A Panzer Dragoon movie would f***ing rock. The RnD is pretty much done, there’s a buttload of concept art, and CGI is now so good and compartively easy to produce (compared to yesteryear) that two dragons could easily fly through the Imperial city at Mach 2 a la Panzer Dragoon 1.
Ah, you say, but movies cost money and no-one will want to see a PD movie, so they wouldn’t make one…
Yeah, that’s possibly true, but what if the movie wasn’t PD as such, but was rather a story related to PD, marketed as being a movie in it’s own right but related to PD? You know, like Tomb Raider (which had no connection to the games AT ALL except for the main “character”), only better? Make the story much easier to understand, introduce the audience to the Empire through the eyes of a village, try to NOT make it look like a Star Wars/Tattooine rip-off, that sort of thing. Mix up the PD games stories to create something wonderful and engrossing.
Example:
Boy (14-16) saves mutated animal from execution based on it’s mutation. Runs away from village that is being ripped apart by Empire. (Zwei)
Boy takes mutated animal out hunting. Friends die. He chases burrower creature into cave; gets attacked by big creatures and seperated from his ride. (Eins)
Mutant fires lasers into big creatures saving boy’s life. Flight powers/arrows of light are discovered. (Saga)
Sky Rider and Dark Dragon fly through ruins. Blah blah blah Sky Rider and his steed (not Solo Wing, just a generic flying creature) get shot down by Dark Dragon’s super evil rider who just happens to be the best pilot of the Imperial Navy. Sky Rider tells boy to stop the Dark Dragon leading the Empire to ancient technology/Tower (Eins).
Turns out ancient technology was under boy’s old village so he must defend it against the Empire, who have dragons of their own (Orta, Chapter 4)
Huge ass fight between a newly transformed Prototype D and the boy’s dragon. (Any)
Dragon collapses from exhaustion after fight. Boy receives super-fast vision of possible sequel. Dragon regenerates into pup, starting over again. Film ends as boy and pup walk away from old village and towards new life.
Now, take that structure, throw in a decently-implemented love interest (think: Spirited Away), one comedy relief character, several dozen influences to the games that don’t take away from the overall script, an overall moral and a fantastic music score. The crowds will lap it up, I tell you!
The timeline of the events as you presented them didn’t quite make sense if they were all in one story… Unless there’s two “good” dragons, the mutant you refer to and what the skyrider is riding… Which would make one or the other end up useless for the rest of the story.
…But really how would this be different from just making a PD movie (as opposed to what you are saying)? If one was made it most likely would be an edited story or an all new one, that’s how it usually happens so I don’t see what’s different in your suggestion.
Though Panzer Dragoon would transfer over to any medium fairly well, the movie idea is stupid…mainly because real life actors suck major cock. There is no talent among the braindead masses, and there never will be. If it were 100% CG, however, that’s another story entirely…
I’d prefer to keep Panzer Dragoon where it is though - an interactive story.
CG needs actors too you know… Someone has to voice them… So I guess you just agreed that there are good actors but they don’t move as convincingly as they speak? I would imagine it’s harder to say things in character capturing the right mood than do certain actions that you have to do even if it’s just acting thus ending up convincing regardless… Anyway, whatever.
What they do in their off time doesn’t dictate their acting talent… anyhow… and what if it were a JAPANESE movie? XD Or heck… make it in panzerese with subtitles, that’d be interesting.
But yeah, while interesting, it’d be difficult to get it right, and even if it was right, it’d still probably be a financial failure. Alas.
Well actually all cgi movies just about do character animation using motion capture. So there is a real person somewhere that acted all that motion out which was when digitised and used to control the cgi character. Usually the actor who does the mocap will also study up and act out facial expressions for their character and that will be used for other parts of the cgi. So I’d personally say there is minimal difference between the two except there you don’t see the faces of any ‘big name’ actors in cgi as the cgi characters in each film look different. All the motion in cgi films is done by actors though.
I started reading the books that the above is based on, but I just wasn’t that drawn into it. In itself it’s as far as PD as you can get, the only thing they share is that there are dragons.