God of War Movie Ditches Original Game’s Ending?

Early reviews of the script for the in-development God of War movie are saying that the movie is “slavishly true” to the first game, except for one key aspect: the ending.

There’s a screenplay for the God of War movie running free in the wilds of Hollywood right now, and early testimony on the script (penned by David Self) seems to be pretty positive. Big Ross, a CC2K staffer and self-proclaimed “Xbox acolyte,” got his hands on the work and has good news for fans: not only is it not half bad, it’s true to the game, “almost slavishly so.”

Indeed, his plot outline basically sounds like an overview of what happens in the first God of War: Kratos is a captain in the Spartan army whose soul is bound to Ares, the god of war who tricked Kratos into murdering his own family. Kratos is aided by Athena in his quest to get revenge on Ares, and (spoiler alert if you haven’t played this game, though you probably have) manages to do so with the help of Pandora’s Box.

Self’s script even has some of the key moments here too – it sounds like the fight against the Kratos dopplegangers is in the script, and everything is described as having the same larger-than-life qualities present in the game: Ares turns ginormous like he does in the final battle, the Hydra’s here, etc. Ross says it’s like “Clash of the Titans, only taken to the extreme and amped up to satisfy the 21st century sensibilities of males 15-25.”

The only big difference, apparently, is a major one. Genuine spoiler alert here. Apparently in Self’s script, instead of becoming the god of war after killing Ares, instead Kratos dives off a cliff (presumably to go to the underworld) and ominously says: “Your turn, Hades…” Sounds like he’s going to go kill Hades for whatever reason, which means that line’s an obvious tease for the sequel. This does not happen in the game, as far as I recall.

Now before you go and grab your pitchforks and flaming piles of hay, know this: scripts aren’t static entities in the movie business – they change, sometimes drastically, over the course of development. God of War is still in development – and we don’t know if this is the script that’ll be filmed or even if it’ll be filmed at all. If it does, it could be just like the game except for the ending, or it could be nothing like the game except for the ending. I don’t mind the either option, really, as long as they cast the right man for Kratos and they get the feel of God of War right.