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The God of War movie looks set to feature plenty of character development, with script writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton revealing to IGN that there’ll be around 30 minutes at the start of the film dedicated to introducing Kratos.
The pair also detailed why they were brought in to re-write the screenplay, noting that the original was fine but a bit outdated.
“The only problem with that is it was written before Clash of the Titans, Wrath of the Titans, 300 and Immortals, and those movies borrowed quite a bit from the God of War stories,” said Dunstan. “It was just a little bit outdated, so we wanted to differentiate it from those other movies.”
With all the character building, the writing duo are attempting to do something similar to what Christopher Nolan did with Batman.
“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,” stated Dunstan.
“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,” added Melton. “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.”
Anyone worried that the Ghost of Sparta isn’t going to get the budget a big-screen debut deserves shouldn’t be worried.
“With God of War, the studio’s saying, ‘We’re going to spend $150 million to make this movie,” revealed Melton. “We really need to understand this character and get behind him and feel his pain and feel his emotions so that, when he is in these giant set pieces, we’re in there with him and we’re feeling it.’ That is a critique of some of these big action films is that they often get too big and just become noise; you’re not invested in the character.”
Other than the movie’s opening segment little is known about the plot and characters, but Melton did reveal that they are trying to build Ares up “so that he can become a true villain.”
Dunstan and Melton are still working on the screenplay, but no director is currently attached to the movie.
God of War: Ascension is due for release on PlayStation 3 on March 15.
