#2) Kratos Is One Of The Worst Characters In Video Games in Just About Every Respect
Kratos is basically what happens when somebody reads a Lobo comic and completely misses the joke. At his best, he’s a bloodthirsty arrogant prick with no indoor voice. At his worst, he’s a homicidal maniac with absolutely zero regard for the health and safety of literally anybody else, including his own friends, allies, and countrymen.
God Of War III tried to pull some sort of ridiculous line of crap about how Kratos deep down felt bad for being a one-man threshing machine, and he never seems to enjoy hurting people, but the simple fact of the matter is that the only thing that’s changed by the series finale is that he’s maybe slightly less arrogant. That’s it. In five games.
Which leads us to the number one problem here…
Everything That Happens In The Entire Franchise Is Essentially Kratos’ Fault
Seriously. Kratos is a complete idiot unable or unwilling to see the blatantly obvious consequences of his actions. The entire franchise starts because he doesn’t want to die and cuts a deal with Ares. Then, when Ares tricks him into killing his family, does he try and break the bond and swear off killing people, which is what got him into this mess in the first place? No, he kills even more people, ultimately killing Ares.
Then, in the second game, he goes around picking fights with the gods until Zeus does what’s quite frankly the reasonable thing and kills him before he rips apart all of Greece. Kratos escapes Hell and could end it there. Instead he goes to pick another fight with Zeus, because the first one went oh so well. You’d think around the time he’d managed to bump off his only remaining friend he might think “Gee, maybe stabbing shouldn’t be my sole method of problem-solving!” But no, here he is again, with the stabbing, and, by the third game, apocalypse causing. He manages to snuff out the sun, flood the Earth, kill all plant life, and unleash a plague. In exchange the human race gets hope.
Thanks, you unbelieveable dick.
When he’s not actively making things worse, he’s blundering into obvious traps and killing people who either meant well or were completely innocent because they were in his way. The ironic thing is that this actually makes Kratos a tragic hero by the rules of Greek drama; his actions trigger his own downfall. Greeks would think this was an awesome play.
None of this detracts from the games. But a movie? Ehhhh. Maybe consider a spunky teenage sidekick. At least we’d cheer when he stabs the brat.
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Problem 6: me hitting triangle will not be important to the progression of the on-screen threesome.
KILL ZOMBIES PORK HOOKERS.
That will be a deleted scene on the UNRATED Blu Ray, Brandon. Kratos can MURDERDEATHKILL all he wants, but sex?
That’s over the line! That’s way over the line! (As John Cena would say….)
Didn’t they already make a God of War movie?
I think it was called Wraith of the Titans.
I beat that joke into the floor when discussing that movie, so I was trying to keep it fresh.
With profanity.
Wouldn’t Immortals be a better fit?
I’d never really thought about it but it is surprising how little actual story those games have. You summed it up pretty well.
To be fair, they don’t NEED that much story. They’re not driven by story. They actually did a lot in the third game to turn what would be cutscenes into gameplay.
I bet they do a “Spawn” type thing and give him the promise of getting his family back if he… murders everyone in his path, or something.
The God of War games have an amazing story arch; obviously the point has flown right over your head. And Kratos is a great character, if you’ve played every game you’d see how his humanity was still intact at the beginning, he was the leader of the Spartan army and went to war like they did, on the brink of death he begged for his life and in turn had to suffer a fate even worse by being tricked into murdering his own family and being forced to live with it forever. Kratos was betrayed, used, manipulated, lied to etc, over the course of the series by many people, you can see his mental state slowly slip into madness, he realised that the Gods would always manipulate and bully him whether he was alive or dead and humanity would always live in fear of the Gods never truly having free will and living in peace unless the Gods were gone, so began his goal on bringing the downfall of Olympus, sacrificing some people on the way and giving the majority the power of hope to rebuild and live without the aid of the Gods is worth it.
There’s a lot more to it but it’s definitely got one of the best stories in gaming and Kratos is a great character, the film can be really great with the right cast and if the story and soul of the film follows the games.
