Well let me start I guess.
Firstly would like the film to be a tense, almost claustrophobic thriller. The speed which the illness spreads and the ineffectiveness of the regular fail-safes mean this should be a far greater “race against time” to find a vaccine than is shown in the actual game. We’re just accepting in the game that within the open world areas its safe from infection….even though you find in safe houses and around the streets people still infected!! Yet, only in certain places we wear a mask???
Story wise, that makes no sense.
Now in a film, some may argue “the film stars must be seen” (who remembers the disaster of Stallone’s “Dredd” film) but if you push the focus of the film out of the streets and into the safe houses, back rooms, medical facilities … this is where you’ll get your star focus, this is also where you’ll get the tense, tight drama as medics buckle under pressure, lab technicians race to find samples, people are isolated, families split up, people die slowly in front of loved ones … all that SHOUTS to me of a deep drama like the best of ER mixed with Walking Dead and even Breaking Bad!
This isn’t to say the film won’t have intense and realistic action like we have in the game… far from it … remember the street shootout from Heat? Yeah…we want THAT, we want that a dozen times over! How do we add that gritty and realistic fast paced shootouts in such a tense drama? Well… we only need to look to the series 24 for an ideal answer, its use of screen in screen and swapping of point-of-view worked perfectly as you had Jack often mid fire fight whilst you also had the point of view of those in “the back room” directing, helping, even hindering!
Layer on top of all this the sub-plot of the 1st wave, of how it starts to become clear through the film that some have gathered together and gone “Rogue” and how they’re currently looking to sell the virus DNA … which adds a race and focus for the combat side of the story…as whilst the backroom team has to deal with loss, short supplies and a race for a vaccine to save the “world”, the front team have to use detective work, combat skills to follow and chase down the Rogue Agents and stop the virus from leaving NYC!
This could be, perhaps, the best “disaster movie” since the 70’s if the balance of focus is right. Ignore pandering to game fanboys who just want to follow an agent as he shoots everyone and put lots of focus on the people behind the scenes…let the actors act their chops off and show the desperation of the situation from the ground level rather than the seemingly demi-god status of the main Agent.
