Chad Stahelski, director of the upcomingGhost of Tsushimafilm adaptation, seems to be hoping to turn the movie into a full-fledged franchise. Specifically, he said that he’s looking for ways to “leave it open to expand further from there”.
In an interview withComic Book Movie, Stahelski said that the Ghost of Tsushima movie is “something we’re in heavy development on” and that it was “the most anti-samurai samurai movie out there”. He added, “How do I pack that much information into a feature that can go on to other features or a TV project or platform[?]” It’s pretty clear that whatever Stahelski has in mind for the movie, he wants to squeeze whatever he can out of it.
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Ghost of Tsushima was a very well-liked game. It won Best Art Direction and Player’s Voice at The Game Awards 2020, having been the subject of an online arms race against the ‘more woke’ The Last of Us Part 2, and was the PlayStation’s fastest-selling first-party original IP debut. As of July 2022, it had sold almost ten million copies. I didn’t care for it. I’velisted a litany of concerns about the adaptationbefore, but let me summarise them again here: it uses anachronistic Japanese stereotypes, the narrative was weak, the gameplay felt repetitive, some consider it cultural appropriation because it was made by white people who ignored historical facts, etc.
I’m not particularly keen on watching this movie when it eventually comes out, and I’m disappointed that it’s being positioned for easier franchising despite there only being a single game. Of course, I’m not surprised. How can I be? We’re in an era of video game adaptations, largely spearheaded by thesuccessof HBO’sThe Last of Us. There are so many in the works thatTheGamer has an entire list keeping trackof what has been announced and what has been released. Studios have been trying and failing to make a truly successful video game adaptation for ages now, and it’s hard for them to resist the honeypot now that they’ve seen the cultural impact The Last of Us had. It’s always going to be a numbers game, and they’ve seen the popularity. They’ll want to capitalise on it.
Ghost of Tsushima was announced in 2021, long before The Last of Us even aired (though after Sonic had a minor hit), but it makes perfect sense that they’ve decided to franchise. After all, that’s what we do with IP now. We can’t make one great movie or TV show and be done with it – we need sequels, spin-offs, reboots, remakes. Stahelski’s own John Wick began as a standalone project and is now four movies deep, with the Ana de Armas-led spin-off Ballerina and the prequel show The Continental both in the works, as well as a rumoured fifth movie and spin-off for Cain.
As I’ve written before, consumers are, unfortunately, more willing to spend money on what they’re already familiar with – we can see this just by searching up the top-grossing movies of any year in the last decade. It’s a lack of willingness to experience new art, exacerbated by an endless stream of content, far too much for us to ever watch all of it. When there’s so much to keep up with, why explore anything new?
Another reason they’re likely considering this is that video games arelong, and Stahelski seems to be struggling with the amount of material he has to deal with. I believe The Last of Us was the most high-profile adaptation, maybe even the first, tohandle the act of translating the video game medium with real delicacy, using what worked, tossing what didn’t, and expanding on things we didn’t even know we wanted to see expanded.
If Ghost of Tsushima does this well, turning what I thought was a mediocre story into a great one, I’ll be impressed. I might even take back what I said about its lack of potential, but I have a feeling I won’t have to. It’s kind of funny, even, to think of Stahelski struggling with the source material, as if he hadn’t realised that the game has at least 20 hours of gameplay. I feel like we might end up with a two-part movie, and gamers will still probably turn up to see it. And then the side quests will get turned into an anthology series, we’ll get a spin-off about Yuna, yada yada.
Ghost of Tsushima will make a hell of an action movie if nothing else, and god willing, we won’t have to see samurais get forcibly Fast-and-Furioused. But studios love money, and franchises make money – even if those stories don’t deserve to be told, ad nauseum, for the rest of a decade.
