t already been turned into a movie (at least not in the traditional sense)? That could be an issue facing Michael B. Jordan and Christopher McQuarrie as they seek to adapt Battlefield (according to Deadline). The video game in question is a first-person shooter that takes place on (you guessed it) different battlefields, ranging from the 1940s to the 2040s. I’ve only played a few (and it’s been a while), but from my recollection, they try to make you feel the chaos of a battle.

But, here’s the thing: we’ve already seen plenty of realistic battles onscreen before. Granted, they could try to tackle one of the games set in the (not-too-distant) future, but even then, will they be able to recreate the experience of playing the games in a movie without treading on ground that has already been covered time and again? Perhaps there’s a big overarching narrative to the games that I am not familiar with, or some lore that they can extract, but it really doesn’t sound like it.

This could easily end up being one of those situations where Michael B. Jordan, fresh off a (much-deserved) Oscar win, is just saying yes to lots of things. This could go into development and not end up going anywhere. Still, of all the video games that exist, this one feels like a weird choice to adapt. There’s no real “there” there. But that could also be the point. Jordan could treat this like one of the video game adaptations of old and use the name to tell a story he wants to tell. At this point, I would be very much into that.