Javascrypt
03-05-2008, 11:16 PM
Who Would Play Who? If they made a movie.
At IGN.com, one of my favorite sites on the net, they posted their own article on a potential cast for the upcoming Gears movie. Their picks were Bruce Willis (Tears of the Sun) as Marcus Fenix, Carlos Bernard (24) as Dominic Santiago, Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris) for Augustus Cole, Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas), and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) as Lt. Minh Young Kim.
Going into a debate like this, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that a cinematic production is nothing like an interactive production. Apart from storytelling, the two have very little in common. However, it is for that very reason that I disagree with many of their decisions. While I respect their reasoning in keeping the quality of the production in mind, this is not X-Men, and this is not Superman Returns. If you deviate from an established character template in Gears of War, you deviate from the whole feel of the entire game. Take 300 for example. Zack Snyder managed to take the look, the feel and the original ideas from Frank Miller's comic book, and put all of them on screen with very little changes in any of them. And that became one of the best movies in years. It didn't have big name actors, it didn't compromise to play by the rules of typical cinema movies, and for that it was a success.
As I said before, the one thing that both the Gears film and game will have in common is the story, and in the story, Marcus Fenix is a bulky, battle-hardened, ex-con, with a snarling attitude, and a tendency to yell over the sound of his own gunfire (even when he’s not firing his gun). So who could possibly fit into that category besides Bruce Willis? Well, I suppose I could list about dozen other actors who could get the job done better than Willis (a few of them are way too old by now), but the most obvious answer is an unknown.
Okay, badly worded, Superman Returns starred a Brandon Routhe a relative unknown, as the Man of Steel himself. But earlier when I said that Gears is nothing like Superman what I meant is that Routhe is younger and a lot less bulky than Superman is currently drawn in the comic books. You get a different feeling when you read the comic book, than you do when you watch the movie. Mushy stuff aside, SR still managed to be a decent film.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...s_Fenix2-1.jpg (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Marcus_Fenix2-1.jpg)
But if they’re going to put a character like Marcus Fenix on the big screen, he better be Marcus Fenix… not Bruce Willis (the way 300 remained on-screen the way it was in the comic book). Take for example Nick Chinlund (Willis’ co-star in Tears of the Sun), not a well-known face, familiar, but still relatively unknown. He’s got the look, somewhat experience in the role of a soldier, and can definitely play the part of a hard-as-nails ex-con. Putting a big name face like Willis in the boots of Marcus Fenix will eclipse not only the character, but the entire feel of the story. Gears are feral, animalistic and brutal warriors who are comfortable getting shot at on the battlefield, it’s their home, they don’t like being there, but you can’t really imagine them fitting in anywhere else. That’s why taking Chinlund, who’s not really known as any one thing, and making him Marcus Fenix, you can still retain the integrity of the character.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...f_War-Domb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Domb.png)
And for Fenix’s burly Hispanic best-friend Dom, I agree with IGN in that he’s got to be someone who can display a certain level of loyalty, but more importantly he’s got to feel right, like Chinlund, he’s got to be someone who doesn’t defame the character by already being a stereotype, he’s got to be someone who can become Dominic Santiago. Well, since Chinlund is already a relative unknown with no former leading roles, whoever plays Dom has to be someone who doesn’t overshadow the lead character but at the same time is capable of playing a tough, buff sidekick. After a rigorous study of new Latino/Hispanic faces in Hollywood, I came up with a name and a face: Franky G. A.k.a. Francisco Gonzales (SAW 2) is more than just looks, he played an believable psycho-killer in Saw II and could definitely turn that psychosis into productive ruthlessness as a seasoned COG soldier.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2..._War-Coleb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Coleb.png)
As for “Coal Train” or Pvt. Augustus Cole, I didn’t really do much thinking. Cole is the most outrageously proportioned anatomical character in the game, so I was obviously looking for someone big. He’s also got to be someone who has the ability to be comedic when the time is right. After a bit of a search, I just gave up and came back to the voice actor for Cole’s character Mighty Rasta. I know his name is kinda funny, like Franky G, but he was born Lester Speight, so give the guy a break he did the best he could okay (I’d probably change my legal name to Spider-Man, but anyway). Apart from Coal Train, Rasta’s most popular portrayal was that of Terrible Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, the recurring protagonist in a series of Reebok commercials originally created for the Superbowl in 2002. So Rasta’s got both the comedy skills and the body to portray Cole as accurately as we could portray him (without steroids), not to mention they have the same voice. At the same time, Rasta played as an All-American linebacker for the Morgan State University Bears, he doesn’t just know how to talk-the-talk, he’s walked it. The body, the voice, the comedy, Rasta has everything it takes and more, he doesn’t have to become Cole Train, he IS The Cole Train.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ich87/KimB.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/KimB.png)
