God of War creator David Jaffe says he’s a fan of Brett Ratner’s work and considers him a good choice to direct a “popcorn videogame” movie likeGod of War.
In a video entry on his blog, Jaffe said, “There are levels of directors, let’s put it that way. Whenever you create something and you know it’s going to Hollywood, of course it’s like, wouldn’t it be great if Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Chris Nolan was the director of the property you had a big hand in creating. That would be awesome.”
But he added that Ratner is also a good choice to direct a God of War film because it’s essentially a videogame equivalent of the kind of films Ratner makes. “I’m not one of these Ratner haters who says, ‘Oh, the guy can’t direct.’ I think he makes really entertaining movies, and so what I told the producer when he said we’re seriously looking at Brett Ratner was, ‘I think this is pretty cool.’ God of War was designed to be a popcorn videogame.”
While not exactly gushing over the choice of director, Jaffe was more direct in his praise of the rest of the team on the movie. “I know the producer of the film really well, he’s the guy who made Get Smart in the summer, he did a great Kevin Costner film, The Upside of Anger, his partner was the producer of the first Batman that Nolan did. They’re a great group over there. The writer of the film is David Self who wrote Road to Perdition, 13 Days, The Wolf Man, he wrote a draft of The Bourne Identity. These are really talented, high-level people that have sort of marshaled and surrounded Brett to make this movie.”
“God of War wasn’t a hardcore game… it was meant to be this total accessible, mainstream equivalent of a popcorn summer action movie, and I think when you look at the directors who really do that well, I’m happy with the choice of Brett Ratner,” he continued. “Would it have been cool if it was Spielberg? Yeah. Ridley Scott? Yeah, that would’ve been awesome, you know. Guillermo would’ve been awesome. But I don’t look at Brett Ratner and say, ‘We’re going to have a shit movie.’ Obviously the proof will be in the pudding.”
Jaffe added that he liked Red Dragon and the first Rush Hour, and also claimed the third X-Men movie was his favorite, even though, as he put it, “Clearly, the other two films are better movies from the standpoint of how they’re crafted.”
