There are not many directors in the gaming industry who deserve to be called legendary, with only a few arguably having made that distinction. Hidetaka Miyazaki, Hideki Kamiya, Todd Howard, and, of course, Hideo Kojima come to mind. Some gamers would even go as far as saying that at least Hideo Kojima would be excellent, if he ever made movies.
And this reference is not lost on most of his fans. After all, he has taken inspiration from movies in his work for a very long time. And it shows too; every single game of his is full of cinematic cutscenes and slow-motion action sequences. Yet, whenever a movie was made about his game, he did not direct it. Why?
A popular director might be the reason Hideo Kojima never directed a movie
Years ago, he made news with a game called Metal Gear Solid, which was a continuation of an even older game called Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. While Metal Gear Solid was launched for the PS1, its predecessors were released on the MSX2. And believe it or not, all of these games were successful in their own right.
And when he was asked to make a sequel to Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima was unleashed to the world. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was one of the best-looking games on the PlayStation 2. It is still considered one of the best stealth games ever made.
When the game starts, players are greeted with an incredibly detailed cutscene. It showed the George Washington Bridge. A man smoking a cigarette walks on the bridge as traffic goes by. He is wearing a dark parka. All of a sudden, the music picks up, as he activates some kind of cloaking device, and Bungie jumps on a tanker passing under the bridge.
He is none other than Snake, and it was indeed an incredibly well-made scene as well. From that scene to Sam Porter’s story being told via incredibly detailed, well-shot cutscenes, Kojima has never faltered. His games are fun to play, and his stories are incredibly well-told and visually engaging.
So, who stopped him from going towards movies? He has an interesting answer to this question that pretty much every fan must have for him. It appears his very close friend and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro is responsible for Hideo Kojima staying away from movies.
In Kojima’s own words, “I fell ill in 2020. It was also during the pandemic, so I was sick and isolated during all of it. I even had surgery. And I thought, ‘I can’t anymore.’ I was at my lowest and felt like I couldn’t go back to making games. And I talked to Guillermo del Toro about it. And he said ‘Hideo, what you’re making is already a movie. Keep going as you are.”
He finally went on to say “His words saved me. And since we’ll be working with many creators in the business, though the output is a game, it won’t be too different from movies.”
And this makes sense too; video games are nothing short of movies nowadays. They look good, have incredible stories, and sometimes make even more money than movies; take GTA 5 and Call of Duty, for example.
Hideo Kojima made the right decision based on the projects he is doing
Kojima is currently working on three of the biggest projects of his life. One of them is, of course, Death Stranding 2, the second is a horror game for Microsoft called OD, and finally, an espionage action title that was recently announced for PlayStation.
Every fan out there who is excited about these games should go ahead and thank Guillermo Del Toro for giving Hideo Kojima sound advice.