Lieutenant Kim is a rather brief character, but essential to the cast nonetheless. Besides I don’t think I could go without seeing Kim get shish kabobbed with a 20 inch dagger on the big screen. Well I couldn’t find that many actors who could potentially become this whiney and by-the-book commander of Delta Squad, but I finally landed on Jason Scott Lee, who starred opposite Kurt Russel in the partially cheese-ball flick Soldier. Lee managed to pull off the look of a killer, and since Kim is a soldier, he could definitely play the part. Being this sort of overbearing commander is another issue entirely however, so I suppose Lee’s boyish and younger looking face might account for Kim being a less-experienced commander in charge of more battle-hardened soldiers like Fenix and Dom. But more importantly he’s not well-known and could easily become the shish kabobbed Kim on screen. On a side note, Scott Lee also played Bruce Lee in Fist of the Dragon (I think), so in my book he’s a badass.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...War-Bairdb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Bairdb.png)
Baird. Well, I’m not sure if I can write about Baird without adding some vile profanity, he’s a definite pain in the ***, but he’s the techno-wiz of the squad (which is kinda ironic because in Tears of the Sun, Chinlund plays the squad techno-dude), and later in the game it becomes very obvious why he’s a main character. At the same time, in the game Baird is sort of like Cole’s other half, the two of them always have each other’s backs just like Dom and Marcus always have one another’s backs. Enter Brian Van Holt (or VanHolt or van Holt or whatever). For a while Van Holt played a soldier in so many movies I was actually starting to think he was a soldier who just did movies on the side and then fought in Iraq on the weekends. But after he appeared in Man of the House, and House of Wax, it became clear Van Holt can go from the heroic to the antagonistic and fit in both just fine. So he can definitely play an ******* (like Baird), but he also has a wide-range of acting ability that I really feel hasn’t been fully tapped yet. And at the same time, Van Holt can fit into the squad without eclipsing any of the other cast members.
Josh Duhamel could do that too, but he’s a pretty boy. There are no pretty boys in Gears of War. There are only hard-*** battle-beaten badass warriors who blend into ruins and rubble as well as their heavy weapons and armor does. That is what the COG soldiers must be, feral, animalistic, take-no-prisoners, grunts. Not streamlined, jagged, not smooth, rough, shoot-first ask questions later soldiers who can scare away children and small dogs just by growling at them. That’s what GEARS OF WAR is all about.
I could be wrong.
At IGN.com, one of my favorite sites on the net, they posted their own article on a potential cast for the upcoming Gears movie. Their picks were Bruce Willis (Tears of the Sun) as Marcus Fenix, Carlos Bernard (24) as Dominic Santiago, Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris) for Augustus Cole, Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas), and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) as Lt. Minh Young Kim.
Going into a debate like this, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that a cinematic production is nothing like an interactive production. Apart from storytelling, the two have very little in common. However, it is for that very reason that I disagree with many of their decisions. While I respect their reasoning in keeping the quality of the production in mind, this is not X-Men, and this is not Superman Returns. If you deviate from an established character template in Gears of War, you deviate from the whole feel of the entire game. Take 300 for example. Zack Snyder managed to take the look, the feel and the original ideas from Frank Miller's comic book, and put all of them on screen with very little changes in any of them. And that became one of the best movies in years. It didn't have big name actors, it didn't compromise to play by the rules of typical cinema movies, and for that it was a success.
As I said before, the one thing that both the Gears film and game will have in common is the story, and in the story, Marcus Fenix is a bulky, battle-hardened, ex-con, with a snarling attitude, and a tendency to yell over the sound of his own gunfire (even when he’s not firing his gun). So who could possibly fit into that category besides Bruce Willis? Well, I suppose I could list about dozen other actors who could get the job done better than Willis (a few of them are way too old by now), but the most obvious answer is an unknown.
