Writer-director-producer George Miller

After a few weeks of mutually-instigated international phone tag, spanning mid-December to mid-January, we finally caught up with writer-director-producer George Miller. Our mission: to get his take on how he'd come to be mobbed up with God of War II director Cory Barlog. And, more importantly, what they would be working on first? Could it be a "Justice League of America" game, set to tie in with the movie which had been put on hold because of the writers' strike? A "Babe: Pig In the City" game for Nintendo's still-sizzling Wii? The answer, when it was revealed, still managed to thrill despite the nonchalance of Miller's delivery: "Well, the first one will be a 'Mad Max' game."

An interactive "Mad Max" epic? With Cory Barlog at the helm? Game, set, match. Or at least that's what legions of fanboys will be thinking--until they remember that licensed games are often less than stellar. But quite aside from the talent involved, our interview with Miller reveals not only the appropriate measure of respect for the medium, but also an understanding of the need to give this game the time it needs in order for it to be good or even great. In Part I of our Q&A, Miller explains how he became interested in working on videogames; the differences and similarities between action sequences and action games; and what it was like watching Barlog play God of War II in their agent's offices at CAA. Enjoy.

How did you become interested in working in video games?

Well, it sort of crept up on me almost imperceptibly. I realized that the kind of filmmaker that I am, I unconsciously try to make films that are as immersive as possible. I tend to use very wide angles and move the camera through space rather than zoom. My cutting patterns and compositions try to exaggerate--well, not exaggerate, but try to enhance a kind of three-dimensionality and an immersive quality to my storytelling. That of course is what games do so well.

The realization was, as I started to work in the digital realm, that film suddenly is able to do things that you weren't able to do before. And once I got into that, like everyone else, I saw the obvious convergence of film towards games and games towards film. So, I got swept along and found myself sort of in a current that was heading towards games.

The other big thing for me was the fact that film is a pretty closed narrative--it moves along at 24 frames a second, it's extremely linear, and in that sense rigid, whereas games bust that open. So in a way, with games being more exploratory, it's closer to what a novelist can do in many ways. A novelist can stop the forward momentum of their story and go explore little cul-de-sacs and then come back again. Games allow you to do that as well. Basically, games and films and just about everything else comes from the heading of storytelling. So it's just another way to tell stories, I think.

It's interesting that you say that, because looking at one of the films you've made in the past like "The Road Warrior"--it was an extremely well-received film, but I think critics would say compared to certain other stories that that wasn't necessarily the most complicated or richest of stories in a movie. Yet, that story and storytelling is probably more involved and more sophisticated than what you get out of most games, if that makes sense.

Yes.

If you look at games as a medium overall, for a lot of games--particularly action games--the story's almost an afterthought. It's almost like a premise; a set-up; an excuse for the action, and then it goes into something else. So it's interesting for someone like yourself, coming out of a storytelling medium, to say this. When you look at storytelling in games, how far along do you feel games are relative to other media when it comes to storytelling?

Well, I think that's where games are tending to move. One of the things when you're doing a film--an action film, for instance--that you always need to be mindful of is that any action shouldn't be empty. Any, let's say stunts or action sequence shouldn't be empty. It should always, in some way, inform the audience about character or the forward momentum of story.

So often we'll see the exact thing that you're excusing games of doing in film, where the movie will stop while you have an action sequence. And the action sequence in a sense doesn't do anything to inform the character or the story. It just simply is a lot of noise and movement and almost a distraction. But the great action sequences in cinema of those that integrate character and the forward momentum of the story. And the same things would apply to games as the technology allows the storytelling in games to be more sophisticated. You're going to see a lot more of that creeping into games. In the past the technology hasn't allowed you to do it. But now I think you're beginning to see more and more of it, so that the action of games can be very characterful.

Another challenge with storytelling in games--particularly in action games--is that in a game the action has to, in many ways, be more repetitive than it would be in an action movie. For instance, you might have an action sequence in one of your movies that goes let's say, even as long as 15 minutes, from the sort of initial set-up to the actual denouement, right?

Yes.

Now for the overall movie, let's say you've got three or four major set pieces which will definitely get the audience excited and cheering. But in between that, there's a lot of drama, a lot of character stuff, a lot of smaller stuff. Whereas in games, you sort of take those 15 minute action sequences and you have to repeat them ad nauseum. There's got to be a lot more of them. They've got to be stretched out and spread out more, throughout the story, in order to keep the player engaged. So there is a way in which, like you're saying, in a movie--even in an action movie, for it to be truly done well, the action has to support character. But in a game it seems like it's almost the inverse, where all of these other elements have to support the action because that's the lingua franca of games.

