Mortal Kombat, Death Note 2 Writer Talks Bad Adaptations and Doing Fandoms Justice
Ahead of the release of the new Mortal Kombat movie, Game Rant spoke with the film's writer, Greg Russo, about what it's been like to work on the movie and other upcoming projects. Over the course of the interview, there seemed to be a recurring theme for Russo: he's been working on adaptations of source material that he is personally a fan of, often in an attempt to do them justice where they have been done wrongly before. To wit, the Mortal Kombat movie our interview centered around and Netflix's upcoming Death Note 2 are passion projects of sorts for him.
While it is by no means simple or easy to create good movie adaptations of any kind of story, there are some unique challenges associated with adapting video games. The way that games tell their stories is very different from film, because games are by nature interactive and have to serve up many more hours of content. We wanted to learn from Russo, though, what he thinks each medium can learn from the other.
"... Any great storytelling should activate the viewer in some way. If you're not holding a controller, then great storytelling needs to activate your emotions, engage you, bring you in. That's something that video games just do better than movies. They bring you into that world because you are a part of the world. Any screenwriter or any storyteller in film should be pushing themselves to bring the viewer in as much as possible, to make them feel a part of it in a visceral and emotional way.
On the flipside, there are some things that storytelling does that video games still struggle with. A lot of them are there, and are pulling from the storytelling they see in films, the character development. I would just say for games: keep taking the time to develop characters. There's some amazing stuff out there right now, like Hellblade. You get inside that character's head, and it's fascinating. As long as they continue to learn from each other in storytelling, some really awesome stuff will come out."
Russo went on to detail how it feels for him to get to work on a franchise like Mortal Kombat, a franchise that is so near and dear to his heart as well as the hearts of countless other fans. It seems he grew up in an era when many game adaptations were not made by people who really understood or cared about the source material, and it became a driving factor in his direction as a writer.
"When I set out to be a writer, one of my goals was to find a way to correct something that I thought wasn't being done right. When you grow up loving games, being a gamer, and I saw these adaptations, I didn't understand why my favorite games were being unjustly done. One of the boxes I put on my wishlist was to work on some of these and make them the best they could be."
This doesn't just apply to games, it seems. Russo is also working on Death Note 2 for Netflix. We were curious about that, since the first Netlix live-action adaptation of Death Note was panned by many fans as a bad disservice to one of the most beloved anime series of all time. Russo is clearly someone who cares about doing his source material justice, so we asked what he was going to do with Death Note 2.
"Oh wow, yeah. We have something really exciting planned for that. I don't think it's been announced yet, but basically, I’m using the template that they set up with that first film, and my main goal is to bring everything back to the source material and to bring the great chess match between Light and L back to the front of the film. There were some things in that first film that were inaccurate to what I loved about Death Note. This is something that I came in as a fan on and said- 'this film now exists, I didn't have any part in it, but here's what I want to do with it, and here's how I want to bring it back to its roots.' So, we have something really cool cooking up, but I don't know if I can say it yet. It's gonna take Death Note in a new direction. It's going to really excite fans and bring them back in, I hope."
It became clear over the course of our conversation that the urge to write films that serve the interests of fans is a consistent theme for Russo. Especially in the case of video games and anime, both of which have struggled with live action adaptations, Russo has a particular interest in giving fans what they want as a way to make up for the injustices of bad adaptations past.
"The fans are important. I think they drive everything. They are the passion behind these pieces of source material, and when I see it done in a way that, when I see a path towards doing it better and doing it for the fans, I always try to take it.... I would love to continue to work on these properties and bring the passion that these fans have, and give them what they want, what they're excited about, what they deserve. Hopefully I can keep doing that."
Mortal Kombat released in theatres and on HBO Max on April 23rd, 2021.
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