Sony reminded us during itsCES 2024 presentation in Las Vegasthat it is currently working on a film adaptation of Gravity Rush. Yep, I didn’t know that it existed either. The PlayStation exclusive hasn’t received a new entry since the underrated second instalment back in 2017, and after its gutting of Japan Studio and an increasing focus on narrative blockbusters, I highly doubt the open-world action-adventure will ever see the light of day again. It’s a shame because both Gravity Rush games are excellent and carry a charming personality that you don’t see from the console giant anymore.
But a movie is on the way, a live-action one at that, which seems to place protagonist Kat within a modern world opposed to the fictional steampunk realm she previously inhabited. While all we saw was a few seconds of footage of our heroine jumping off a roof followed shortly by a behind-the-scenes look at motion capture, this project is already wrought with red flags along with a fundamental misunderstanding of why Gravity Rush worked so well.
Sony also updated us on itsGod of WarandHorizon Zero Dawnadaptations at CES, both of which are currently still in the scripting phase and several years away.
A couple of years ago I wrote about the brilliance of Kat as a protagonist, and how she does a solid job of subverting hero tropes and presenting a female character who isn’t sexualised or viewed as a damsel in distress at the most inopportune moments. If anything, she quickly becomes a force of hope within her community, working with fellow humans and Raven, a girl who happens to possess the very same powers she does. A cult following formed around the series in recent years after the second title’s online services were shut down, a sign that Sony was pulling support for the game that dashed hopes of a successor.
Sony has found decent to incredible success with its adaptations ofUnchartedandThe Last of Us, and, even if theGran Turismofilm didn’t exactly set the world on fire, it has a good enough track record to keep throwing properties at the wall to see what happens. This is why God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn are being turned into streaming originals, and forgotten classics like Patapon are becoming ideal fodder for animated adaptations. Only a matter of time until Aardman is commissioned to make a stop-motion rendition of Loco Roco. Actually that’d rip.
Video game adaptations are slowly but surely stepping in to address the fatigue we have for superhero media, although I’m unsure it will have the same staying power, nor do I believe it is right to throw every single property even loosely suited for film or television into the mix in the vain hope something will emerge a global hit. The Last of Us had the workings of a HBO drama in video game form, hence why the transition seemed so effortless. You’d struggle to say the same for Gravity Rush, which, judging from the footage we’ve seen, will be set in a modern world as an everyday woman gains amazing superpowers. The potential for cringe is already off the charts, reminding me of bad mid-00s films like Catwoman or panned video game adaptations like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, which took a beloved character and turned her into something unknowable.
It’s much too soon to cast judgement on Gravity Rush, but we only need to look at Sony’s past attempts to figure out what sort of film it intends on making. Uncharted and Gran Turismo were largely predictable fare with source material that could be effectively adapted, but you can’t do that with Gravity Rush if you want to keep its soul intact. Kat’s cutesy banter amidst a fantasy world is what made it so special - she just so happened to have gravity-bending powers capable of fighting giant monsters. Transplanting that into our own world and outfitting it with a laundry list of awful clichés would be a disaster, and from what little we’ve seen, also feels inevitable already.
It seems like a bad idea, and likely won’t receive the budget nor creative direction needed to avoid such a mediocre fate. There’s a slim chance of me being proven wrong, but I’ve done this song and dance enough times to know how it ends. Gravity Rush feels out of time long before it’s even come out, operating on the tenets of video games movies from decades ago instead of reading how the winds have changed in recent years.
