A Mass Effect film has pretty much been rumored since gamers saw the first trailer of the game years ago, and as with most popular series, the inevitable moment of the movie being announced has finally arrived.  Whether it actually happens or not is still way up in the air, and Hollywood's track record with game movies isn't much help either.  For every Resident Evil movie (four of them now), there are 10 ready-for-the-big-screen games that can't even get their films off the ground.  Halo had Peter Jackson backing it and that was canned. David Hayter, legendary voice actor of Solid Snake and successful screenwriter can't even get enough cash to make a Metal Gear Solid film.  And yet the Hitman movie is made.

The names fronting the money and penning the script are impressive though, so this might just happen, and if it does, here's my candidate list of actors...

 

 

NOBODY!

 

For all that is good and holy, please do not make a Mass Effect movie.  Here are three reasons why:

1. The guy writing the screenplay, Mark Protosevich, has a total of three movies under his belt: The Cell, Poseidon, and I Am Legend.  I've never seen the Cell, but the other two sucked.  I Am Legend is one of the best books I've ever read, and somehow Mark completely messed everything up as he was writing for the silver screen.  He totally missed the entire theme of the book altogether, not even translating what being a "Legend" actually meant in the context of the novel.  The film is just a typical summer special effects blockbuster with a clusterfunk of a plot.

This is the guy penning the Mass Effect screenplay.  Chances are he'll be confused by the Reapers and make up some crappy backstory about when Shepard and Saren used to be buddy cops in C-Sec.

2. Video games movies suck, even the non-Uwe Boll ones.  As much as I hate to admit it, this is true.  Remember when the first Resident Evil movie came out and how it wasn't about the games at all? Here you have a series that already has ready-to-be-filmed material and instead the writers have a room full of lasers kill everyone off.  What, were zombies already passé by the time the movie started?

If the movie comes out, fans of the series will be disappointed because there's no way the film could include everything that makes the Mass Effect universe great, and non-fans will just see it as another video game movie in space.  And Mass Effect has no where near the name-recognition of Halo, and that couldn't even get made.

3. What makes Mass Effect great is its RPG-ness: the character you build, the choices you make, and the effect it has on the galaxy around you.  How is this appropriate for a movie at all? Shepard isn't male or female, renegade or paragon; Shepard is what you make them.  Film is simply not the right medium for the story being told in the games.  Sure, they could make it a side story like the books, but what is the point then?  People don't want to see Blasto the Hanar Spectre, they want to see Shepard.  But they want to see their Shepard.  Which is impossible.

Don't make this movie.  Guys at BioWare, concentrate on finishing up the main trilogy and make it the best ever.  Guys in Hollywood? Make a good movie from some original material and stay away from our beloved video game series.