Buoyed by the wave of glowing reviews for Insomniac’s recent PS4 reboot, Sony’s galactic mascots Ratchet & Clank have been all the rage in the video game industry over the past fortnight or so – a momentum director Kevin Munroe is aiming to carry over onto the big screen.
In an interview with The Verge, Munroe spoke broadly about video game adaptations in general, Insomniac’s swashbuckling duo, and how the imminent movie stays true to its roots.
First up, the filmmaker heaped praise on the creative team steering Ratchet & Clank to cinemas, noting that he adopted a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach before dabbling in Insomniac’s beloved universe.
“I think that with any adaptation, but specifically video game adaptations, filmmakers just get super arrogant in terms of the producers and the studios, and they think they know better than the guys who have been working on the video game up until that point,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of feeling, especially with video games, that you have to go in and reinvent a lot of stuff.”
In order to retain the essence of what makes Ratchet & Clank so special, Munroe ensured that he recruited the core voice cast from Sony’s video game franchise. “It was really important for us to get those core guys,” he explained. “And not have Seth Green’s voice coming out of Ratchet’s face so that you could put another name on the poster.”
“It always comes down to trust,” Munroe says. “You’ve got to get everyone around the table and have everyone feeling like the other person isn’t there to screw up what they’re trying to do. With Insomniac, it was great, they were so open to it, and I think they looked at it as a chance to really re-launch this franchise and do it in a way that would make everyone take notice.”
Also starring James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Paul Giamatti, Daredevil and Jessica Jones star Rosario Dawson, John Goodman and Sylvester Stallone, Ratchet & Clank makes a beeline for theaters on April 29. Are you excited to see Insomniac’s spacefaring duo light up the big screen?