And by the way, everyone who wanted to kill Kratos has VERY good reason to, you mentioned Hades and Persephone but let’s look at some others. Poseidon wanted to kill Kratos for sinking his palace and city Atlantis, Zeus wanted to kill him because he was scared that his son would overthrow him just like he did with his dad, Hephaestus wanted to kill him because he wanted to sacrifice his daughter Pandora, The sisters of fate tried to kill him because he was trying to control his own fate, Thanatos tried to kill him because he killed his daughter, Ares tried to kill him because you broke your bond to serve him… There’s a lot more but obviously they all have great motives, I don’t think you’ve played the games or maybe you just paid no attention to the story or characters, which tends to happen with action orientated games meaning some people don’t appreciate the great story and characters, unfortunately.
I could be sarcastic, but I want you to go through and look at A) why a lot of those things happened in the game (HINT: Kratos stabs people) and B) think about how relatable those motives to your average man on the street. I singled out Persephone because, while her means are pretty horrible, it’s difficult not to sympathize with somebody trapped in the worst marriage imagineable.
I’ve actually played all of the games in the series, although I found the PSP games to be a bit tiresome, and, as video games, they’re absolutely great dungeon crawlers: great graphics, lovely level design, superb score. The combat system could use a little work sometimes, but to Santa Monica’s credit they started out good and ended up great. I’m looking forward to Ascension letting you mix weapons in combos.
That said, as stories, they stink. And that’s OK. They don’t NEED to be good stories. They need to be good games.
You both might wanna check out this new thing called “getting laid”.
Actually, just Anonymous.
I’d love to know what other stories you consider to be the best in gaming.Seriously.
What an awful idea. Surely Killzone would have more potential for movie-izing. Not that any of the protagonists in that series are that much more sympathetic than Kratos, or that the overall story is any more interesting than GoW’s, but those are both bland enough to just make up some shit.
If we’ve got to see any Sony property made into a movie, LittleBigPlanet. With Stephen Fry narrating. Put it out around December, everybody would show up because it’d be like a nice, warm, audio blanket.
Aw fuck yeah, that’s a fabulous idea. Come to think of it, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, or Jak and Daxter would probably also have more movie potential than GoW or Killzone, as Pixar-type flicks.
Everything That Happens In The Entire Franchise Is Essentially Kratos’ Fault…
THIS is what could define this movie, and actually could make it not only watchable, but memorable. The dark parable is there to be written – the fact that the games don’t have a decidedly well written plot, just means that it’s wide open for a brilliant story teller. Sign Guillermo del Toro to write and/or direct and I’d buy my ticket in advance.
The tradeoff here is… why should we give a shit about Kratos or his quest, then? He’s just a dick looking to dick over some other dicks and instead dicks over himself.
I partly agree with you, Dan, in that I can’t think of a way to make Kratos likeable or deserving of empathy without some serious re-kafoobling of his character; but perhaps the likeability isn’t really necessary. A story with a theme of “war is a self-destructive enterprise” could be pretty fascinating. Kratos, having had great facility with killing for all his life, is seduced by the power which that facility allows, forsakes his family for it, unwittingly kills them, realizes he’s done wrong, keeps killing things to try and set things right. No matter how much killing he does, though, he can’t repair that damage.
He’s not capable of that, even as strong as he is. The movie ends with him broken and despondent, perhaps setting out to kill some more stuff, but knowing that it won’t actually do him any good. Still not likable, but pitiable; that counts for something.
Not that I expect Sony to do anything like that with it.
If Paul Verhoeven directs this movie it will be the greatest thing in the history of ever.
Each movie can be a build up to each ending of each game. This has the potential to be a much more elaborate and action packed “John Carter”.
Huuuh guess nobody knows about what there saying….the reason kratos fights is because of gaia’s promise to remove his memories of what he did to his family (also gaia’s fault). He kills everybody because gaia caused him so much pain but he takes it out on everybody else. The story should be based on gaia and Zeus ( for the simple fact he’s kratos father). This would be a great movie if the person writing it had played the game and isn’t so thoughtless about this great idea
Reason the movie will be awesome 1) Kratos nuff said, but in all honesty the game does have a great story line unless you just hate violence. If this thing becomes g rated I’l be pissed, but if they stay true to the game, it will be a great movie and the best video game to movie all time, even over the Resident Evil series.