There are some video games that lend themselves to an easy adaptation. The Metal Gear franchise is not one of those games. On the surface, it’s “Stealth Espionage Action” where you play operative Solid Snake, who is tasked with taking down a paramilitary operation. But the story and weirdness that permeates the games make it a unique experience, and one that makes a translation to the big screen difficult.

Nevertheless, an adaptation of the most popular title in the long-running franchise, Metal Gear Solid, has been in the works for some time with Kong: Skull Island helmer Jordan Vogt-Roberts coming on to direct back in 2014. He’s still attached, and he seems more bullish than ever on the film’s prospects and being unafraid to dive into what makes Metal Gear so unique.

I recently spoke with Vogt-Roberts for his new Destiny 2 trailer, and while we were on the topic of translating video games to film, I wanted to get his thoughts on Metal Gear Solid and going all-in on the source material:

With Metal Gear, absolutely, my thing is we need to not just make a Metal Gear movie, but we need to double-down so hard on the oddities that make Metal Gear idiosyncratic and what it is—Kojima's voice, the fourth wall, the goofiness, the anime, the manga, the hyper-violence, the talking philosophies, the characters who just represent ideologies. These things are Metal Gear, and I think, when you look at Guardians of the Galaxy, it's like, "What genre is that before that movie came out?"

 

James [Gunn] doubled-down on that world and said, "No. This is what's going to make people love it," as opposed to saying, "Uh, it's kind of like this" or "It's kind of like that." "It's sort of a little bit of that." No. That was able to be what it needs to be, and so for me, in the success of Kong, in the success of Logan, in the success of Deadpool, I'm able to go to the studio and say, "Let's double-down on this and make this the absolute best version of Metal Gear that it needs to be."

I don’t know if name-dropping Logan and Deadpool means he wants to get an R-rating for Metal Gear Solid, and when we spoke to him back in February, he said that his adaptation could go PG-13 or R, but they’re trying to figure out the best story to tell.

However, that story probably won’t be a straight adaptation of the PlayStation 1’s Metal Gear Solid. Vogt-Roberts says he’s trying to stay true to the source material but it won’t be a “pure adaptation” of one of the games:

On one hand, I'm trying to make a game that Metal Gear fans who are so passionate say, "That's my Metal Gear. I'm so proud that this is on screen. I'm so proud it's on screen this way. This is exactly what I knew it could be a movie. When I first played Metal Gear or when I first played Metal Gear Solid" or whatever they got in the franchise when they were a kid playing that game, the movie they saw in their mind, I'm going to make that.

 

On the other hand, it's a tricky thing where I just gave an hour-long talk with Kojima at E3 and I asked him point-blank in front of an audience, because we had a long conversation about him and film and I said, "What would your advice be to me? What would you have to say?" And he said, "Do what I would do. Betray your audience," which is just such a Kojima thing to do. I want to be very respectful to the canon. I want to be very respectful to the characters and the story, but it will not be a pure adaptation, necessarily, of one of the games.

 

I'm going to be ... I'm doing something really interesting with a time device that I'm excited about that I'm so happy, once again, I pitched this. Much like when Kong when I pitched that kind of Harryhausen movie with “Platoon.” I thought they were going to laugh me out of the room. This is the type of idea I pitched to Sony saying, "This is what I think would be fucking badass" and they were like, "Cool. Let's do that." We're playing with all of the different elements of it and we're sort of combining different themes and different arcs and things like that, but I can't really get into specifics on it.

The “time device” aspect sound interesting, and I’m curious to see if that’s how Vogt-Roberts is going to bridge the gap between games like Metal Gear Solid 3 which focused on Big Boss and took place in 1964, and a game like Metal Gear Solid, which had you playing as Solid Snake and was set in 2005. The Metal Gear series covers a lot of time and goes a lot of different places, and hopefully Vogt-Roberts is given the freedom to make his vision come to life.

That being said, if it’s a film that’s not for everyone, I’m kind of okay with that. I would rather see something like Warcraft, which is made by a fan for fans but it doesn’t reach everybody, than something like Assassin’s Creed, which tones down its personality so much that it barely exists.

Look for my full interview with Vogt-Roberts later this week.