Marcus Dunstan & Patrick Melton talk about their God of War adaptation

September 1st 2012, 4:55am

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton. I know you know who these dudes are. They’re everywhere! Ever since “Project Greenlight” Dunstan and Melton have been mainstays in our beloved genre. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to change any time soon with the duo recently being tapped to adapt the highly anticipated GOD OF WAR film.

But we already knew that. What we don’t know is how the screenwriting pair plan on tackling such a sprawling subject matter. Luckily for us the folks over at IGN were wondering the same thing and decided to ask the scribes. Here’s a bit of what they had to say:

“In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition, we were attempting to do that with Kratos so that when we meet him — like they’re doing in this newest game, which is sort of a prequel to the original — we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.”

“In the game… there’s that attack from the barbarians and Kratos has to call upon Ares to help him. Really, that’s going to be our first act break. Before then, he’s going to be mortal, and he’s going to have his family. We’re going to learn about him and understand how he operates. So it’s potentially 30 minutes — give or take — of building up this character so that, when he does turn and becomes the Ghost of Sparta, we understand him as a human and we understand the journey that he’s going to take. We’re emotionally invested, so that it could go beyond just this one movie.”

“There was a recent movie, which will remain nameless, that depicted the main character without any fear. When you do that, how are we supposed to be afraid through him? How are we supposed to gauge anything as a legitimate threat? It’s become this dulling element. So with this, we take an intimidating presence such as Kratos, fighting and pursuing a bloodthirsty vengeance trail to the God of War. How do we make that genuinely scary? The man of action must prevail, but it’s got to hurt to getting there.”

To check out the whole article, which includes some more from Dunstan and Melton, head right over HERE.

Created by David Jaffe and Shannon Studstill and released in March 2005, the game followed the battles of the Spartan warrior Kratos, who squares off against mythological beasts including Medusa, Cyclops and the Hydra in his quest to find Pandora’s Box and destroy Ares, the god of war.

Universal is the studio bringing GOD OF WAR to life with Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Alex Gartner producing. No word on who might be directing this bad larry yet but hopefully that news will roll our way once the script is finished.

Source: IGN