And the fact that pretty much every video game movie hasn’t aged well. 
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How’s that? Most video game movies suck, and the ones that don’t still don’t.
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I disagree with the takes that a good live-action movie about 47 simply cannot be made because of some supposed inherent flaws in such a concept: 47 wouldn’t work on screen, social stealth wouldn’t work on screen, a very fact it’d be an adaptation etc.
A bad movie is bad because it’s bad, say, because of a studio putting some amateurs to work on a cash grab movie under time constraint and low budget to milk a well-known IP, not due to the mere fact it’s about Hitman.
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If they can make a dozen movies about Michael Myers creeping around and stabbing people without saying a word, there should be no problem with a dude being slightly more creative than that, all while looking suave as hell and watching the numbers go up in his bank account after each body. Get some body on it who knows how to make that work and make it goddamn work.
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The type of genre also has a big effect on what type of movie we end up with. Both the 2007 movie and the 2015 reboot are both action movies and the later leans heavier into the action.
I think 47 could work well in a thriller or even a soft horror thriller. Remove the action spectacle. The movie doesn’t even have to make 47 the protagonist. It could easily be a character like Cosmo Falkuner from Absolution. A police officer who’s hunting 47, the 2007 film did play into this aspect to some degree. I do think the franchise fits well on the silver screen. It needs the right frame for it to work and so does 47 character. Play into his strength.
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Thats basically why the hitman movies aged like milk Heisenberg
I’ve seen people suggest the variations of this idea dozens of time by now. I just don’t get it. 47’s character deserves a lot more than to be reduced to a force of nature that others try to fight.
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See, that’s where I have to argue back. To say that they aged like milk is to suggest that they were ok when they first came out and then got sucky over time, and that’s the error; they were sucky to begin with. They didn’t age like milk; they already were extremely aged milk at the time of release.
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Indeed. Again, I use the reference to us watching Michael Myers sneaking around and doing his thing, now combine that with the tension of watching James Bond trying to deceive his quarry into thinking he’s someone else while looking for his opening, and Marty McFly in Back to the Future Part 2, sneaking around his past self while trying to stay out of sight and dropping heavy objects on top of hid enemies. You can work the antics of these characters into a serious situation for 47 that can be put up on the big screen and capture the feel of the games inside a movie.
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You’d need a script/director/producer that allowed the character to just be the character. Most media today shoehorns in drama/romance/action/“character development” where it doesn’t need to be. A good 47 movie would need to just let 47 be 47 and let the movie exist without a love interest and without the character “discovering themself” by the end.
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Ahhh shit, wrong word, Heisenberg used the worng word power. I can’t answer back or I’ll be in considerable risk of death! Maybe not milk but they ain’t great and so is most video game movies.
from a story perspective, he doesn’t have much of a character to play with nor is that what makes him interesting. he started life as a bit of a cipher for the player and any attempts to flesh him out haven’t been particularly strong, really; not in games or movies.
a satisfying story arc generally - not always - needs the protagonist to change or grow in some way, and i don’t think you can really do that well with 47 without fundamentally altering who and what he is. i don’t think he’s particularly strong without the mystery around him, and decent character development is often about unpacking mysteries.
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That isn’t my pitch. 47 is a character, but play into legend that surrounds him. I’m not suggesting that we frame him like the Predator or the Terminator. Give him an arch like the Hitman in No Country for Old Men, we don’t need 47 to be the character who undergoes deep character change.
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Yeah… In my humble opinion, a person that was created artificially with a single purpose - to serve their master by killing their foes, and was thrown from the basement into the outer world with no experience in socialising and no understanding of moral values, has quite some room for the character development. 47 develops his empathy, learns of the concept of morality, bonds with Diana in a special way, develops his own agency, finds his place and purpose in the world after his soul-searching culminates in killing his own creator. He didn’t walk out of the asylum in the beginning of his journey as the same character we know and love!
I believe this here is the potential to unleash and to let 47’s character shine, and not have him be just an “emotionless killer that is flawless and has nothing to learn”. Even H2SA and WoA are about him having a character arc, and regardless of the execution of those, these stories have found their way into the hearts of fans. Which proves that 47 is perfectly capable of having an arc that doesn’t go against his character.
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when you put it like that, it sounds great! when it comes to execution, not so much.
looking at his character development: he now regrets one kill, decides in the end to only kill ‘bad’ people (which he’s almost always done anyway) and he now chooses to take orders from diana. nothing really changes.
i love hitman, but his story is rarely the best narrative in any given game; the targets are always more interesting.
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If you are gong to insert your own narrative into my opinion, then I don’t see this as a worthwhile discussion. It’s not in anyway what I have been suggesting or saying. If you want to discuss this in a civil manner and not in this passive aggressive tone you got going on, then we can do so.
I’m strictly speaking about an approach that I think could fit a silver screen version that doesn’t fall into the same pitfalls as the two previous films. I’m in no way talking about 47 or his development in the video game series. If you knew anything about my opinions regarding 47 and his development as a character and which games I praise for pushing his character forward. You would not so carelessly insert agendas into my opinions.
There is a lot more to the character of 47 then the emotionless T-800 he’s portrayed as in Blood Money. But we have already seen two films that centers around 47 and his journey. Personally I believe that a film from the point of view a character who is hunting 47 is a lot more interesting. Keeping 47 more mysterious, leaning more about 47 through the one hunting him. I’m not in anyway suggesting that he will play the role of the boogeyman.
If we where to follow 47 as a character and learn more about him. A TV show would be a much better fit, especially when characters in film has much less screen time compared to TV.
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To this, bare in mind; 47 was not emotionless in BM, he was not a “terminator.” He was full of anger and bitterness and apprehension, which you can see anytime someone came to visit him or any time he interacted with Diana, and all of which can be explained being resentful that he was recently killed by being shot in Contracts due to having his guard down. It was a humbling moment, so he doubled down on his lack of trust.
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To be honest, I don’t think this is actually presented in the game nor is it really built upon either. It’s an interesting way to view the game and 47’s “journey”. But there is really no pay off or real change in 47 character. I doubt that this was the intention of IO when creating the game and if it was they didn’t nail that aspect of the game. I can accept is as head canon as an explanation of his regress as a character in that title. But now we are discussing multiple things, both BM and what approach a film could take. It’s two wildly different discussions.
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This is true. To be fair, unless they explored what was making 47 so angry and coldly bitter toward the end, a movie wouldn’t work very well playing off 47 as he appeared in BM, at least not as a first film. Perhaps a sequel. For a first film, assuming that they again don’t actually try to make it like the actual first game, it would be better served to go off of the 47 we see in Silent Assassin or Absolution.
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I think the problem with a more humane 47 in a film, is that there is very little time to develop 47 as character. Especially if we have to go from a closed off test tube baby suddenly thrown into the world. Come to grips with his place in the world. A tv show could much better balance a broader character development. Like the one we saw from C47 to H2SA. It would be much more rewarding.
Take Cassian Andor in Rogue One vs Andor. I love Rogue One, but when they announced a tv show with Andor I didn’t jump in my chair of excitement. I was a bit baffled that they would go with him, he wasn’t the most engaging character, he was interesting. But not really main character material. The TV show blindsided me, it’s easily the best Star Wars TV show, miles a head of the Mandalorian. It actually feels like a modern day TV. Well written, engaging and Andor is suddenly a lot more interesting, then his first appearance. Ultimately this has to do with tv having time to tell his story. Something a film can’t afford to do.
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