Yes, but I think from watching games--games are a way more nascent medium than cinema. We're watching games evolve as we speak, very dramatically. The balance is going to tip the other way. I go back to the notion of immersion of the audience. Games, being highly interactive, are very immersive with the audience, but there needs to be some experience that the player takes from that. And it's a very fertile medium to work in if you're looking towards how you can inform a character. So what I'm saying is, just as movies are moving towards games, games are going to be moving towards movies, where that balance is going to be less--that sort of balance towards action over character, and any character or story is basically in support of the action sequences.

What's tended to be the case in games is that you have the cut scenes interrupting the game play and so on. Now those lines are blurring and in the best of the games--you don't have that kind of stop/start staccato thing like you do in in those action movies, where you have you know the second unit stuff and the main unit stuff. So they're all blurring together. I'm repeating myself but that's a very obvious place where games could evolve.

Were there any particular games that helped build this sense of conviction that you have? Not only that the two media were converging, but also that you were starting to see things in games that you maybe hadn't in the past.

Well, first of all, when a character has a choice or a player has a choice between doing one thing and another and when you begin to see the consequences of that choice. In a sense, it's always what's happening in drama. And as I start to see that even in every game, from the really popular ones to even much more subtle ones. I can't remember the game now--the Japanese one where the guy goes off and has to save this princess by killing--

Ico.

Ico, yeah. Well there's an example. Which I didn't actually get to play myself--but I watched people play it and talked to people about it--because I didn't have the time. But, that was a really great example of a game where a character had moral choice and quite often you didn't even know what the consequences of those were until you got to the end. Which is no different from classic drama. And when I started to sort of hear and get a taste of those sort of games, I began to say, "Holy cow, it's all heading in the right direction." Except games, by definition in a sense, are more immersive for the audience. And the audience--the player has a greater sense of being in control of their destiny in some way. Does that make sense?

It does.

So I don't think I'm wrong. I don't think I'm the first to observe this. I think everybody's picking this up. And when I spoke to Cory Barlog, that was what I found really, really interesting. Here is somebody who is as obsessed with how to tell story through games as I am obsessed telling story through film. How to make that experience between the player and the character on the screen--that line between them--almost invisible, and let them go into an experience which completely carries them along.

Along the way, as in film, you shouldn't know how you're being worked, what's happening to you morally or emotionally. You shouldn't see the mechanics of it, but somehow you do end up going through an experience when you come out the other end, and in some way you're informed about yourself and the world. I think you could argue that that's one of the elemental functions of storytelling.

So were you able to play--or were you able to see someone play--God of War and God of War II?

I'm one of those parents who tends to watch their kids playing games, because of their higher skills. Actually I had Cory play it for us. To see God of War II played by the guy who created it was very exciting.

Do you remember when it was that Corey played God of War II for you?

About nine months ago.

That's interesting. Maybe the equivalent would be if I were to have you over to my place and you were giving your director's commentary right next to me while we're watching, say, "Babe: Pig In the City." What was it like watching him play God of War II and then talking with him, or having him answer questions while you were watching him play?

Well it was--it obviously felt like a privileged moment. Because obviously I was at the source of it, and he was explaining what he was trying to achieve and how he would achieve it. More than anything else, I think we were trying to get into each others heads; really understand each other's process and to see where there was commonality. That's why I was so excited when we said, "Let's work together." Because as I said, he approaches games in the same way that I like to approach film. Very rigorous--almost obsessively thinking about how to do it better. And I said, "Well, that's just very familiar." I spend most of my waking hours and probably half my dreams trying to figure out how to do it better in film. He's doing the same in games and for me, that was very exciting. But to actually watch him do was another thing. My kids have played it but, then to watch the guy doing it--it was just a pretty cool moment.

How did you get put in touch with Cory?

Well, as I said, I'd played games but I never really thought about what was happening until I started to really get involved in the digital realm of filmmaking. Mainly through the you know, the early experience of the first "Babe," and then ultimately "Happy Feet" and so on. Realizing how there have been very, very bad games made out of very good films, and then occasionally a good film made out of a not-so-bad game. But usually the games are a marketing adjunct or to a film and never, never something that has its own sovereignty. I began to think a lot about that sort of thing.

But also, realizing what I said at the beginning of the conversation, I felt that games had the ability to do things that I've been trying to do in cinema; that I realized cinema in a sense can't do as well as games can: totally directed immersion. And then like everyone else, I began to observe the convergence between the two. So, I spoke to Bryan Lourd from CAA and Seamus Finney--do you know him, from CAA?

Seamus Blackley?

I'm sorry, not Seamus Finney, Seamus Blackley. Seamus said, "When you talk about film, it's how Cory talks about games. Would you like to meet him?" I said, "Yeah, of course," and that's how we met. In fact, it was in Seamus' office where Cory came in and played God of War II.

