http://bit.ly/ooTCIL
With clever composing and imaginative gameplay that difficulties gamers to “think with portals,” the Portal video recreation series, created by Valve Software program, has been a preferred of gamers given that the 1st game’s release in 2007. And Portal 2, which was launched previous April, marketed 3 million copies in its first two months on shelves.
Central to the game’s premise is the idea of a product that can develop “portals” amongst locations, enabling you to wander by means of one particular magical hole and emerge anywhere else. Include a physics engine and some crafty puzzles to that idea, and it will become an engaging, addictive journey that is strikingly diverse from standard initial-man or woman-shooter fare.
It also will become fodder for the imagination of fans — such as director and Absolutely Rad Demonstrate co-host Dan Trachtenberg, who commenced shooting a short film inspired by the franchise two a long time in the past. Next a premiere for TRS enthusiasts at Comic-Con, he posted it to YouTube this week.

Using, among other things, Terminator two as an inspiration, Trachtenberg’s take on Portal strips the franchise down to its central components — a girl, and her portal-making gun. This signifies that No Escape lacks the whimsical humor of the original game titles, which is the principal criticism of the short, based mostly on Twitter and Facebook commentary I saw. But rather it has flawless visual consequences that capture completely the prospective of the Portal gun in a film context. For the first time, I believed that Portal as a film could in fact work.
I’m not the only one who feels that way — the film caught fire upon its release on Tuesday, acquiring large weblog protection, massive quantities of retweeting and a YouTube front page characteristic. It was even aired in total on cable channel G4?s Attack of the Show (I am presently a writer for the display, but had no involvement in the determination to air it). As of writing, it had more than three.five million views, and almost 150,000 thumbs-up ratings.
Most of the commentary surrounding No Escape‘s release on the web has taken the type of “Someone just give Trachtenberg a entire bunch of money and let him make a true Portal movie already.” And these days, that is not these kinds of a unusual thought — without a doubt, there is some precedent for that route, the most current instance staying Kevin Tanchareon’s consider on Mortal Kombat.
Mortal Kombat: Legacy started off as what would technically be a enthusiast film (regardless of the participation of Star Trek: Voyager‘s Jeri Ryan and Michael Jai White), then was picked up as a ten episode internet sequence by Warner Bros. And confident, a world wide web sequence isn’t a function film — but Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which was distributed by Machinima, has obtained more than 46 million views, in accordance to a Machinima spokesperson.
The issue is, although, is it truly achievable for Portal to get the identical therapy?
In an job interview with the blog Really Conscious, Trachtenberg described not only his inspirations, but tackled that criticism I pointed out earlier, about No Escape lacking the Portal games’ quirky humor:

Nicely it is certainly redundant to say I love the video game and its universe, but to be honest, I was far more energized about seeing the technologies in the video game in a various planet. The video sport is extremely whimsical and somewhat cartoony- I truly wanted to explore the thought of taking the fundamentals of Portal and placing it in a a lot grittier, critical location.

Likely gritty was also component of what impressed Warner Bros. about Tanchareon’s consider on the Mortal Kombat franchise — but what was truly crucial to the internet sequence finding greenlit was the reality that Tanchareon brought a refreshing approach to the concept. There will be individuals who argue that it is not truly Portal without having an insane A.I. playfully threatening to murder you at the begin of every single stage. Those men and women might incorporate the people at Valve, which seem to retain the film rights for the franchise. But with No Escape, Trachtenberg has revealed Valve that if they want somebody with an unique voice to adapt the franchise, he’s possibly the right man for the work.
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