Netflix’s Bioshock Movie Would Be Better as a Series

As video game movies go, Bioshock has always felt like a good candidate. The “video game movie curse” has always been a falsehood, but some titles have a better chance of success than others. Bioshock is dripping with atmosphere and packed with engaging details. Rapture, one of the most well-realized worlds in video game history, will demand impossible effort. Netflix’s Bioshock will struggle to decide what should be dredged up and what should stay on the sea floor.

Bioshock Is Too Big for the Big Screen

Remember Sander Cohen? The deranged artist who commits gruesome murders in pursuit of aesthetic glory. He’s one of the most memorable characters in the original game, but he doesn’t take up too much of its story. He’s one of several dangerous antagonists Jack runs into during his trek through Rapture. How long can a Bioshock movie spend on Sander Cohen? What about on J.S. Steinman? Or Peach Wilkins? Cohen could carry a 48-minute episode of a mini-series on his own. They’re secondary characters in the game but would be relegated to brief appearances in a typical film. Jack is barely a character, and as compelling as Atlas and Andrew Ryan are, they’re necessarily stuck in the third act. These figures are critical, but they aren’t the only thing Netflix’s Bioshock could give the short end of the stick.

The problem with most video game movies is that interactivity is the beating heart of the medium. It’s like trying to adapt a film into a radio drama. The project inherently removes the element that made the previous work unique. Bioshock is compelling as a piece of interactive narrative. Watching the cutscenes on YouTube doesn’t have the same effect. Critically, however, there are aspects a film can capture and comfortably transition from its source material. That’s what usually separates a good video game adaptation and a bad one. The Bioshock movie has to translate the story’s atmosphere to be seen as anything approaching a success. Even a particularly grueling film would struggle to let the concept breathe. There’s a reason we don’t watch speedruns to enjoy a game’s plot.

The Netflix Limited Series Format Is Perfect for Bioshock

Netflix gets a lot of pushback about how they handle their streaming series. They put out five or six new shows every month, most of which never make it past the first season. Overpopulating their service and killing off shows people like tends to draw negative attention. While they lose goodwill with around half of their choices, their video game adaptations stand oddly above the pack. Thank Adi Shankar of Castlevania and the recent Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix for that. The adult-oriented animated series format would be great for Bioshock, but the model that brought the world Dark, The Witcher, and Stranger Things fits even better.

Structuring a Bioshock movie would be somewhat simple. Launch in with a plane crash and get Jack to Dr. Tenenbaum in the first act. Spend most of the second act fighting his way through locals until the big twist near the end. Finish the fight and play out the good ending in the final moments. It’s not complicated, at least from a pacing perspective. An entire season of streaming TV could follow the same structure, but I would argue it could also take the time to explore Rapture. Rapture is a character in Bioshock. Every detail begs for further analysis. While a film will tell the story, a series could add something new. The adaptation will never outrun the lack of interactivity, but it can offer something valuable with time to explore.

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No one wants to see the Bioshock movie get The Hobbit treatment. That 8-hour game features enough material for three 2-hour films. The power of the source material is in the fine details, the atmosphere, and the living, breathing world that holds it all in. The Bioshock movie might be the perfect 2-hour distillation of one of the most memorable games of the modern era. It is, however, impossible for a feature film to cover everything that belongs in a full-fledged adaptation. Bioshock would make a perfect Netflix series. We’ll have to wait and see whether a more contained story can handle Rapture.