 "Photo: Hive Productions")
See Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy at MGS-Philanthropy.net.
Who has played one of Konami’s “Metal Gear” games and thought it wasn’t awesome?
When I found out that there was a “Metal Gear” movie, I nearly flipped. I have been playing the games since 1989, and I am a die-hard fan, so the prospect of a movie really intrigued me. Despite being low budget and fan based, the film will excite any “Metal Gear” fan.
Released on Sept. 27, and running about one hour and 10 minutes long, “Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy” is a fan-based and driven movie developed by the organization Hive Division and is directly inspired by Hideo Kojima’s game series, “Metal Gear Solid.” The storyline is not an official part of the “Metal Gear” time line.
There have been several attempts to make a fan-based “Metal Gear” project, but Hive Division’s attempt has been the most professional one so far. What makes it even better is Hive Division is not charging anyone to stream the movie off its Web site.
The movie starts in “Outer Heaven,” a commonly occurring theme in the “Metal Gear” series, as a place that is void of politics and the corruption of governments.
It is a place where soldiers go to be free from being pawns of their government and live their lives as they see fit. Soldiers are looking for someone but only find their dead comrades.
While trying to find the culprit, they get subdued by the legendary soldier and stealth expert, Solid Snake (Phillip Sacramento).
In the next scene, you see Snake sitting down on a jet talking to an associate. Snake is now a part of an organization called Philanthropy, a group dedicated to fighting nuclear threats, specifically the Metal Gear, a bipedal nuclear toting weapon of mass destruction.
Snake receives his mission: to find and rescue Abraham Bishop, a senator who has strong connections to a company called Arms Tech.
Arms Tech is a company widely known for producing Metal Gears. Bishop has information that can aid Philanthropy in bringing Arms Tech to justice and to shut down the production of Metal Gears forever.
As the group arrive over their target area, they spot an abnormal storm, but regardless the mission presses on. Snake jumps out of a plane and lands safely in a foreign country and begins to look for his support group to proceed.
Unlike many of the scenarios in the game, Snake is actually armed and the weapons are not procured on site.
This is different from the games because Kojima made the “Metal Gear” series stealth based; the object was to avoid enemy detection. That, and Snake always performed his missions solo in the games, so a support team is new turf that Hive Division decided to try out.
The music makes me feel like I am watching one of the cinematics from the video game series. Hive Division ensured the music matched the games’ style. It makes the film completely believable, and although the characters look a little different in the movie, they act as their characters would.
Though it is strange to see a different face as the main protagonist, Snake is as stoic and hard-core as the “Metal Gear” series portrays. The actors really captured the essence of the games, despite looking kind of amateur in certain scenes. Snake’s lectures about the way of the battlefield and his mind-set while on a mission feel like it came from Kojima himself.
Another good element from the “Metal Gear” series that the film stuck to is how Snake is always pitted against nearly supernatural enemies.
The animation is surprisingly fluid, and the story was sound. Some of the cinematics replicated the game precisely, codec for example. When Snake calls someone on the codec, they used a very similar screen as the one in the video game. In certain scenes, it looked exactly like the video game. I expected to pick up a controller at any minute while watching the film.
The director also used several elements in the movie that are constant themes in the game. Snake’s lack of knowledge regarding technology is a perfect example. When Snake finds one of his support members playing a Nintendo DS, he calls into base demanding to know who the man playing a “game box” was.
Another example is when one of his support members says, “You would make a good video game character.” Anyone who plays “Metal Gear” will catch on to this humor instantly.
“Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy” is a good movie with a sound story line to watch even if you are not a fan of the video games, and it is definitely not a disappointment considering it was a non profit fan based movie.
Two sequels of the film have been written, but Hive Division has yet to start on the sequels. All things considered, I give it four stars out of four.
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