After years of false starts and being stuck in development hell, it looks like the BioShock movie is finally coming true. Netflix has snatched the rights to this iconic sci-fi shooter franchise and the film now has a director in Francis Lawrence from The Hunger Games.
Unfortunately, if the last few decades have taught us anything, it’s that great game source material doesn’t automatically translate into great movies. If Netflix wants to escape the video game movie curse, there is one crucial rule to follow. The BioShock movie shouldn’t be a direct adaptation of the original game. Instead, it should be a prequel. Here’s why a prequel movie has a better chance of doing justice to the games.
What would a BioShock prequel be about?
The nice thing about the original BioShock is that it leaves plenty of room to explore the events leading up to the game. BioShock is set in 1960, with a plane crash survivor named Jack stumbling through the underwater city of Rapture. Once intended as a monument to the ingenuity and limitless potential of humans, Rapture has instead become a dilapidated ruin infested by Splicers – humans addicted to a rare, gene-altering substance known as Adam. BioShock becomes the story of Jack’s struggle to navigate Rapture, discover the secrets behind its dilapidated walls, and come to terms with his own bond with the city and its founder, Andrew Ryan.
As the game slowly fills in Rapture’s backstory through dialogue and various footage left by survivors, players never really get a chance to see the city in its prime or the horrific massacre on New Year’s Eve 1958. That’s where the film can. instead of focusing on Jack himself, the film could focus on Ryan and other key figures who helped make this impossible city a reality.
The film could show us Ryan as a younger and more idealistic figure, a man determined to prove that a society free from the constraints of government and religion can reach utopia. It could also target his nemesis Frank Fontaine, a gifted con artist who sees Rapture as an opportunity for the greatest score of his life, and Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, a Nazi collaborator who finds an ounce of redemption in protecting her adopted children. The film could also spotlight the many characters who become entangled in that feud, as they watch a once-promising city turn into chaos and ruin.
That has all the makings of a compelling prequel. It’s also a movie that could sit alongside the games rather than trying to repeat the plot of the original. This is a story also chronicled in the 2011 novel BioShock: Rapture. But with a franchise like this, it’s one thing to read about the past and another to really see that story come to life.
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BioShock: the problem with Jack
The prospect of a direct adaptation of the original BioShock is not very appealing. First, there’s the inherent challenge of cramming a 10-15 hour gaming experience into a 2 hour movie. You can, but not without losing a lot of the flavor and fun of soaking up the world of Rapture.
But there is a more specific problem when it comes to customizing BioShock. As a protagonist, Jack just isn’t very compelling. He is the ultimate first-person shooter hero – a figure who says little and shows no outward signs of emotion. In fact, he only has one instance of spoken dialogue in the entire game.
None of that is intended as an indictment of the game. The decision to make Jack a faceless, mute protagonist is very deliberate. And while the movie tries to flesh out Jack as a character and give him more personality, that inherently works against Jack’s purpose and his unique role in the Rapture conflict.
More than once, 2022 has shown us the dangers of trying to adapt iconic video game characters in live-action. Netflix’s Resident Evil series debuted to mediocre reviews (although IGN gave Season 1’s Taylor Lyles a 7), with RE mainstay Albert Wesker’s off-the-wall approach receiving particular criticism.
Paramount+’s Halo series has also proved divisive among fans. That series embraces its status as a standalone adaptation set in an alternate timeline, embellishing the backstory of Pablo Schreiber’s Master Chief, and even repeatedly showing the character’s unmasked face and taking other unexpected storytelling liberties.
Both shows deserve credit for their efforts to forge their own respective paths with these franchises. But in the case of Resident Evil, at least those changes didn’t help the show build an audience or avoid cancellation. Gamers don’t find it easy to see their favorite heroes and villains transformed. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where a revamped version of Jack will do well with hardcore BioShock fans.
Jack is supposed to be a thin sliver of a character. He is specifically intended to be an enigma and a figure upon whom the player can project his own motivations and choices. Therein lies the problem. BioShock is essentially a game about choice and free will. Throughout the game, players are forced to choose whether to be merciful in dealing with the Adam-harvesting Little Sisters or whether to kill them and reap the extra rewards. Those choices ultimately determine which of the two possible endings will happen. There is also that one crucial moment towards the end of the game where the player is robbed of his free will.
BioShock needs a certain amount of interactivity to succeed. However, that is not an element that translates to film. Better is the Netflix movie focused on a story with a predetermined beginning and end.
Building the BioShock Multiverse
There are currently three main games in the BioShock series, along with a handful of expansions. There is clearly room for Netflix to build an entire franchise, and that was undoubtedly part of the streamer’s motivation to acquire the rights.
Obviously, the first film should focus more on telling a compelling story than laying the groundwork for sequels and spin-offs. Still, the hope is that the film will include some Easter eggs and a nod to the larger BioShock multiverse. A prequel movie offers a lot of potential in that regard.
For starters, we would like to see Sofia Lamb as a secondary character in the film. BioShock 2’s main antagonist, Lamb, has been retroactively identified as a major force in the pre-fall Rapture. It would be nice to see her integrate more smoothly into this world.
The movie could also work in some of the mythology introduced in BioShock Infinite and its expansions. Infinite contains many of the same elements as the first two games – a remote, technologically advanced city ruled by a fanatical leader, warring factions made up of genetically modified citizens, etc. At first, Infinite seems to tell a story completely separate from that of its predecessors. . But over time, it becomes clear that the underwater city of Rapture and the floating city of Columbia are linked by the power of the multiverse.
The BioShock Infinite DLC “Burial at Sea” bridges the gap between the two universes by placing Infinite protagonists Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth within the walls of Rapture itself. Along the way, players will learn more about how Rapture evolved into the underwater hell it has become. The film could easily incorporate elements of “Burial at Sea” into its story. In a multiverse story centered around free will and universal constants, Elizabeth herself could become the common thread connecting every BioShock adaptation.
To learn more about the world of video game movies, watch the first teaser for HBO’s The Last of Us series and polish every video game movie and series in the making.
Jesse is a gentle staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by… Follow @jschedeen on Twitter.
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