Written Interview: Jon Spaihts (“Prometheus”)
An io9 interview with screenwriter Jon Spaihts, co-writer [with Damon Lindelof] of the upcoming movie Prometheus. Excerpts:
Have video games changed the way people think about this kind of storytelling?
Yes and no. Storytelling in games has matured tremendously in the past decade. Some really great work has been done. But the design requirements are totally different, almost the opposite of filmic storytelling.
The central character of a game is most often a cipher — an avatar into which the player projects himself or herself. The story has to have a looseness to accommodate the player’s choices. This choose-your-own adventure quality is a challenge for storytellers and, I fear, militates against art.
A filmmaker is trying to make you look at something a certain way — almost to force an experience on you. Think of the legendary directors, whose perspective is the soul of their art. It’s the opposite of a sandbox world. It’s a mind-meld with a particular visionary.
Do you think films like Prometheus and Gravity could spark a new interest in big space epics that aren’t based on an existing franchise?
I want to say yes, but I think those aren’t the films for the job. Prometheus “shares DNA” with a pre-existing franchise, and what I know of Gravity suggests it’s a fairly grounded predicament movie, without the larger-than-life characters or fanciful story-world that would naturally give birth to a franchise.
To launch a new franchise you need both a strikingly imagined world with a conflict built into its bones, and vivid characters with heroic traits that allow them to the be the backbone of a series of stories. See “Star Wars.”
Spaihts is doing extremely well with multiple projects in development including The Mummy reboot, St. George and the Dragon, World War Robot, and some original screenplays Children of Mars, Shadow 19 and the 2007 Black List script Passengers.
For more of the io9 interview, go here.
There is also an extensive interview with Spaihts in Collider here.