What were you looking to do? Obviously CAA has a videogame division, and they're very aggressively trying to put together deals on the game front. Were you looking to make games yourself? What was it?

As Seamus said, I think what happened is a lot of filmmakers looked up one day and saw that games were in many ways eclipsing film. Eclipsing film in even the box office, as it were; I don't know if they call it box office in games, but, revenues. And so [some of these filmmakers] said, "Okay let's get into the game business."

Now, to be as honest, that wasn't what was driving me. Because for many, many, many years--for as many years as I can remember, we've been asked to make games of the "Mad Max" story. I mean, we've been approached by every major game company or developer virtually, asking "Can we do a 'Mad Max' game?" And to me, it always felt like what I used to call empty calorie action. Where you just--the thing that you were alluding to before, which is just action for its own sake without anything underneath it. Without any real subject. It came across as though you went through the experience, but you came out the other end and you almost forgot it the next moment. It didn't stay with you.

Then I realized at a certain point--maybe about three or four years ago--that, "Wait a minute, the world of story telling--if you approach it from the point of view that this is all storytelling--is changing way, way rapidly" It's very bewildering. If you stick to the old orthodoxies, it's very, very confusing. And so people tend to become very, very rigid and they say, "Well, the only way to tell stories is in cinema. Or the only way to tell stories is on television. Or the only way to distribute the stories is to make big blockbusters or do small independent films," or whatever. Everyone's got their own orthodoxy.

What I realized is that in this new digital age, the storytelling is the same. It's just the means by which you tell the story that shifts. So, in a sense, it's, "Create the story once but publish it many times in many different forms." Go back to the novels of Dickens. They started off as serializations; they were basically serials. And they were only later written as novels. Almost like serialized TV shows like a "Lost" or something, where you end up with a kind of a question at the end of each episode to bring you back to the next episode, as it were. And it was only later they said, "There's a novel in there." So it's a similar thing, but in an extreme way; there's many, many forms in which you can take your story out into the world. There are many, many platforms in which you can do it. And you have to include games as part of it. And the other thing--does that make sense?

Yep.

Good. The other thing that was happening--there were three scripts I've been working on, including another "Mad Max" film quite some time ago, before "Happy Feet." I found that all of them were tending to have very similar qualities to what were in games. So I was writing films, without being an obsessive game player myself, that would make very interesting games. They had that same quality and that's when I realized, "Wait a minute, where I'm going in my filmmaking is to try to make the film experience as immersive as possible. And that's exactly what games already are doing well." So, that's what happened and that's what drew me to games.

It wasn't so much looking at a business plan, it was really an opportunity to see what you could do in terms of storytelling. To deal with the same world but, to put it out there in two different media and have each one of them do what it did best, so that your story is told much more comprehensively. When it's very linear you tell it as a very closed narrative--you make that as well as you can in the cinema. When you want to be a little bit more exploratory, you can look at other tangents. You can expand on other characters that you might only meet tangentially in the middle of a movie; secondary characters. You can explore them much more aggressively in a game. And in a game you can bring all the moral conflicts and emotional conflicts that you'd normally get in drama.

Were you involved with the "Happy Feet" game?

I had no time. I really, really wanted to at the beginning, and in fact its one of the things I had promised myself that I would be involved. But because we were trying to do the first digital animation I'd ever done, and it was way more involving than I thought it would be, I just ultimately had no time even to review what was happening in the game.

Right.

To be honest--and I probably shouldn't say this, but I haven't been able to bring myself to look at the game. Because, I just know its going to be one of those games that's kind of surfing off the movie rather than a game that has its own integrity.

And so was that part of the reason for wanting to have a creative partner? The--

Yes, definitely.

--video game equivalent of a George Miller--

That, that's one way--

--to work on the game project?

Yeah, that's definitely one of them. What I want to do is bring the two sensibilities together and workshop a project together. Bringing the art departments of the film and the game together. Sharing the characters; you cast the same actors and the same voices, so the two are very, very highly integrated. You don't get an actor who sounds like the lead in your actor, you get the same actor. The two go hand in hand so that the two feel of a piece, just a different way to experience the same story. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

I would never pretend to be able to do a game. All I know is, there are certain things I know about storytelling that have been acquired over a lot of filmmaking. I still find myself thinking about how to tell stories. I just know that there's certain things that we can teach the game developers, as it were. And I know that there's certain things that the game developers can teach us. If we set that out under the heading of us all trying to explore characters and worlds through the different types of games, through the two different media, then we might have something that's much more integrated and I think more powerful.

Next: Miller explains why the "Mad Max: Fury Road" movie has yet to be made, and details exactly how he'll be collaborating with Mad Max game director Cory Barlog. Click here to read Part II of our George Miller interview. For Parts I and II of our interview with Barlog, click here and here.