Okay, badly worded, Superman Returns starred a Brandon Routhe a relative unknown, as the Man of Steel himself. But earlier when I said that Gears is nothing like Superman what I meant is that Routhe is younger and a lot less bulky than Superman is currently drawn in the comic books. You get a different feeling when you read the comic book, than you do when you watch the movie. Mushy stuff aside, SR still managed to be a decent film.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...s_Fenix2-1.jpg (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Marcus_Fenix2-1.jpg)
But if they’re going to put a character like Marcus Fenix on the big screen, he better be Marcus Fenix… not Bruce Willis (the way 300 remained on-screen the way it was in the comic book). Take for example Nick Chinlund (Willis’ co-star in Tears of the Sun), not a well-known face, familiar, but still relatively unknown. He’s got the look, somewhat experience in the role of a soldier, and can definitely play the part of a hard-as-nails ex-con. Putting a big name face like Willis in the boots of Marcus Fenix will eclipse not only the character, but the entire feel of the story. Gears are feral, animalistic and brutal warriors who are comfortable getting shot at on the battlefield, it’s their home, they don’t like being there, but you can’t really imagine them fitting in anywhere else. That’s why taking Chinlund, who’s not really known as any one thing, and making him Marcus Fenix, you can still retain the integrity of the character.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...f_War-Domb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Domb.png)
And for Fenix’s burly Hispanic best-friend Dom, I agree with IGN in that he’s got to be someone who can display a certain level of loyalty, but more importantly he’s got to feel right, like Chinlund, he’s got to be someone who doesn’t defame the character by already being a stereotype, he’s got to be someone who can become Dominic Santiago. Well, since Chinlund is already a relative unknown with no former leading roles, whoever plays Dom has to be someone who doesn’t overshadow the lead character but at the same time is capable of playing a tough, buff sidekick. After a rigorous study of new Latino/Hispanic faces in Hollywood, I came up with a name and a face: Franky G. A.k.a. Francisco Gonzales (SAW 2) is more than just looks, he played an believable psycho-killer in Saw II and could definitely turn that psychosis into productive ruthlessness as a seasoned COG soldier.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2..._War-Coleb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Coleb.png)
As for “Coal Train” or Pvt. Augustus Cole, I didn’t really do much thinking. Cole is the most outrageously proportioned anatomical character in the game, so I was obviously looking for someone big. He’s also got to be someone who has the ability to be comedic when the time is right. After a bit of a search, I just gave up and came back to the voice actor for Cole’s character Mighty Rasta. I know his name is kinda funny, like Franky G, but he was born Lester Speight, so give the guy a break he did the best he could okay (I’d probably change my legal name to Spider-Man, but anyway). Apart from Coal Train, Rasta’s most popular portrayal was that of Terrible Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, the recurring protagonist in a series of Reebok commercials originally created for the Superbowl in 2002. So Rasta’s got both the comedy skills and the body to portray Cole as accurately as we could portray him (without steroids), not to mention they have the same voice. At the same time, Rasta played as an All-American linebacker for the Morgan State University Bears, he doesn’t just know how to talk-the-talk, he’s walked it. The body, the voice, the comedy, Rasta has everything it takes and more, he doesn’t have to become Cole Train, he IS The Cole Train.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ich87/KimB.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/KimB.png)
Lieutenant Kim is a rather brief character, but essential to the cast nonetheless. Besides I don’t think I could go without seeing Kim get shish kabobbed with a 20 inch dagger on the big screen. Well I couldn’t find that many actors who could potentially become this whiney and by-the-book commander of Delta Squad, but I finally landed on Jason Scott Lee, who starred opposite Kurt Russel in the partially cheese-ball flick Soldier. Lee managed to pull off the look of a killer, and since Kim is a soldier, he could definitely play the part. Being this sort of overbearing commander is another issue entirely however, so I suppose Lee’s boyish and younger looking face might account for Kim being a less-experienced commander in charge of more battle-hardened soldiers like Fenix and Dom. But more importantly he’s not well-known and could easily become the shish kabobbed Kim on screen. On a side note, Scott Lee also played Bruce Lee in Fist of the Dragon (I think), so in my book he’s a badass.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...War-Bairdb.png (http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/subwaysandwich87/Gears_of_War-Bairdb.png)
Baird. Well, I’m not sure if I can write about Baird without adding some vile profanity, he’s a definite pain in the ***, but he’s the techno-wiz of the squad (which is kinda ironic because in Tears of the Sun, Chinlund plays the squad techno-dude), and later in the game it becomes very obvious why he’s a main character. At the same time, in the game Baird is sort of like Cole’s other half, the two of them always have each other’s backs just like Dom and Marcus always have one another’s backs. Enter Brian Van Holt (or VanHolt or van Holt or whatever). For a while Van Holt played a soldier in so many movies I was actually starting to think he was a soldier who just did movies on the side and then fought in Iraq on the weekends. But after he appeared in Man of the House, and House of Wax, it became clear Van Holt can go from the heroic to the antagonistic and fit in both just fine. So he can definitely play an ******* (like Baird), but he also has a wide-range of acting ability that I really feel hasn’t been fully tapped yet. And at the same time, Van Holt can fit into the squad without eclipsing any of the other cast members.
Josh Duhamel could do that too, but he’s a pretty boy. There are no pretty boys in Gears of War. There are only hard-*** battle-beaten badass warriors who blend into ruins and rubble as well as their heavy weapons and armor does. That is what the COG soldiers must be, feral, animalistic, take-no-prisoners, grunts. Not streamlined, jagged, not smooth, rough, shoot-first ask questions later soldiers who can scare away children and small dogs just by growling at them. That’s what GEARS OF WAR is all about.
I could be wrong.