EntertainmentTVAnimation ShowsPrime Video’s Secret Level series needs to avoid the mistakes of other video game adaptations if it wants to succeedWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
EntertainmentTVAnimation ShowsPrime Video’s Secret Level series needs to avoid the mistakes of other video game adaptations if it wants to succeedWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
For the past few years, big screen video game adaptations have been a mixed bag. It’s been rare for the films to be quite as bad asBorderlands(2024), which has served as a reminder of just how difficult it is to translate a game into another medium, coming off the back of 2022 adaptations likeUncharted, which never seemed to capture the tonal consistency and intensity of its source material, andFive Nights at Freddy’swhich, while leaden with Easter eggs and references to the games, fell flat as an actual horror film. In contrast to this, hype continues to build for the upcoming second season of The Last of Us, and Prime Video is hoping to continue the success of Fallout with the newly announced anthology series Secret Level.
From the team behind the Netflix anthology Love, Death, & Robots, the upcoming Secret Level aims to tell short stories set in the worlds of various acclaimed video games – and game-adjacent properties – with the trailer showcasing Space Marines from the world of Warhammer 40,000; God of War’s Kratos; Mega Man, and more. On paper, this has the potential to be great. Drawing on games that are acclaimed for their storytelling – like God of War and The Outer Wilds – could be the perfect way to remind people not only how good these games are, but to show that they can work well in other forms. That is, if they’re able to sidestep what could potentially be the biggest problem with the nascent series.
Secret Level - Teaser Trailer | Prime Video - YouTubeWatch On
Secret Level - Teaser Trailer | Prime Video - YouTube
Secret Level - Teaser Trailer | Prime Video - YouTube
The trailer for Secret Level addresses itself to, rather than a viewer, an imagined gamer. Cutting from the moody lighting and neon gore of Space Marines putting down an unseen alien to the voice of a narrator who declares that “this world has waited for your arrival,” does something that could be setting Secret Level up to fall: it treats it like a video game. There’s a tension throughout the trailer of interesting narrative bursts from these stories, and the idea that they’re there for a gamer. As the narrator says “you shall open the door, because you are the chosen,” we’re treated to a propulsive series of cuts between the worlds ofSifu, God of War, and Armored Core. Seeing these worlds in a new context – even in short fragments like this – is thrilling. The problem is that Secret Level doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be: the clips from Sifu recreate the aesthetics of the game, but this isn’t true for other stylized titles like Mega Man. It’s unclear about if this wants to be a kind of recreation of the games, or an attempt to move them into a different medium.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
In contrast, the recent successes of shows likeThe Last of Us,Fallout, and Arcane show that the best way to make a video game adaptation work is to keep its new medium in mind, tailoring the stories that are told so that they could only work on TV, or the big screen. The end of the Doom film is bad because it simply stops being a film, while something like ‘Long, Long Time’ succeeds due to its willingness to embrace something that feels counter-intuitive: the fact that it isn’t a video game. If Secret Level is able to do this, then we might be ending the year with one of the best series of game adaptations yet.
For more, check out our guide to all theupcoming video game adaptationson the way in 2024 and beyond.
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