Call of Duty movie director Peter Berg has teased more details about his live-action adaptation, promising a film with a very strong soul that digs into the human price of combat. The filmmaker behind Skydance-Paramount’s reimagining of Activision’s blockbuster shooter series opened up about his approach in a new interview with ComicBook.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Credits: IGN)
We already know the movie will focus on the Modern Warfare corner of the Call of Duty universe. According to Berg, he and writer Taylor Sheridan have been looking closely at the games themselves for inspiration, and what they found there goes well beyond gunfire and gadgets.
Call of Duty Movie Director Peter Berg on Modern Warfare’s Soul
Berg pointed to the franchise’s best-known operators as the heart of the project. Captain Price, Soap, Ghost and Alex are, in his words, complicated humans rather than cartoonish action figures. Their missions and storylines carry real nuance, and underneath the violence and hardware sits something deeper.
That something, Berg explained, is the cost of war itself: the burden carried by warriors who choose to put themselves between danger and everyone else. It is a theme the games return to again and again, and it sounds like the film intends to put it front and centre rather than treating it as background noise.
It is an ambitious pitch for a video game adaptation, a genre that has historically leaned harder on spectacle than on introspection. If Berg delivers on the promise, the film could stand apart from the usual shoot-’em-up blockbuster by asking what all that combat actually costs the people doing the fighting.
Why Some Fans Are Still Not Convinced by Berg
Not every fan is sold on Berg as the right director for the job, and the reason dates back to 2013. Back then, asked for his take on war-based video games, he called them pathetic and dismissed players with the phrase keyboard courage.
He went further at the time, saying that anyone spending four hours playing video games was weak and should get out and do something instead. Those comments have followed him ever since, and they sit awkwardly alongside his current praise for the Modern Warfare universe’s soul.
Whether fans forgive the old remarks may depend on what ends up on screen. A film that treats Price, Soap and Ghost as fully rounded people carrying real burdens would be the strongest possible answer to the sceptics. For now, Berg’s comments at least show he has thought seriously about what makes Modern Warfare more than just a shooter.
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Source: IGN — read the full story there.
