Deus Ex: Human Revolution has proved itself a worthy successor to the Deus Ex name, and now, the game has been optioned for the silver screen treatment. The game itself is about a sort of secret agent loaded up with the latest techno-toys and bionic enhancements who navigates a world of conspiracies and corporate plots. The movie will take after Human Revolution, although how well it will manage to stick to the source material is anyone’s guess. The Los Angeles Times has the story.
Oddly enough, for all its cyberpunk influence, the one thing Deus Ex doesn’t focus on is fame and celebrity. The video icon culture just isn’t in the game. Maybe a movie will change that.
Deus Ex is also excellent for a silver screen movie — it’s almost a movie story in-of itself. If the movie don’t try to wing it off in some random direction tangential to the story (this happens a great deal: I’m looking at you Silent Hill.) As a cyberpunk, it hits all the right points talking about the oppression of the weak, transhumanism, and exploitation.
Technology has always been part of the class war, especially when it’s being controlled by giant corporations — we see it in copyright and the Internet, pharmacologicals, medical advancements — but placing it into a transhuman context, where being bigger-better-and-badder is necessary to move up in the world. It’s the prefect dystopia with a protagonist who is not-philosophical-enough to make the narrative preachy.