Explosively Cinematic: Tapping Into the Thrilling Universe of Just Cause for the Big Screen

Universal Pictures, Avalanche Studios and Square Enix promise ‘a high-octane blockbuster action film with a compelling, over-the-top story’ in a bid to take the explosive, Hollywood-esque world of Just Cause to movie theatres across the planet. The hope is that fans of the series will simultaneously embrace and be inspired by a movie starring Rico Rodriguez.

TAPPING Into the Legacy of Rico Rodriguez

Make no mistake: at heart, the Just Cause series is a brilliantly tuned machine of visceral entertainment. Since the first game came out in 2006, the series has followed the action-packed travails of Rico Rodriguez, a rogue agent who specialises in undermining rogue regimes and rogue criminal organisations. The games are defined by their boundless open-world exploration and high-octane action sequences, they both happen simultaneously. Fans have yet to tire of Rico’s favourite toy, the heavily armed grappling hook, a piece of hardware that captures the chaos and destruction the game is known for.

The Creative Minds Behind the Just Cause Movie

The way forward for the oversized action narrative of Just Cause will fall to a group of industry veterans. Produced by Constantin Film, it is Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt who are on board to produce and screenwriter John Hlavin (Underworld, The Shield), bringing his pen to the Just Cause universe. The team promises the film will embody the spirit of the Just Cause universe and resonate with fans of the game.

A Forward-Thinking Partnership

The announcement of development and distribution is clearly a mutually beneficial alliance. It suggests synergy between Universal, Avalanche and Square Enix and, clearly, shared confidence in building a version of the Just Cause universe that the other will also support. With Avalanche Studios already beginning work on a fifth instalment in the game series, it suggests that the movie and the upcoming game will serve each other, gaining fans aware of one to expand the other.

Tapping into Hollywood's Gaming Craze

Just Cause lends itself well to a feature film at a time when Hollywood is increasingly eager to mine the video game business for ideas. The blockbuster success of Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu helps prove there’s money to be made in adapting video-game experiences for the big screen. It seems a winner for the Just Cause movie, an adventure for fans and filmgoers, rolling left, right and upside down.

Keeping Fans on the Edge of Their Seats

Details are scarce – casting and release date have yet to be announced – but this much is certain: the makers have their work cut out for them. How to deliver the action setpieces that readers of the games have come to expect, when Just Cause should be every bit as chaotic as the shooter series upon which it is based? Fan reaction has been mixed. Will audiences be enticed by a protagonist who can rip off the rafters of a rapidly sinking ship, or will they be let down after witnessing the inside of Rio De Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium? And wouldn’t audiences prefer to see Rico drift from a helicopter into a cityscape, rather than bumbling through a glitch-ridden explosion? Look out, Hollywood. Here comes Rico.

The Potential for a Thrilling Cinematic Experience

The potential is there for the Just Cause movie to become the best video game adaptation yet. With the right balance of story, character and action, Rico Rodriguez’s big-screen debut could fundamentally capture the magic of the game series, and not unfaithfully copy it. Moviegoers, both fans and the uninitiated, will be paying attention to see how it turns out.

Exploring the Tap Into Gaming's Cinematic Frontier

What Is "Tap" In Context?

Although we can use it as a verb to describe things we do with our hands – like turning the key in our front door lock – the use of the word ‘tap’ in the context of this article is far from mundane. When we talk about a video game being ‘tapped’, we refer to the fact that people are tapping, physically, the buttons on their controllers in order to play the game, but we also use the verb in a broader manner than this: we can also refer to the fact that a video game is ‘tapped’, ready to be turned into a movie, or to reach a market that is ‘untapped’ (ie, one that hasn’t yet proven as lucrative as other markets). In every case, the word ‘tap’ refers to the discovery that allows us to unlock something more, something new, as we tap into the potential that lies before us. And the moviemaking adventure from the console to the silver screen that the Just Cause movie represents is an adventure of precisely this kind: we can only guess at what we’ll find when the Just Cause movie finally taps into the potential for a new kind of explosion on cinema screens, one that taps into and opens up spaces for gameplay that until now have remained forever closed off.