Another day, another announcement of a video game adaptation. Sometimes it’s hard to stay neutral when reporting on projects like this, especially in the wake of Eli Roth‘s disappointing “Borderlands.” At the very least, we’re in a time period where it’s no longer a guarantee projects based on a game is going to be dreadful. After all, “Fallout“ was really damn good, and even something like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie“ was delightful and charming in all of its simplicity. But what do you do when there’s an announcement like this most recent one for an adaptation of “Shinobi?”
If you’re not familiar with the SEGA franchise, it’s not your fault really; Sega has let this thing stay dormant for two decades. The last game in the series was for the 3DS back in 2011, but if you want to talk about a proper console game, that’s where you have to jump back 20 years to the PS2. That was when SEGA tried to take their previously side-scrolling ninja action game into the realm of 3D. Maybe it was the brutally hard difficulty, maybe it was titles like “Devil May Cry” doing over-the-top action games better than Sega could at the time, but either way the series fell into the shadows.
This hasn’t stopped SEGA from forgetting about it entirely though as reportedly, the game studio has been wanting to make a movie based on the franchise for about a decade. Plans have never made it off the ground until recently though when it was announced that Sam Hargrove would be directing an adaptation of the games for Universal. Hargrove had a good deal of success for Netflix in directing “Extraction” and its sequel in 2020 and 2023, respectively. “Shinobi” will team the director with writer Ken Kobayashi, with a resume including “Hit-Monkey” and 2024’s Apple TV+ series, “Sunny.”
This early on in terms of the announcement, there’s no indication of what the plot is going to be about. “Shinobi” was never a very plot heavy kind of series, especially considering that it’s heyday was back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Arguably, the series is mostly remembered today for the absurdity of the boss battles found in the third overall game in the series, “The Revenge of Shinobi.” In the original version of the game you end up fighting Spider-Man, Batman, Godzilla, Terminator and others, all without any explanation or possibly the licenses to use those characters.
If you want to look at things from a different point of view, the lack of a real story means that there’s no pre-existing narrative you really have to stick to. This could give Kobayashi a clean slate to write with that isn’t mired down in lore and expectations. At the same time though, what would really make a “Shinobi” movie stand out from any movie that has a ninja in the present day? Actually, who’s even asking for this movie? Maybe we’ll find out as development continues and we get more information.
