One of the things that drew fans in to theMetal Gear Soliduniverse was its complex storytelling and characters. Right from the beginning, the very first game in the series showed it had potential to be adapted into film. It had all the makings for a perfect spy and action thriller mixed with science fiction and maybe even a little fantasy. Then, as the series expanded, it showed it had even more potential to create a film franchise filled with political intrigue and alternate histories.
However, the series quickly found that too much of a good thing can turn a story sideways. As the mysteries and twists piled on, the plot began to buckle under the weight of its own history. After the first game, the Patriots were introduced as the shadow organization behind the government. Then, it was explained that the Patriots organization grew out of the Philosophers, some of whom were already existing characters spread out across a very long timeline. Fast forward to today, and the series has become a hyper-capitalistic dystopian future with multiple artificial intelligences, demonic body doubles, and a contrived story that requires an entire encyclopedia to understand.
At its core though, Metal Gear Solid still remains a very powerful and passionate story. As talk of a film adaptation once again ramps up, there’s an opportunity to streamline its story and make up for the convoluted mistakes that were thrown into the plot along the way. It was established that Solid and Liquid Snake both arose from programs aimed at cloning Big Boss, but many of the details of how those programs arose weren’t touched upon in the first game. As later games in the series expanded upon Big Boss’s life, the story complicated his journey from honored soldier to villainous mercenary. Even in the 1980’s, which was when MGS 5 took place, Big Boss was still a heroic protagonist. But it wasn’t Big Boss at all. It was a body double, which was used to explain how he was alive at the end of MGS 4 when his dead body had been used as a major plot device since the beginning. All of these layers piled onto one another to create a dense history that’s hard to keep up with.
It seemed as though the Metal Gear Solid history was being written with every new installment, and Big Boss was just a small part of that history. The origins of his organization, the Patriots, was also difficult to explain. As the mythology became more nuanced, the identities of the Patriots and how that group was formed from the Philosophers became fleshed out rather than just touched upon. But the story never unfolded in an easily understood straight line. In fact, some plot teasers, such as the financial backers for Solid Snake’s operation, were dropped altogether, as they just became too difficult to explore.
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A movie adaptation of this story has a chance to write these wrongs by plotting out and planning the whole history ahead of time. This is what George Lucas did after the firstStar Warsfilm. He didn’t just write the story for the next two films in the franchise; he came up with the entire backstory for what would eventually become the prequels many, many years later. Since Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place decades before the first two games, a similar situation may arise. By planning out the history of the entire universe ahead of time, the filmmakers can avoid stumbling into the game’s crowded and complicated timeline. It could make the entire story seamless from beginning to end by only focusing on the core players rather than all the details that bogged down the games' story.
As a general rule, adaptations succeed when they honor the source material and treat it with respect. But in this case, that respect could be earned in a different way — by avoiding some of the more troublesome paths that the games laid out. That doesn’t mean the games can’t be used as inspiration and guidance for how the story can unfold. Instead, the filmmakers should ultimately figure out their own way to include the main parts of the whole that make the Metal Gear Solid story and characters so compelling. They just also have to understand that if they get too invested into following that blueprint, it can lead to a jumbled mess.
