So, my buddy Bryan took me to see the new District 9 (the night after I watched him play Army of Two), and holy crap … this is the ideal video game movie. Let me begin with stating that the movie began under production as the Halo movie, so this goes to explain why I feel that Microsoft could have ended up making bank if they had let Neill Blomkamp behind the camera on the project. However, because of whatever reason Microsoft had for not making the Halo movie, we have a wonderful replacement.

So, how does District 9 successfully emulate what a video game movie should be? Well, to start with, District 9 has the classic Hero’s Journey (monomyth), with a classic everyday man who is the typical anti-hero. Many video games start this way, and has been a staple in game story telling for sometime. Half-Life has the protagonist as an MIT educated Doctor, Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) the protagonist is someone who is just trying to exonerate himself, and even Tron 2.0 had you playing as a character’s child (Jet, son of Alan Bradley). Video games use this story telling model to get people to grow with their character, and follow them through the journey laid out before them. The same protagonist is then called upon to do something “big” to help advance their career, while still being in a middle-man position. Gordon Freeman, in Half-Life, was a PhD, who was doing lab tests to help advance the findings, for a company that was looking to use the results to try and connect with alien worlds, for nefarious reasons. Wikus van der Merwe, the main character of District 9, was tasked to help evict the aliens who lived in District 9, meanwhile being a puppet for Multi-National United (MNU), an industrial military supplier to South Africa. This makes the protagonist’s dilemma even more interesting when shit hits the fan. This makes the viewer/player immediately connect with the protagonist and make them question what they would do in that situation. Would they be tied to the loyalty to their employer, or would they do what is best in the situation for themselves. This is an ethical quandary that each creator handled differently. In the case of Half-Life, it is assumed that because something went wrong, you are on your own (Half-Life’s narrative doesn’t explain Gordon’s motive, Half-Life 2 makes it clear as day). District 9, shit hit the fan once (Spoiler) Wikus got sprayed with the alien goo and that caused the series of events that occurred.

Now that we have figured out motive, next is the action. The quick editing style, by cutting out segments of seconds during long scenes makes the movie feel sporadic, and emulating the feel of memories in video games. I never recall few seconds of a game that had no real action, so when I replay a game in my mind, I only remember the important bits. This is usually why we diminish gameplay time in our personal calculation of the length of the game. This makes the movie feel longer than the 2 hour running time. This also explains why games full of action are considered a better buy, because we remember the fun bits instead of the boring ones, and those occupy more “time” than longer games. (At least for right-sided people).

Add to the fact that the camera is a plethora of handheld shots, TV News Footage, and some sexy, sexy “archive” footage that looked to have actually been filmed in the 1980’s (when the footage was said to have been made). This give the movie the epic feeling that this world has existed for as long as it has stated (20 years for District 9), and adds to the believability of it. Assassin’s Creed is another game that emulates this style very well. Not only can you change the view points during important events to a chase cam that emulates the chaotic feeling of the chase scenes in the Bourne movies.

So, add all that together, and you have an epic video game movie that isn’t really based on a video game. Ultimately, if Microsoft had given the job to Neill Blomkamp, I imagine it would look like this. Sadly, we may never see that.